Week 38/2025

To mark the publication of the new Dutch translation of Marguerite Duras’s script for Hiroshima mon amour, De Cinema is showing the Nouvelle Vague classic – directed by Alain Resnais – on the big screen. Duras’s Nouveau Roman style, with its non-linear, narrative and fragmented perspectives, pairs perfectly with Resnais’s visual precision to develop an investigation of history, memory and the mediation of the past through images. Bringing together literature and cinema in an intermedial exchange, Hiroshima mon amour demonstrates their complementarity and shared sensitivity to the concept of time.

After the commercial and critical failure of Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, Gus Van Sant came back strong with To Die For. It’s a satirical black comedy about a young woman, brilliantly played by Nicole Kidman, who is willing to do anything to advance her career in television. “You’re not anybody in America unless you’re on TV”, is the mantra she lives by as she manipulates her way to the top. Blending the genres of true crime and docudrama with Hollywood conventions, Van Sant created a highly self-aware film about fame and media that still resonates today.

The fifth instalment in his series Comedies and proverbs, Le rayon vert is Eric Rohmer’s take on romantic isolation. When her friend cancels their holiday, Delphine is suddenly left without plans for the summer. Wandering through Paris and taking the occasional trip abroad, she is unable to get rid of the sense of loneliness, despite the numerous encounters with family, friends and strangers. As always with Rohmer, weighty ideas are presented with lightness, and melancholy with hope. From the concreteness of everyday life emerge philosophical reflections that are as fleeting as they are eternal.