[The structure of Hiroshima Mon Amour (HMA) is based on Resnais' concepts of time. The film not only deals with exterior time (the actual length of the film) but interior time (the time of the central action we see). Within Resnais' use of interior time, the series of dramatic entities have meaning contingent on the sequence in which they are presented. Each sequence of happenings might be called a specific time, a fraction of the interior one. They compose the continuum of action, the story of the film.]

These specific times, the circumstantial components of the interior continuum, are in HMA subdivided into two categories:

(a) One is le temps réel, the time in which the action in the city of Hiroshima takes place. Le temps réel is, then, the time in which the love story between the Japanese architect and the French actress develops.

(b...