With Resnais and his varied followers, the need for rationalised explanation has been modified, and audiences have come to accept the loose ends which are found in modern films as frequently (or almost) as they exist in real life.

This is very much the case in Je t'aime, je t'aime. One can see, from the lucid opening phases, that the 'story' is about a man named Claude who has attempted suicide and is discharged from hospital in very poor shape emotionally….

Far from the stylised coolness of Marienbad, yet nowhere near the human warmth of Hiroshima and Muriel, this 1968 collaboration between Resnais and the writer Jacques Sternberg hardly succeeds at all with its characterisations. Claude is dull…. Catrine is hardly more than a cipher. And the other personages are all ciphers…. (p. 53)

Perhaps Je t'aime, je t'aime (a strange title in the circumstances) might be regarded as a...