Muriel (film)

Muriel (French: Muriel ou le Temps d'un retour, literally Muriel, or the Time of a Return) is a 1963 French film directed by Alain Resnais. It was Resnais's third feature film, following Hiroshima mon amour (1959) and L'Année dernière à Marienbad (1961), and in common with those films it explores the challenge of integrating a remembered or imagined past with the life of the present. It also makes oblique reference to the controversial subject of the Algerian war which had recently been brought to an end. Muriel was Resnais's second collaboration with Jean Cayrol, who had also written the screenplay of Nuit et Brouillard (Night and Fog) (1955).

Plot

Hélène, a widow who runs an antique business from her own apartment in Boulogne-sur-Mer, is visited by a past lover, Alphonse. Her stepson, Bernard, is tormented by the memory of a girl named Muriel whom he has participated in torturing while doing military service in Algeria.

The story takes place over 15 days in September–October 1962. (The screenplay provides specific dates and times for each scene, but these are not apparent in the film.) An extended sequence takes place on the first day (a section lasting about 45 minutes: the introductions of Alphonse and his 'niece' Françoise to Hélène and Bernard, and their first meal together). Another long sequence takes place on the last day (the Sunday lunch and its revelations, and the scattering of the principal characters in their different directions). The intervening days are represented in a series of fragmented scenes, which are chronological but seldom consecutive, and the passage of time is blurred.