Last Year At Marienbad Details

Penned by modernist writer Alain Robbe-Grillet, this is a complex cinematic riddle that broke all the rules of narrative film-making. Are Delphine Seyrig and Giorgio Albertazzi really reuniting a year after their first meeting or was she killed by her jealous husband, Sacha Pitoeff? Do the events take place only in Albertazzi's memory, or is it simply an erotic fantasy on Seyrig's part? The winner of the Golden Lion at the Venice film festival and Oscar-nominated for its screenplay, Alain Resnais's film is a triumph of camera movement, symbolic décor, abstract structure and stylised playing. A veritable masterpiece, but beware, this icon of French New Wave cinema is as likely to irritate as it is to mesmerise.

A dreamy, elegant film which presents a puzzle with no solution. It has its attractions for film buffs and cryptogram addicts, but is not for anyone who simply wants to be told a story.