We watched Alain Resnais’s 1959 classic, Hiroshima mon amour, this evening. Based on a screenplay by Marguerite Youcenar, the film consists of a 36 hour conversation between a French actress (played by Emmanuèlle Riva) and a Japanese architect (played by Eiji Okada). The story takes place in a recovering Hiroshima (lots of interesting historical footage), where the actress has come to act in an anti-war film. She and the architect have had a brief fling (both are married) but now she must go and so they must say goodbye. However, the man becomes fascinated and keeps returning to her and their conversation, which is punctuated by flashbacks representing her reminiscences about a youthful relationship she had with a young German soldier. After liberation, she had her hair cropped and was ostracised as a collaborator. The script and the film cleverly juxtapose the horrors of her youth with the horrors of the people of Hiroshima (many of the survivors lost their hair), including the architect’s family (he was conscripted). Indeed, both she and he are trying to relate back to events that they cannot fully comprehend. She in particular floats between the now and the then, and he sometimes becomes what she once had.