Resnais’ fondness for musical theater (he is an avowed Stephen Sondheim fan) informs this ensemble piece about a group of lovelorn Parisians. Borrowing a strategy from Dennis Potter, writer of the screenplays for the original versions of Pennies from Heaven and The Singing Detective, the film pauses occasionally to allow its characters to voice their unspoken thoughts, fears and desires by channeling French popular songs from the 1930s onward. The device reveals a contrast between the external and the internal that is alternately amusing and poignant and, like so much of the director’s recent work, represents an intersection between theater and cinema that is itself a correlative to his earlier examinations of the gaps between memory and experience.