Wednesday, March 20, 5:30 pm, Popp-Martin Student Union Theater
(Building 69 on this map; closest [visitor] parking is Union Deck)
Drama by Raúl Ruiz, France 1999/169 min.
French with English subtitles
Presented as part of The Tournées Festival, made possible with the support of the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the U.S., the Centre National du Cinéma et de l’Image Animée (CNC), the French American Cultural Fund, Florence Gould Foundation, and Highbrow Entertainment.
Additional sponsors are the Alliance Française de Charlotte and the UNC Charlotte French Club.
Introduction by Mary LaMarca, Lecturer of French, UNC Charlotte. A discussion will follow the screening.
It stands to reason that only Raoul Ruiz, a director utterly free from
conventional approaches to representing time and space, could do jus-
tice to Marcel Proust’s monumental In Search of Lost Time. For Ruiz’s
accomplishment in Time Regained is not only to deliver a surprisingly
profound yet accessible digest of Proust’s themes and leading char-
acters, but to create a self-standing, utterly captivating film that adds
an original vision of cinema to Proust’s meditations on the passage of
time, the construction of memory, and the evolution of relationships
and society. Working from the structure of Time Regained, the final
volume of Proust’s opus, Ruiz intertwines and layers different times
to provide a panoramic view of all seven volumes of the novel, driven
by superb attention to period detail and a stellar, at times surprising
cast (John Malkovich as Charlus!). Naturally, Ruiz is forced to pick
and choose from the profusion of motifs in Proust; his emphasis on
the wartime setting of Time Regained and the history of gay mores
provides fresh insight. For those who have not read the novel, Ruiz’s
epic achievement is an irresistible invitation. For those who have, it is
an opportunity to plunge deeper into Time.
