You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet

Sabine Azéma and Pierre Arditi

Alain Resnais' You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet, from 2012, is a droll and fitfully entertaining swan song to a magnificent career. The film, which concludes with Frank Sinatra's rendition of "It Was a Very Good Year", has the autumnal glow of an artist looking back on his career and his collaborators. It is another example of Resnais engagement with theatrical modes during the final stage of his career. The film concerns a group of actors, all playing versions of themselves, gathering together for what they think will be a memorial service for a beloved playwright. Instead of a funeral service, the attendees watch a video of a recent and punky production of the playwright's Eurydice, a work all the attendees have appeared in over the years.

The watching actors can't leave well enough alone and soon are collaborating with the players in the video. The fourth wall is broken and so is the third dimension as the boundaries of the villa dissolve into the surreal dream land of art. The film is, at times, too hermetically sealed with the referential self-regard of a French intellectual, but the sweetness of Resnais' intention prevents things from becoming overly academic. As one character puts it, "All the people we knew live on in our memories." Even when facing death, like Orpheus, Eurydice, and Resnais, the show must go on. The love Resnais displays towards his actors, nearly all of whom Resnais has worked with before, is palpable. There are many marvelous performances, especially by Sabine Azéma, Resnais' wife and muse for four decades.