Muriel, or The Time of Return

NOTE: This is a region-1 DVD which requires a region free DVD-player..

Alain Resnais’s Muriel, or The Time of Return, the director’s follow-up to Last Year at Marienbad, is as radical a reflection on the nature of time and memory as its predecessor. The always luminous Delphine Seyrig stars as an antique shop owner and widow in Boulogne-sur-Mer, whose past comes back to haunt her when a former lover reenters her life. Meanwhile, her stepson is tormented by his own ghosts, related to his service in France’s recently ended war in Algeria. Featuring a multilayered script by Jean Cayrol and inventively edited to evoke its middle-class characters’ political and personal realities, the fragmented, emotionally powerful Muriel reminds viewers that the past is always present.

SPECIAL FEATURES:
– New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
– Excerpt from the 1980 documentary Une approche d’Alain Resnais, révolutionnaire discret
– Excerpt from a 1969 interview with actor Delphine Seyrig
– Interview with composer Hans Werner Henze from 1963
– New interview with film scholar François Thomas, author of L’atelier d’Alain Resnais
– Trailer
– New English subtitle translation
– PLUS: An essay by film scholar James Quandt