I love films that offers more than one way of understanding it.Alain Resnais’s Last Year at Marienbad did the exact thing to me,the ambiguity of time and space,the intentional still performance from the actors,all provide me some kind of uncertainty of the story and the characters.Renair said it is a film you should sense,not try to comprehend,but a film geek like me still couldn’t help taking some guesses here.
Interpretation 1:
Think about Kubrick’s The Shining,can you find any similarities between it and this film? Yes,both film takes place in a gigantic haunting house,and both are about repetitions.You can argue that X,just like Jack,is a ghost,and possesses the ability of telepath.The story he told A was trying to override the memory of what happened to her last year,to persuade her to love him.
Interpretation 2:
If you remember the plot well,the man said he took a picture of the woman when they met last year,and then we saw a scene where the woman opened the draw in her room,and there were many same photos of her.It does not make sense that the man took all these pictures at the same time, so there is a possibility that the man already tried his scheme many times,maybe every once a year,but kept failing until this time in the film.
Interpretation 3:
This is something you did not notice unless you watched every scene very carefully,there was a play took place in the palace,the story of it had something to do with sexual violence even raping indication.So we can guess that the reason A denied the past was not she couldn’t remember anything,but had something to do with her own suffering,maybe a raping attempt by X last year.
No matter they are right or wrong,this film opens a window to all kinds of interpretations,what’s yours?