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L'immortelle More at IMDbPro »

10 out of 12 people found the following review useful:
A neglected masterpiece to set beside 'Marienbad', 9 September 2007

Author: Rheinische from Great Britain

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

How can this not yet have any IMDb comments? The reason must be its relative obscurity in the Anglosphere, in which case it definitely needs to be rediscovered.

What I had heard of Robbe-Grillet's own films suggested they were weak in comparison with his collaboration with Resnais, but 'L'Immortelle', at least, totally overturns that suspicion. The plot - what there is of one - is not too dissimilar to 'L'Année dernière à Marienbad': a man meets a mysterious woman, loses track of her, finds her again. Or does he? Is he being deceived, or pursuing an erotically alluring phantasm? Once again, the narrative is inherently ambiguous, filled with conflicting testimonies, and arguably of secondary importance to the film's treatment of space and locale.

The camera pores over a drowsy Istanbul, following its characters through shuttered windows and on to boats at sea, through cavernous mosques and ruins (which the woman claims are artificial), and crowded bazaars. The formal compositions are as impeccable as those of early Resnais, with actors arranged almost geometrically, like inanimate objects. Some of the shots are reminiscent of Antonioni, such as a slow zoom through the railings of a cemetery, or a long shot which reveals an initially bustling plaza to be deserted. The viewer's eye is tricked (mirroring the perceptual confusion of the central male character), as people appear and disappear, only to reappear within the space of a single pan. Another source of alienation is the use of Turkish speech, which 'our man' cannot understand, and therefore remains untranslated in the subtitles.

As one might expect, there is no resolution to this film: its ending is as elusive as its beginning. Some viewers might tire of the repetitiveness of its structure, as scenes are replayed and memories recollected, but I can practically guarantee that fans of Resnais will find much to enjoy. Other later points of comparison might be David Lynch, or the analogous atmosphere of Oriental anxiety in Cronenberg's 'Naked Lunch', but Robbe-Grillet ought to be regarded as a major cinematic artist in his own right, just as he has long been highly regarded for his literary output (the fact that he also published 'L'Immortelle' as a 'ciné-roman' suggests his belief in the continuum between the two artforms).

Postscript: I have subsequently had the opportunity to watch Robbe-Grillet's latest, 'Gradiva' (2006), and unfortunately it leaves one wondering how the mighty have fallen: a sloppy and ridiculous piece of 70s-style pseudo-erotic fantasy (think Borowczyk, but not as good) which totally lacks the visual precision and intellect of 'L'Immortelle'. I can only surmise that his film-making career went downhill steadily after the 1960s, but we should probably cut an 85-year-old man some slack.

4 out of 6 people found the following review useful:
Stretching the boundaries of cinema, 23 February 2008

Author: pstumpf from United States

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

Fresh from "Last Year at Marienbad", Alain Robbe-Grillet not only wrote, but directed, this brilliantly rendered exercise in cinematic style. The superb combination of story, actors, setting, cinematography, editing, music and sound all make this a cinematic experience of the highest order.

A Frenchman, newly arrived in Turkey, encounters a beautiful woman, and meets her again on several occasions, but learns virtually nothing about her - although she appears to be shadowed by a man in sunglasses with two Dobermans; when she fails to keep a rendezvous, he attempts to find her, but is hindered by his foreignness in an alien culture. The lugubrious Jacques Doniol-Valcroze makes the perfect foil for the "eternal feminine" embodied by Francoise Brion - exquisitely desirable, in stunningly elegant clothes and coiffures, with a seemingly sunny and open manner, but ultimately opaque. Filmed in crisp black-and-white images, the Istanbul locales (mosque, houses, cafés, streets and seascapes) give the film its magical background of fantasy grounded in realism. The stunningly shot and edited scene in the plaza, at first populated (a la "Marienbad") with stationary people casting no shadows, then empty, with only Brion walking across it, is one highlight of a film filled with many memorable shots and sequences: the fisherman by the bay; the woman seen - in memory or fantasy? - through the slats of the wooden blinds; the cemetery of steles - by day - and at night; the wooded glen, when the woman writes her address on a paper, which she then casts away - and the man later searches for it; the excavation with the long, steep staircase; the vendor outside the mosque who pretends (or does he?) not to speak French, and the photo set he gives to the man, with the woman in the shadow - scenes not soon to be forgotten. In the background, the recurring diegetic Turkish music, dogs barking, the murmur of the sea and the city - all so endemic that it's a surprise to see a music credit for Georges Delerue in the end credits. All in all, a landmark of inventive cinema from its period of peak creativity.

