Basically, what it is, is that

I can't stop thinking about certain scenes, mainly the exterior shots of the small town, in Muriel, or the Time of Return (1963), first watched a few years back. In my memory, it's usually the Time of the Return, as if appending a bookmark to spatio-temperature changes it all. Street lamps, water, rounded shop windows, except it's cold. The potential for gambling with the ominous presence of the casino, to which Delphine, shown ugly, gauche, middle-aged, hanging on, almost English, a Natalia Ginzburg character, must be accompanied, and from which she is then steered away. She cannot help herself, it being there, just like people in Monaco are forbidden to run ragged at their places of employment. Her convertible domesticity, ye olde furniture shop. Her errant, mysterious son, lover. Lapsed, lopsided storytelling—people resented Resnais for this. More easily accepted: intergenerational affairs, mutual violences. Colonist comes home, to sad, pathetic home, poor effect. Awkwardnesses pluralized, spliced and spread among conversation's participants. All humming separately rewinding respective reels. I do not "like" this movie much, but I think it is somehow very important now, or will be.