You know what it cost you in the past

WILD GRASS (2009)

For some reason, I rarely come across films that kick off brilliantly, then gradually collapse. It’s usually the other way around: films that initially strike me as duds often have a way of surprising me in the end. The former is obviously more upsetting – becoming completely invested in a film only to see it slowly fall apart – but alas, the former is the case for Alain Resnais’ Wild Grass. The now eighty-eight-year-old Marienbad director, who I lauded with a considerable amount of praise in my last review, has sustained a productive career for over half a century, and while his filmography isn’t exactly teeming with an array of achievements, the modernist auteur has contributed beyond his share to French cinema. While Resnais’ work may span decades, he isn’t prolific, so selecting a film to follow-up Marienbad with should have been a breeze. Night and Fog was perhaps the obvious choice, but typical of my curiosity, I decided to check out his most recent effort. With Wild Grass, Resnais utilizes his unique approach of complex narratives featuring ambiguous characters, but unlike Marienbad, the setup here isn’t fully realized, or even successful for that matter.

Wild Grass opens with an existential narration that profiles a peculiar, zany-haired woman named Marguerite (Sabine Azéma) who has just been mugged on the street. The story’s narrator points out how in similar clichéd predicaments people feel compelled to call out for help, despite the slim odds of actually receiving any. She contemplates calling the police, but assumes her small dilemma doesn’t quite warrant involving the law enforcement. What’s interesting to point out here is that we never clearly see this woman’s face – even after following her home – until much later in the film. I suppose this is Resnais’ way of rendering the audience clueless regarding Marguerite's identity in order for us to see her the way the film’s second protagonist, Georges (André Dussollier), visualizes her – as a stranger.

En route to his car in an empty parking garage, Georges stumbles upon Marguerite’s stolen wallet and begins to obsessively psychoanalyze the stranger based on the contents inside. As he rummages through Marguerite’s papers, it becomes clear that the middle-aged man is a bit neurotic. Paranoid and tactless, Georges returns the wallet to the local police station and is clearly discomforted by the presence of officers; it’s suggested that Georges has a criminal past. Stuck on his irrational longing for the hapless stranger, Georges looks her up in a telephone directory and plots a way to meet her. After hounding Marguerite with fanatically detailed voice messages and even slashing her tires to convey his passion, Georges is finally approached by local officers, who advise him to cut all ties with the theft victim. In an unlikely turn of events, Marguerite begins to sympathize with Georges, experience guilt over the unforeseen impact she's made on both his life and marriage, and thus decides to pursue him – how comically ironic.

The narrative then begins to employ repetitive dialogue, deviating points of view, spontaneous, but integral character introductions, and dubious suspensions of disbelief. Oddly enough, this disordered method actually worked for Marienbad. So what did Resnais’ new wave critical achievement have that his latest feature lacked? Consistency. With Marienbad, viewers are generally able to determine the type of film it is from the offset. Wild Grass, however, unfolds as a seemingly ordinary story that boasts two innovative and realistic character studies which somehow get lost in the absurdity of the film’s final acts. Resnais offers two of the most complex characters I’ve seen in a film all year, then replaces them with vague mannequins of different ideals and frames of mind. In the film’s first half, we see Georges as a potentially dangerous, withdrawn archetype of severe neurosis while Marguerite displays an apprehensive woman who seeks to avoid crisis at all costs. These initial characterizations were amazing, but ultimately became lost in the story’s odd plot developments. I suppose I could interpret the title Wild Grass one of two ways: as a symbolic reference to Georges’ mental state or as a reference to the actual film, which is essentially as tangled and unkempt as wild grass itself.

7.5/10