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Chilean director Raul Ruiz joins a legacy of directors (Schlöndorff, Adlon, Visconti, Losey) who refuse to be swayed by the notion that Marcel Proust's "Á la recherché du temps perdu" is unfilmable. Taking the final part of this vast contemplative work, Ruiz weaves a film of a richness that rewards re-viewing.
Opening with the ailing Proust dictating memoirs to his housekeeper, it uses photographs as a means to loosely frame the collage of memories that follows. Without fixed order the film shows fragments of a life lived over the turn of the century, through and beyond the First World War. Much of this consists of social gatherings interspersed with individual encounters that colour but barely explain the gallery of characters.
Every apparent forward movement awakens our instinctive desire for a linear plot, but the film defies such finality, circling back to earlier events on a mere whim. In refusing a relentless movement towards the end, it captures the Proustian notion that the process of remembering is a necessary struggle with death.
Of the starry cast, Malkovich demands attention as the decadent Charlus, but this is not to Deneuve's or Béart's discredit in their humbler roles. Italian Marcello Mazzarella is a sympathetic but not uncritical observer of this sometimes strange collection of experiences.
Unfilmable? Film is ideally suited to studying the theme of memory in this way. It's more likely that Ruiz's unpretentious fidelity to his source material is unpalatable to an audience who dislike a demanding night at the cinema.
