Life of Riley [Aimer, boire et chanter] **** (2014, Sabine Azéma, Hippolyte Girardot, Caroline Sihol) – Movie Review

Aimer, boire et chanter (Life of Riley) is the last film of great French director Alain Resnais, who died on March 1 2014, aged 91. He was perhaps best known for known for Night and Fog (1955), Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959) and Last Year at Marienbad (1961). He was married to the actress Sabine Azéma, who stars as Kathryn here.

The last film of great French director Alain Resnais is a sad but memorable occasion. Directing his last movie at the extraordinary age of 90, he manages to turn an Alan Ayckbourn comedy into a profound tragedy as three couples react to news of their friend George’s imminent dying.

Resnais’s style of turning theatre into cinema is equally idiosyncratic and impressive, with real footage of the Yorkshire countryside, drawings of houses, and stylised film stages with walk-through backdrops. And his wife Sabine Azéma plays one of the character’s mourners at his funeral at the end. Bold, brave, farewell movie-making. RIP Alain Resnais.

Sabine Azéma, Hippolyte Girardot, Caroline Sihol, Sandrine Kiberlain, André Dussollier, Michel Vuillermoz and Alba Gaïa Kraghede Bellugi star.

Resnais was too ill to attend the film’s world premiere at the 2014 Berlin Film Festival and died less than a month later, shortly before the film’s opening day in France.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Movie Review

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