Last Year at Marienbad - Plot

Plot

At a social gathering at a château or baroque hotel, a man approaches a woman. He claims they met the year before at Marienbad and is convinced that she is waiting there for him. The woman insists they have never met. A second man, who may be the woman's husband, repeatedly asserts his dominance over the first man, including beating him several times at a mathematical game (a version of Nim). Through ambiguous flashbacks and disorienting shifts of time and location, the film explores the relationships among the characters. Conversations and events are repeated in several places in the château and grounds, and there are numerous tracking shots of the château's corridors, with ambiguous voiceovers.

The characters are unnamed in the film; in the published screenplay, the woman is referred to as "A", the first man is "X", and the man who may be her husband is "M".

Read more about this topic:  Last Year At Marienbad

Famous quotes containing the word plot:

    “The plot thickens,” he said, as I entered.
    Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930)

    After I discovered the real life of mothers bore little resemblance to the plot outlined in most of the books and articles I’d read, I started relying on the expert advice of other mothers—especially those with sons a few years older than mine. This great body of knowledge is essentially an oral history, because anyone engaged in motherhood on a daily basis has no time to write an advice book about it.
    Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)

    The westward march has stopped, upon the final plains of the Pacific; and now the plot thickens ... with the change, the pause, the settlement, our people draw into closer groups, stand face to face, to know each other and be known.
    Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)