Je t'aime, je t'aime Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		3.5
Overall		4.5

Je t'aime, je t'aime Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman April 2, 2025

Note: This is a Region B release, but it played without any problems in my Region A player.

Though it is of course a massive overgeneralization, it's at least arguable that Jean-Luc Godard (with more than a little help from Cécile Decugis) helped advance the French New Wave courtesy of absolutely startling "montage theory" and especially associated editing techniques utilized throughout Breathless. If Godard was a prime example of Nouvelle Vague's so-called "Right Bank", Alain Resnais was the scrappy upstart type on the "Left Bank", and he may have subliminally been suggesting to Godard and Decugis something like "hold my beer" (and/or wine, considering France and all) with Resnais' absolutely fascinating Je t'aime, je t'aime, a film which is as deliberately arcane and probably even more structurally complex than Resnais' Last Year at Marienbad. It's kind of hilarious in a way that a film so concerned with the fragmentation of chronology and temporal instability might have been "before its time", so to speak, but that's evidently exactly what happened, as this 1968 opus was not especially rapturously received by critics or massively attended by audiences, and has become a rather curious footnote of sorts to Resnais' legendary filmography. Hindsight (another somewhat ironic term, considering its own relationship with history and memory) has been significantly kinder to the film, and it is often cited as a prime influence on later properties like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

Claude Ridder (Claude Rich) is being watched at some kind of medical facility after what is ultimately disclosed to have been a suicide attempt. While the first part of this film is actually more or less straightforward from a purely chronological narrative perspective, there are several unanswered questions, including why exactly Claude has attracted the interest of several researchers who it is also relatively quickly disclosed are involved in a time travel experiment. Even more oddly, these researchers think Claude would be the perfect first human to attempt a bit of temporal dislocation, after evidently successful trial runs with a variety of mice. Already the film is completely peculiar in tone and even plot mechanics, but things get even more peculiar once Claude is actually taken to a remote location and thrust into a kind of hilarious Time Machine which looks kind of like a mutant brain on the outside (there is quite a bit of brain imagery running through the film), but has an interior looking like some jettisoned midcentury design from Barbarella.

What ensues is both kind of inherently indescribable and also absolutely riveting in both its content but probably even more so with regard to its presentational quirks. The upshot of the time travel is that Claude, instead of safely returning to the present after a short stay in the past, starts to "ricochet" between almost nanosecond vignettes that are increasingly fragmented and seemingly random, though everything is largely centered around Catrine (Olga Georges-Picot), a woman whose own tragic trajectory has played into Claude's own story. What this means from a purely viewing perspective is that Resnais and editors Albert Jurgenson and Colette Leloup don't just toy with "montage theory", they pretty much abandon any even New Wave-ish shattering a la Breathless to provide even more picayune deconstructions, with repeated moments (sometimes literally just a second or two), or with nonlinear chronologies colliding within any given ostensible "scene".

Note: Kino Lorber released the film for Region A many years ago and Svet Atanasov's Je t'aime, je t'aime Blu-ray review provides a write up of that version.

Je t'aime, je t'aime Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Je t'aime, Je t'aime is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Radiance Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.66:1. Radiance only sent a check disc for purposes of this review and so I'm not privy to any verbiage an insert booklet might have, and their website offers only a "2K restoration presented on UK Blu-ray for the first time". Some prefatory text information before the main feature here suggests this was culled from the same restoration that provided the source for the Region A Kino Lorber Je t'aime, je t'aime that came out a decade ago (!) and which now looks like it may be hard to come by. That said, doing even a cursory comparison of screenshots between this review and Svet's review of the Kino Lorber release can show how radically different the color timing is on this release, and I'd argue redounding to the benefit of this release. Yes, things are still very cool looking at times, with, as Svet mentioned in his comments about the Kino Lorber release, an emphasis on blues and slate grays (especially in some of the cave material where this film's, um, Time Tunnel (Time Mushroom? Time Onion?) resides, but just compare screenshot 1 of this review with screenshot 2 of Svet's review for just one example of how much warmer this presentation is overall. There are several other examples available for those wanting to parse through the combined screenshots. I found grain to be a bit more variant looking here than Svet evidently did with regard to the Kino Lorber release, but nothing struck me as inorganic or problematic with regard to compression.

Je t'aime, je t'aime Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Je t'aime, je t'aime features an LPCM 2.0 Mono track in the original French, though it may be Krzysztof Penderecki's fantastic score rather than dialogue that makes the most immediate impression. Penderecki's vocal cues are especially haunting (for those with music theory or ear training backgrounds, listen to how he repeatedly almost "stuffs" sudden minor seconds into otherwise relatively consonant sonorities), and all are delivered with excellent clarity and fidelity. Sound effects, as in the repeated use of seaside scenes, also reverberate well. Dialogue is rendered cleanly and clearly throughout. Optional English subtitles are available.

Je t'aime, je t'aime Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Alain Resnais (HD; 12:43) is an archival audio interview from 2007. This plays to stills and snippets from the film.


• Claude Rich (HD; 15:45) is an archival interview from 2007. Subtitled in English.


• The Meeting of Alain Resnais and Jacques Sternberg (HD; 20:31) is an interesting 2007 conversation between Sternberg and Francois Thomas. Subtitled in English.


• David Jenkins (HD; 12:46) is a really well done newly produced overview of the film by Jenkins.


• In the Ears of Alain Resnais (HD; 54:31) is an excellent 2020 documentary about the legendary auteur, with a rather fascinating emphasis on sound design. Subtitled in English.

Radiance sent only a check disc for purposes of this review, but their website lists their usual assortment of swag, including an insert booklet, Obi strip and reversible sleeve.

Je t'aime, je t'aime Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

If you're a fan of some of Resnais' other, arguably better remembered, works and have never seen this particular film, you're in for another mind bending treat that may in fact be even more gobsmacking than Last Year at Marienbad. If you're new to Resnais, get ready to jump into the deep end with the foreknowledge that in this particular case it's a potentially life altering rabbit hole. Technical merits are solid and the supplements very appealing. Highly recommended.