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I Love You, I Love You poster

I Love You, I Love You (Je t'aime, je t'aime)

1968 · 91 min · movie
⭐ 7.1 (3,759 votes)

As Claude Ridder is leaving a Belgian hospital after attempting suicide by shooting himself in the heart, he is approached by two men, who ask him to participate in a mysterious experiment in time travel being conducted by a private research body. They take him to Crespel Research Center, a secret location in the countryside, where the researchers explain to Claude that they are confident they have succeeded in sending mice back in time, and are now ready to send a human back, since a human can confirm they really did revisit the past. Claude, who does not seem particularly concerned about whether or not he will survive the experiment, agrees, but instead of reliving one minute from one year earlier and returning to the present, as the mice had supposedly done, he re-experiences many episodes from his past in a highly disjointed and fragmented manner, each scene lasting just seconds or minutes.

While some of the moments Claude revisits are mundane, many others catalog the highs and lows of his seven-year relationship with the beautiful, morbid, melancholic Catrine, which ended recently. Gradually, it is revealed that Claude seems to have been responsible for Catrine's death on a trip to Glasgow when the flame of a gas heater in their room went out while she was asleep, as he noticed this on his way to a meeting, but chose not to wake her, as she was smiling in her sleep, and, for once, looked happy and peaceful. However, after admitting this to his friend Wiana, Claude immediately says he was lying, and the flame went out after he left. Regardless, after Catrine's death, Claude comes to the painful realization that, not only could he not live with her, he cannot live without her, and attempts suicide.

After an hour, the researchers conclude they have lost Claude for good. When they leave the lab, however, they find his body on the grass at Crespel—shot through the heart. Seemingly, reliving his suicide attempt broke the chaotic loop in which he was stuck and freed him from the time machine. The researchers carry his mortally wounded body inside, and Claude struggles to speak, a single teardrop falling down his cheek. (Whether or not Claude's "second" suicide attempt resulted in his death is left ambiguous.)

Directed by

Alain Resnais

Starring

Olga Georges-Picot
Claude Rich
Anouk Ferjac
Alain MacMoy
Ray Verhaeghe
Claire Duhamel
Bernard Fresson
Irène Tunc
Ratings provided by IMDB. Information courtesy of IMDb. Used with permission. Wikidata Licensed under CC-BY-SA-4.0