Seen at the French Institute, NYC, on February 19, 2008; programmed, coincidentally (?), one day after the death of Robbe-Grillet. Excellent print, but slightly spoiled by a bubble in the screen, which caused an irritating rippling effect for the many panning shots.

5 out of 9 people found the following review useful:
A mystery without a solution, 4 June 2008

Author: timmy_501 from United States

First off, let me qualify my comment by saying that the print of this film I saw was of low quality and that makes it a bit hard to judge the visuals-I decided to give it the benefit of the doubt as they seem good from what I can tell.

L'Immortelle is about a French professor who takes a teaching post in Istanbul and finds himself in an alien society. As there are many tourists who travel to this area because of a fascination with the Byzantine era, the natives play up that aspect of their culture for everyone. Through the comments of the mysterious woman to that effect, the film calls the authenticity of the architecture and artwork into question again and again. While this may sound like it leads to a portrayal of the city that makes it seem fake, the opposite is actually true. The fake city that is shown off to tourists hides mysteries that are near impenetrable. The willingness of the natives to share the false culture is a perfect excuse for keeping the truth hidden.

The plot of the film focuses on the professor's encounters (and attempts at romance) with a mysterious woman. She constantly deceives him in a way that is similar to the deceptions of the city itself to outsiders. Paradoxically, she actually points out the faux culture that surrounds them while maintaining her own deceptions. Viewers who are looking for meaning here may see her mystery as a symbol for that of the city the film explores.

Eventually the woman disappears from our protagonist's life and despite all of his efforts to find out more about her he ultimately fails to learn anything definite. Like the viewer, he is left to ponder what (if anything) his experiences mean.

As a frame of reference, one might say that L'Immortelle is like a combination of L'Avventura and Last Year at Marienbad. Like the former film it includes an unsolvable mystery and like the latter it uses the language of cinema to call memory itself into question (late in L'Immortelle there are remembered versions of scenes from earlier in the film that are different from the originals). Still, L'Immortelle lacks the clarity and coherence of either of those films, making it a minor albeit unjustly ignored classic.

Alain Robbe-Grillet's Metaphysical Mystery Debut, 23 August 2011
Author: Eumenides_0 from Portugal

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

N travels to Istanbul to take up a teaching job; taking a month off to get himself familiarised with the country he gets lost and asks L to help him. He falls in love with her and becomes obsessed with her mysterious connection to M, a sunglass-wearing stylish man accompanied everywhere by Dobermans. L disappears and N begins a frantic search for her. He finds her only to tragically lose her once more. It's possible that N's name is André; it's less certain whether L's real name is Lucille or Lane. If this weren't confusing enough, there is a plot about white slavery in Istanbul. Or maybe not.

This is the spectacular debut of Alain Robbe-Grillet, the screenwriter of Alain Resnais' mind trip Last Year In Marienbad. Once again he subverts the conventions of narrative by fracturing timelines, contradicting the facts of the action from chapter to chapter, interrupting the flow of the narrative with repetitive descriptions of objects and ending the novels on a note of ambiguity.

L'Immortelle is all about deception and artificiality. L gives N a guided tour across Istanbul, promising him to show him its cultural treasures only to bring attention to their own falsehood. Istanbul is a city putting on an act for the tourists, she explains, mythical Istanbul only exists as an illusion to meet the Westerners' stereotypes. As L demystifies Istanbul, her own mysteries deepen. Why does she pretend not to understand Turkish? Who is the sun-glassed man N sees her with on several occasions? Is he a pimp or the leader of a white slavery ring? And why does she disappear? This movie takes a sadistic pleasure in teasing the viewer and denying him a clear answer. It brings up questions of identity and memory but confuses the answers through multiple interpretations, and in the end says there aren't any answers at all. The viewer who enjoys these perverse entertainments must be the rare person who loves frustration in his art.

If the plot is deliberately sparse, the technical construction of the movie is exuberant. Released in the same year two revolutionary movies – Otto e Mezzo and Contempt –changed the art of cinema, L'Immortelle followed a different path to filmmaking while retaining its own originality.

