Opening with the ailing Proust dictating memoirs to his housekeeper, it uses photographs to loosely frame the collage of memories that follows. Without fixed order, the film shows fragments of a turn of the century life, through and beyond World War I.

Much of this consists of social gatherings interspersed with individual encounters that colour, but barely explain the gallery of characters.

Every apparent forward movement awakens a desire for a linear plot, but the film defies such finality, circling back to earlier events on a whim. In refusing a relentless movement towards the end, it captures the Proustian notion that remembering is a necessary struggle with death.

Of the starry cast, Malkovich demands attention as the decadent Charlus, but this is not to Deneuve's or Beart's discredit in their humbler roles. Italian Marcello Mazzarella is a sympathetic but not uncritical observer of this sometimes strange collection of experiences.

Unfilmable? Film is ideally suited to studying memory in this way.

Cast

Catherine Deneuve
Emmanuelle Beart
Vincent Perez
John Malkovich
Pascal Gregory
Marcello Mazzarella
Marie-France Pisier
Chiara Mastroianni