text: Alain Resnais directs three parallel stories that have to do with fantasy and imagination in the adult world. In one of them is a sort of Operatic bordello story where a rejected architect attempts to manipulate a group of people into throes of happiness--only his attempt misses it's only real target, the woman that he pines after. In the same unfinished château he built, a group of teachers search for love in a more modern story, as one woman believes ineffably in the role of romance and the cynical anthropoligist tries to teach her a lesson by setting her up with the biggest jerk in the group. Meanwhile, a bunch of kids fantasize a George Melies-like adventure of a prince that saves a girl in distress from swamp creatures and then kills the evil king, bringing upon the kingdom of love. The two primary themes? Life is a fairy tale, and Life isn't a fairy tale.<br /><br />Which sounds better than the movie actually is. Resnais is the type of director where oftentimes the concept is good or bad, but the exposition is what matters; here, the concept is great but the movie is downright painful to watch. Horridly off-tune songs, bubbly characters without an ounce of dimension, backdrops of sickening pastel--instead of giving your inner child an ice cream cone, Resnais drowns it in a bucket of cake frosting. Add some French philosophy and you get a weird witches brew, one that doesn't bubble bubble toil and trouble, but just kinda sits wrong in your stomach until you want to regurgitate it.<br /><br />Resnais is a risk-taking director, and even in his worst you can see he's trying something that might not work with full clarity of action. In I Want to Go Home, he manages to pull past annoying characters and ditzy set-pieces by showing some real change and having a moment few moments of quiet to catch his breath. Here he submerges directly into a fantasy that doesn't really reflect fantasy, only its baby's room wallpaper reference. The biggest problem is that he somehow managed to make a movie more flamboyant than an 80s pop video, and more kitsch than Golden Era Hollywood musicals. The fantasies are beyond childish and naive, but the movie (with nudity and profanity) is definitely aimed for adults, a target he decidedly missed.<br /><br />However, he sticks closely to his theme and never backpedals. If anything, this movie is impressive simply because its unapologetic.<br /><br />--PolarisDiB