An old French classic is already iffy for me; one that gets reviled in some circles is iffier still. I had planned to skip this one, until I got invited to a Meetup group to discuss it. Hey, if it was bad, at least we could harp on it together.
None of the characters have given names, and the setting is ambiguous apart from a fancy resort. What's important to know is that a man (Giorgio Albertazzi) insists that a woman (Delphine Seyrig) had had a romantic liaison with him at a Czech spa and agreed to meet him again around this time, but she denies ever meeting him before. The other man of note (Sacha Pitoëff) evidently disapproves of the first man's actions and challenges him to games of Nim.
If you're in the market for plot progression, keep looking; you basically won't find any until the ending, and then only a little. I was not surprised to learn later that Alain Resnais also directed Hiroshima mon amour, which bored me. Fortunately, LYaM has an advantage to combat boredom: mystery. Even the filmmakers couldn't agree on the "truth" of the story. Is the guy gaslighting? Has he mistaken her for someone else? Is he crazy? Is she dumping him through dishonesty? Does she have amnesia? I detect some evidence for the last one: She accidentally supplies more details of the alleged liaison and never clarifies whether the second man is her husband or, indeed, has no closer a link with her than the first.
More than mystery, there's surrealism. Not only do details change in the course of their repetitions and imaginations, but something seems off about the resort. Extras frequently stop moving altogether. The night looks like day, and the timing in general is hard to follow. This leads to more fanciful interpretations, such as the entire picture being imagined or one or more characters being ghosts.
I have to give the artistry credit. The camera shots get interesting, and the music is consistently haunting. I can see how other works in various media would take inspiration, even if I can't draw precise parallels with, for example, The Shining. The acting? Well, Seyrig does an apt job with emotion, but the two men seem to have been chosen for looks more than ability.
Personally, I thought the most controversial aspect would be the first man's ultimately rewarded behavior. Whatever actually happened, it's clear that the woman doesn't want to be with him now, and following her around with a story she doesn't care to hear must qualify as harassment. Instead, the apparent determining factor in whether you call it one of the best films ever or one or the worst is whether you can tolerate a lack of sensible resolution.
As usual, I neither love nor hate it. By not caring too much, I could sit back and admire the strangeness. If nothing else, LYaM is distinctive.
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