Time regained [Widescreen]

Confined to bed in his small apartment, Marcel Proust, is looking through old photos. As faded pictures jog his memory, real characters of his past intermingle with fictional ones from his novels. Proust’s world is like an interconnected gossip column penned by a rich intellectual snob with a refined sense of the comic, for whom music, painting, and literature in particular matter far more than society. The lost paradise of his childhood gives way to literary salons in Paris. To evoke the vast human comedy that surrounded and supported Proust, director Raul Ruiz blends the Baroque and the Surreal, creating a story like a series of corridors leading to the images, themes and stories which coursed through Proust’s novels. ‘Time Regained’ can be at times disconcerting for those not familar with Proust’s work, as Ruiz chose to have characters glide in and out of the story without formal introduction. In the spreading twilight, the shape of post-war society looms on the horizon. Proust died in 1922, but by the end of WWI most of his world had already vanished. Stars Catherine Deneuve, Vincent Perez, Emmanuelle Beart, John Malkovitch. Adapted from ‘Remembrance Of Things Past’ by Marcel Proust. In French with English subtitles. Reference: Ron Holloway. ‘Time Regained’. Cannes Internatinal Film Festival. Online. http://www.filmfestivals.com/cannes99/html/seloff11.htm