Resnais’ first film in English, this portrait of a writer’s last days, both autumnal and nightmarish, finds him surrounded by his family but also retreating into his imagination, with his final work reflecting his ambivalence towards his children and the women in his life. As in so much of Resnais’ work, the borders between history, memory and fantasy in Providence prove to be more permeable than solid, which Resnais brilliantly represents by giving the film’s locations a geographic fluidity – the spaces onscreen seem to oscillate between the real and the imaginary. The primary setting is an English country house that seems as haunted as the resort in Last Year at Marienbad.