Alain Resnais’ “Wild Grass” (“Les Herbs Folles”)

Free admission!
France | 2009 | 35mm | 104 min. | French with English subtitles
At 86, French New Wave icon Alain Resnais graced us with one of his most purely pleasurable films, an effervescent lark that kicks off with a lost wallet. It’s discovered by a married suburbanite, who in turn becomes obsessed with its owner, a dentist-cum-avaitrix played by the director’s wife and frequent collaborator Sabine Azéma. The plot soon spins gleefully past plausibility, keeping pace with the film’s candy-colored design and whimsical characters. “A funny, soulful movie about love and other agonies… among [Resnais’s] finest movies in years” (The New York Times). “The most sublime film I’ve seen in Cannes in years, a hallucinatory, entrancing work in which each scene is surprising” (Variety).