Constructed in order to resemble the imperfection and fleetingness of memory, the movie builds itself upon successive layers of flashbacks, obsessively repeated with disorienting variations. A gesture of the hand performed in middle of a forest is re-enacted in a hotel room, a scene is re-imagined with different characters.

The scenes cut abruptly into each other proudly piling up what is commonly called continuity errors. A character wearing a white suit stands disoriented in the middle of a street; as the scene cuts to him climbing a street he wears a black suit. N and L leave a mansion on the margin of the Bosphorus by a row-boat, only for the scene to shift to the two watching from a ferry the same boat coming into the river. Try to make sense of this, dear viewer.

If this visual confusion weren't enough, the sound, designed by Michel Fano, further serves to disrupt the intelligibility of the action. A howling at the beginning of the movie is heard again in a tragic scene later on. Often disconnected from the image, sounds and noises follow their own logic and reoccur like musical themes.

Little information is given about the characters. During a stroll in the woods, N asks L for her home address. He doesn't even know where she lives. She asks him something to write on and he hands her a blank page and a pen. She writes something on it but throws the paper away, telling him not to bother to look for it because what she wrote is false. After she disappears halfway into the film, N searches for the blank paper but when he finds it, it's blank. She never wrote anything on it. Always the movie points to the unreality and falsity of everything.

The movie doesn't flow as a linear narrative but moves as a circle; it builds on the cumulative effect of repetition. After visiting all of Istanbul together, an obsessed N in search of L starts retracing all his steps, discovering by himself the secrets of the city. Even limited by the barrier of language, N scratches a conspiracy that may involve street peddlers of tourist souvenirs, shop-keepers, and the cops, all involved in a mystery that may have something to do with kidnapped women. Is the mystery really worth knowing? Probably not, I doubt Robbe-Grillet really thought it through. But the viewer should understand this is not a movie to watch to know what happens, but how it happens.

The movie is not character-driven and the actors don't perform. They gesture. They move their heads in slow form, smile, stare, or they stay fixed. One of the most unsettling traits of the movie is the fact that time seems suspended around L and N. As they walk the streets, the figures of the passersby remain frozen like statues, as if in anticipation of something. This was an idea Robbe-Grillet took from 'Marienbad,' but here it's much more involving since it affects an entire city.

Although there is no acting here in the traditional sense, that is not to say the actors weren't perfectly chosen. Jacques Doniol-Valcroze, with his wide eyes and impersonality, is the stand-in for the viewer, the anchor that keeps the viewer focused. Through him we watch and try to understand. Like him we're totally clueless. The sensual Françoise Brion is a cipher without substance, hiding herself behind her seductive smile and her dream-like voice with its perfect tone for the narrative of a story that seems the cross between a fairy-tale and surrealist experiment.

Robbe-Grillet enchants, surprises and torments with the dazzling procession of sounds, sights and expectations that constitute this cinematic labyrinth.

1 out of 2 people found the following review useful:
what I think Robbe-Grillet was up to., 8 September 2008

Author: rschmeec from United States

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

No spoiler here, but I do want to disagree with one of the former posts that claimed there was no resolution. I think there is a very definite and forceful resolution, that can be missed if one exaggerates the stiff professor seeking his lost and mysterious paramour. That pseudo-plot does resemble L'aventurra and Last Year at Marienbad, however.

I saw this film in a new 35 mm. print, along with Robbe-Grillet's 2nd film, Trans-Europe Express. Taken together, they provide very clear clues to what Robbe-Grillet is up to, how they relate to Last Year at Marienbad. what one can expect, and why Robbe-Grillet is important.

Last Year at Marienbad overwhelmed the viewer with its fascinating cinematography, set in a spacious European hotel and its extensive formal gardens. Substitute Istanbul, with its ruins, streets, and back alleys for the formal gardens, in L'immortelle, and you can sit back and enjoy the movie for its visuals alone. Trans-Europe Express seems to find anything and everything in Antwerp that is photogenic, punctuated by shots of trains, inside and out.

