Four Nights of a Dreamer

Despite his deceptively simple and astonishingly sophisticated and direct narrative technique, the films of Robert Bresson are not known for their complex plotting, but this film is unusually plotless even for a Bresson film. Almost nothing really happens, yet I was captivated for the films nearly hour and a half running time. Based on a novel by Dostoevsky, it concerns the "dreamer", a young painter named Jacques and the woman he loves named Marthe, who loves another man despite his fickle nature. The four nights of the title refer to the four nights in which Jacques is with Marthe and waits for her to fall in love with him. It's kind of a romantic comedy (to the extent that you could place it within the confines of a genre). It's probably Bresson's most sensual film. To watch it, indeed to watch any of his films, is to slowly begin to understand the films and technique(s) of Jean-Luc Godard, whose films about Paris youths in the 60's seem heavily inspired by the works of Bresson.