“A” (Delphine Seyrig), a beautiful woman and “X” (Giorgio Albertazzi), with movie-idol good looks, who insists they met last year and arranged to meet again this year and “M” (Sascha Pitoeff), who may be A's husband or lover, all stay at a Spa in Mariendbad.
At a weekend gathering X tries to convince the woman that they had met there and spent some time together the previous year. What plot there is simply provides the material for a meditation on the uncertainty of knowing.
The screenplay is from another novelist Alain Robbe-Grillet, and its array of startling images from cinematographer Sacha Vierny, with its unprecedented exploration of architectural space and teasingly complex narrative structure, “Last Year at Marienbad” is a challenge that divided audiences when it was released in 1962 and continues to do so today. A classic.