Highly charged eroticism is another feature of L'immortelle, with scenes of the gestures that precede f**ing, gestures that break off before the culminating copulation, which is left to the viewer's imagination. And Robbe-Gillet throws in a seemingly gratuitous scene in which the viewer joins the patrons of a night club to view a very alluring dance act. But maybe not so gratuitous; rather a signature scene, since Trans-Europe Express, also includes such a highly charged night club dance. Since L'immortelle begins with the protagonist solitarily looking out of the window, a scene that recurs several times, I interpret that as indicating that what we are seeing is from the point of view of that character. Perhaps someone can supply us with insight into how these dance scenes function as parts of the entire movie.

There is not a lot of dialog, and, what there is, frequently affirms the fakery of the entire city of Istanbul, in which the very ruins are claimed to be currently produced only for the delectation of tourists. As we view the astoundingly photogenic visual details, these are constantly being undermined by that theme. The tourist as voyeur suggests that we, too, viewing the movie, are viewers of something that is unreal.

To summarize: what one can expect in a Robbe-Grillet film, based on his first two, includes a feast of photogenic visual background, a preoccupation with erotic desire from a male point of view, and a deconstruction of what is being portrayed, a deconstruction that suggests that cinema itself is becoming aware of its own fakery.

3 out of 16 people found the following review useful:
Au Contraire, c'est ephemeral, 9 September 2007

Author: writers_reign from London, England

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

It's difficult to believe that Tobbe-Grillet isn't taking the mickey here because he has made the ultimate movie FOR posers by making one ABOUT posers. Literally. He clearly saved a fortune on actors by just getting passers-by to stand perfectly still and expressionless. Even a DOG poses in the middle of the road. I note that after more than 20 years there are NO comments here and I can't believe that the usual pseuds/academics missed it but anything's possible. I can't believe I'm writing this but the movie (if that's what it is) opens with a guy (turns out he was one of the founders of Cahiers du Cinema, surprise, surprise) standing not only still but robot-like in a sterile room. Then there's a shot of a woman doing guess what? That's right, you got it in one. More? Why not. There's a really GREAT shot of an old guy sitting stock still on the waterfront while a dead fish lies on the dock; a shot of a man and a woman standing equally still etcetera, etcetera and these shots are HELD for what seems like forever but is probably no more than forty or fifty seconds and there's even a shot of a group of people POSING in a square. Now what this all means your guess is as good as mine unless, of course, you're a pseud and/or academic in which case you've already awarded Robbe-Grillet the Golden Ego Massager. Otherwise come back the Carry On series, all is forgiven.

6 out of 22 people found the following review useful:
THE IMMORTAL ONE (Alain Robbe-Grillet, 1963) **, 27 February 2008

Author: MARIO GAUCI (marrod@melita.com) from Naxxar, Malta

While the print of this one was more pleasing than the other Robbe-Grillet titles I watched to commemorate his recent passing, the viewing itself was marred by a couple of instances of temporary freezing. The film, then, was perhaps the most pretentious and, well, tedious of the lot – given that there’s hardly any discernible plot!

Again, we’re thrown into a remote Arabian locale (complete with relentless – and, consequently, extremely irritating – religious chanting) with, at its centre, a glamorous yet vapid femme fatale in Francoise Brion – to whom the title is presumably referring. Frankly, I’m at pains to recall just what went on in the film – even if only a little over 36 hours have elapsed since then…which is never a good thing but, usually, this is a predicament I find myself in after having watched some mindless/low-brow action flick and not a respected art-house one! What’s certain is that, as a film about the search for a missing enigmatic girl, it’s far less compelling and satisfying than Michelangelo Antonioni’s L’AVVENTURA (1960)! Incidentally, the bewildered hero of THE IMMORTAL ONE is played by Jacques Doniol-Valcroze – who happens to be a film-maker in his own right, actually one of the lesser (and, therefore, least-known) exponents of the “Nouvelle Vague”.

Though I have to admit that – in the long run – I was disappointed by the mini-marathon dedicated to this influential novelist and highbrow film-maker, I’d still be interested in checking out the other efforts he directed (not to mention hope to catch these three again in better representations and, perhaps, a more amenable frame-of-mind). In any case, I still have Alain Resnais’ demanding but highly-acclaimed LAST YEAR IN MARIENBAD (1961) – which Robbe-Grillet wrote, and for which he even garnered an Oscar nomination – to re-acquaint myself with, and that is sure to be an infinitely more rewarding experience...

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