Film Review: Hiroshima, Mon Amour

‘Hiroshima, Mon Amour’ is essentially a film of parallels: the desire to forget against the urge to remember, the pain of war against the ache of love, the personal war against the war waging outside, the dissimilarity and similarity of the past and the present, the joint pleasure and pain of love, the effects of the same war in two different parts of the world. This film formed an integral part of the French New Wave, moving away from the classical style of filmmaking.

Elle (Emmanuelle Riva), a French actress in Hiroshima for a film on peace, and Lui (Eiji Okada), a Japanese architect begin an explosive love affair that gets progressively contemplative as they examine the ripples created by the Hiroshima bombing and the resulting death and loss. Despite both of them being married, they embark on this affair where they start falling in love with each other.

Elle gradually reveals her painful past, when her first love was claimed by the World War, in France. As she feels the joy and pleasure of a new relationship, she continues to be haunted by her grisly experience and social ostracism in Nevers, France and is torn between the act of remembering and the inevitability of oblivion.

French director Alain Resnais and screenwriter Marguerite Duras have engineered a deliberative tale told through a tapestry of images, traipsing between the past and the present to convey the sense of loss and the shifting time passages in a beautiful and innovative way. A series of documentary and news reel footage establishes the roles of memory and oblivion. The film moves at a slow pace and could have been a little shorter, yet with the sheer artistic rendering and the sleek story-telling, I wouldn’t change a thing.

Cinematography by Sacha Vierney is immaculate in black and white with smooth camera movements, leading us back and forth into time. Editing is splendid as it harnesses the avant-garde style. The musical score by Georges Delerue and Giovanni Fusco is evocative.

The performances of both Emmanuelle Riva and Eiji Okada are admirable, laced with subtlety, depth and just the right amount of emotion.




It’s interesting to note that their names are simply ‘Elle’ and ‘Lui’ which is French for ‘She’ and ‘Him’, since it exhibits something that is extremely personal and yet something that can happen to anyone at anytime.

“Why deny the obvious necessity of remembering?”, asks Elle. A statement like that is succinct in making its point, yet never provides any answers. The importance attached to reminiscences is a powerful but not overpowering presence in the film. We want to hold onto memories, no matter how tragic and painful, but alas, as life would have it, forgetting is inevitable. Tragedy is something that we all strive to forget yet it is imperative to remember too.

This film, despite being made in 1959, is very much relevant today, reminding us about the ghastly whirlpool that is war. We’re hard pressed to find a film like this nowadays, an artistic platter that can be both delectable and contemplative.