LOVE UNTO DEATH / LIFE BED OF ROSES BD [Blu-ray]

“Love Unto Death” / "Life Is a Bed of Roses"  is a double feature Blu-ray. Both films are directed by Alain Resnais. "Love Unto Death" is about a man, Simon (Pierre Arditi), who collapses and is pronounced dead by a doctor. Later, however, he awakens and greets his grieving wife, Elizabeth (Sabine Azema). Long discussions ensue between them about the meanings of life, death, and love. They decide to avoid family and friends and set out for a vacation, but then change their minds. They seek out two friends who are both clerics with their own religious views on the meaning of life. The film gets increasingly ponderous and gloomy. Stylistically, Resnais divides it into movements, ending each with a dark background followed by drifting particles and a chamber music interlude. This choice slows the pace and makes the metaphysical journey puzzling, if interesting visually. Overall, the movie seems more suitable as a subject for academic discussion than as an engaging cinematic experience. “Life Is a Bed of Roses" uses a three-part structure to combine comedy, fantasy, and music. Resnais uses a non-linear approach to storytelling, switching back and forth among the three separate segments. The first takes place in 1914. Michel Forbek (Ruggero Raymond) is a wealthy, eccentric count who designs a sort of pleasure palace in which those who visit drink a potion and revert to their infantile state. To create a Utopian atmosphere, the guests are exposed only to positive sensations. Beautiful music fills the air and blindfolds keep out unpleasant sights as the guests lie peacefully in giant cribs.The second segment takes place 60 years later. The count’s gothic castle has been converted into an experimental school run by idealistic educator Nathalie Holberg (Veronique Silver), who hosts a seminar on education of the imaginative. During the conference, while the adults theorize and engage in romantic liaisons, we come to the third segment: a number of children at the school fantasize a tale about a heroic figure, complete with dragons and damsels in distress.The underlying theme that human imagination is limitless, offering untold possibilities, some whimsical, some serious, some merely distractiong, is interesting, the structure often leaves the viewer grasping to understand how the three parts relate. Bonus Blu-ray features include feature-length critical audio commentary and the theatrical trailer for each film. The films are in French, with English subtitles.

I found it hard to warm to this film. I like Resnais but this treatment of life overshadowed by death:when is a dead man not dead?When he's mysteriously ressurrected.Even then he's like the walking dead to his lover who's only known him briefly.This is about love unto death and beyond.What did he learn in the afterlife before his strange ressurrection? He liked what he saw,may have even wanted to stay.In his 'new' life with his partner he's like McCavity the mystery cat, when he's not doing archaeology,liable to pop off or disappear.They prepare for his re-death by wanting to do all the things they would have like to do if they'd have lived a normal life.Their cleric friends(another couple) cannot convert them to a more Christian view of life and death. Arditi dies again after getting to make mad passionate love a few times to Azema.However Azema promises to join him in the afterlife, feeling against her friends' wishes,this is the best she'll ever know of love.They are forced to question whether their religious books have lost some types of love in translation rendering their advice futile.Small scenes are divided up by even smaller interludes of music by Hanze Werner Heinze and scenes of either falling snow or dust motes.I found this device irritating after a while.Azema goes off to join her dead lover as she walks off into the dark.I found it dour and gloomy beyond belief or a massive intellectual leg-pull.Riffing with Descartes.

more than a mood piece - this is a thought provoking film - presenting glimpses in the aftermath of a man's sudden death - and spontaneous revival - how it affects on his relationship with his newly acquired girlfriend - and with his close friends who happen to be man and wife clerics - and with himselfthe film makes no attempts at an ultimate answer - altho the man is a freethinker - the framework of the film is a judeo-christian onedirector Alain Resnais uses snowflakes and exotic music as scene transitions - the visuals are generally striking - the acting very good - with Pierre Arditi as the man - cutie pie Sabine Azéma as his new girlfriend - with André Dussollier and Fanny Ardant as the clerics