PROVIDENCE

 Filmed in English, (though originally in France with the actors dubbed into French then 'dubbed' back again for an English-speaking audience), from a screenplay by David Mercer yet unmistakably Resnais and set mostly inside the head of dying novelist John Gielgud. I have to admit I hated "Providence" when I first saw it finding it both arch and pretentious and at the time I couldn't quite understand why so many international critics thought it was a masterpiece.

Maybe it seemed to me to be an old man's movie or at least a middle-aged man's movie, a picture about being old and dying but now that I'm a relatively old man myself I finally 'get' it and "Providence" does indeed feel like a masterpiece and a worthy companion piece to "Last Year at Marienbad".

As I said it takes place mostly inside the mind of dying author Gielgud who spends his long sleepless nights mostly drunk and in pain, this thoughts a mixture of memories, some real, others imagined and amalgamated with ideas from the novel he's writing and in which his family are the characters. Dirk Bogarde, (superb), is his fey son, at least fey in Gielgud's mind. Ellen Burstyn is Bogarde's wife, Elaine Stritch his mistress and his mother depending on Gielgud's point of view and David Warner both Burstyn's lover and Bogarde's half-brother.

Like "Marienbad" it's a memory piece, even at its most fantastical and, of course, it's highly literate as perhaps you would expect from a film about a writer and it's often very funny. It may never be as profound as it thinks it is, a smart doodle by a great director enjoying playing with his audience and this time round, to quote a particular Oscar-winning actress, I liked it...I really liked it.