There is something both mischievous and moving about a world-famous director who, closing on his 10th decade, designs a movie that celebrates his actors: their varying ages, their versatility, their heart.
Alain Resnais, who made “Last Year at Marienbad” all the way back in 1961, depicts a group of players assembled at the remote house of a fictitious playwright (Denis Podalydès) who has just died.
The playwright has left behind a filmed production of “Eurydice” as enacted by a very young theater troupe. As the old-timers watch in a posh screening room, they begin to speak the lines and enact the play themselves, taking over from the tyros on screen.
The play, by Jean Anouilh, is really a wistful and often amusing modern-dress version of the Greek myth of a young couple whose love reaches beyond death. As the actors on screen recede, Resnais gives us two versions of Orpheus, old (Pierre Arditi) and middle-aged (Lambert Wilson). There are also two Eurydices: Sabine Azéma (who’s married to Resnais) and Anne Consigny.
Other parts are played by Michel Piccoli, Mathieu Amalric, Anny Duperey and Hippolyte Girardot. The multiple-person structure shows off the subtle variations in performance — one line may be enacted twice in rapid succession, both readings different, both wonderful.
Fittingly, it’s the oldest couple — Arditi and Azéma — who give the most vivid picture of reckless youth. The movie’s title echoes Al Jolson’s line at the dawn of the sound era in “The Jazz Singer”; it evokes a world of possibility for what this director and his actors can still do.