Main Cast: Marcelo Mazzarella, Emmanuelle Béart, Vincent Perez, John Malkovich, Pascal Greggory, Catherine Deneuve
Release Year: 1999
Country: FR/IT
Run Time: 158 minutes
MPAA Rating: NR
Plot
An ambitious project of Chile-born, Paris-based Raul Ruiz, this psychological drama brings to the screen the famous classic of Marcel Proust with fidelity to its interior monologues and streams of consciousness. Proust (Marcelo Mazzarella), on his deathbed in his small apartment on Rue Hamelin, is looking through old photos and remembering his life, as real characters intermingle with fictional ones from his novels. The period is 1914-18, when WWI is raging. Hidden in Paris, thanks to his asthma, Marcel Proust wanders into the night. He finds an aging courtesan in Café de la Paix, which is deserted by the curfew. Charlus, the seducer of young boys, is at the Palais des Felicites where he meets his lovers. Gilberte returns alone to Tansonville to evade the confiscation of her chateau by the Germans after the death of her husband at the front. Famous violinist Morel is hiding in a decrepit hotel. The demoralizing effects of war affect all the characters, hastening their decadence or transforming them into caricatures. In the whirlpool of the grotesque specter of war, Marcel finds refuge in his childhood memories to escape the atrocities around him. Death and decadence, the evanescence of human existence, and the relations between space and time are some of the main themes explored in this film, which reflects the works of Marcel Proust in every detail. Raul Ruiz has on his side a very good screenwriter, Gilles Taurand, and an impressive cast: Catherine Deneuve and John Malkovich, who have collaborated with Ruiz before, Emanuelle Béart, Vincent Pérez, Pascal Greggory, and the Italian man of theatre, Marcello Mazzarella. Shown in competition at the 1999 Cannes Film Festival. ~ Gönül Dönmez-Colin, All Movie Guide
Review
As Time Regained rolled out to theaters, two schools of thought emerged, one arguing that it would be best enjoyed by those with no knowledge of Marcel Proust the other holding that only Proust scholars could possibly appreciate it. Chances are that Proust scholars will find in it only a different variety of inscrutability than neophytes. There's really no translating Proust, and if there were, most would not do so by jumping into the final volume of Remembrance of Things Past, but with Time Regained, director Raúl Ruiz turns just about every disadvantage to his favor. Structured, more or less, as the thoughts of a dying Proust as he attempts to finish the final volume of his magnum opus, the film takes on the quality of a dream, or, more appropriately, an imperfect memory. If sorting out the characters in terms of Proust's work requires prior knowledge, sorting them out in terms of the structure of the film does not. What each means to the film's protagonist is made as clear as it needs to be. Ruiz sustains the dreamlike tone through surreal asides and striking cinematography (courtesy of Ricardo Aronovich) and by continually undermining viewers' sense of time. In the process, he gets at some Proustian notions in a way a more conventional film could not, particularly the sense of "extra-temporality" created by memory and the notion that some events have more significance as memory or as art than they do in themselves, if it's even possible to talk about events in themselves. It can be a bit overwhelming at times, and the actor dubbing John Malkovich's voice gets no points for authenticity, but as a singular cinematic experience, Time Regained offers quite a bit in return for patience. ~ Keith Phipps, All Movie Guide
Time Regained (French: Le Temps retrouvé) is a 1999French film directed by Raoul Ruiz. It is an adaptation of the final volume of In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust (1871-1922). The plot is about the anonymous narrator of In Search of Lost Time who reflects on his past experiences while lying on his deathbed.
The choice to develop the last volume of In Search of Lost Time allows the film to refer to the entire series of books. For example, the film shows an episode of the first novel, Swann's Way, usually referred to as "the lady in pink", as a flashback of Time Regained.
