L’Immortelle (1963)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

L’Immortelle (1963) – A. Robbe-Grillet

Directorial debut by famed New Novel author, Alain Robbe-Grillet, who had earlier written Last Year at Marienbad for Alain Resnais.  Here, the obfuscation continues.  We are in Turkey and a French man who is later called Andre meets and pursues a woman who may be called Lale or Leila or something else.  The foley artists are working overtime creating sounds that somehow do not seem to belong (too loud and often of uncertain origin).  There is foreshadowing of a tragic event.  Lale goes missing and Andre spends most of the latter half of the film looking for her.  Does she speak Turkish?  Is she married?  Is she somehow involved in a human trafficking ring? Robbe-Grillet’s gaze is steady and the films images are repetitive, almost hypnotic, like the long belly-dancing scene thrown in for good measure.  Some might find this pretentious (more so than Last Year) but, for me, the Middle Eastern music and chanting lends it the quality of a dream or a drone (a drone-like dream) that is somehow bewitching.