Je t'aime, je t'aime

A mysterious time-travel experiment becomes a warped voyage through memory, in this mesmerising sci-fi from acclaimed director Alain Resnais.

Alain Resnais’s ingenious melding of sci-fi and romance centres on Claude Ridder, who, following a failed suicide attempt, is asked by some scientists to participate in a mysterious time-travel experiment. Travelling back in time one year for just one minute, he becomes lost in a continually shifting mosaic of temporal episodes.

Although the title suggests a light French romance, Je t’aime, je t’aime is a tough and absorbing study of psychological damage, with Resnais employing bravura editing to illustrate Claude’s disjointed and fragmented journey into his own disturbing past. The film became a noted influence on Michel Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.