Review of Hiroshima Mon Amour

Hiroshima Mon Amour was a very well done film. I heard about this movie from reading Larry Turman's book So You Want to Be a Producer. In the book Turman emphasizes that a producer should have taste and tenacity. Hiroshima Mon Amour is a clear example of taste. It is set in Hiroshima after the nuclear attack. It centers around the brief, but intense affair between a married French woman and a married Japanese man. The story is short, but poignant. They are only together for a matter of days, but each is smitten so much that neither wants to leave. The Japanese man begs the French woman to stay, but she says that she must go.

The first fifteen minutes of the film are the most intense. At first it is unclear what is happening in the movie. Then, gradually it is revealed that the two lovers are in embrace over a montage sequence that shows the dead and affected by the atomic bombing. I was taken aback by the footage. It showed all types of humans mangle, burnt, and dead. I kept wondering when, or if we were going to see the lovers. For the first sequence of the film the two lovers are not shown.

It is only after a significant amount of time has elapsed that we finally see the two lovers. The movie clearly depicts the horrors of war, but what does the relationship between the two lovers symbolize? Why would a Japanese man and a French woman come together? And for what purpose? The film does little to explain why these two come together. There is little exposition. It is only after the first hour of the film that we learn of the French woman's past. Her love affair with a German soldier and the ostracism that she received from her parents and fellow citizens.

Resnais is portraying the difficult relationships that are forged out of war. I think he is showing how the relationship between the French woman and the Japanese man is doomed. I think the film shows that they are star crossed lovers. Why they got together to begin with is unknown and their parting is heartbreaking, but somehow inevitable.

This film caused me to develop sympathy for Japan. The images of the nuclear bombings and the French woman's refusal to stay in Hiroshima with her lover, caused me to think that Japan was mistreated at the end of the war. Why were nuclear bombs used on Japan and not Germany? Furthermore the French woman's rejection of the Japanese man's overtures of romance reveal that she is, at least, unsettled with being with a Japanese man. Yet, they are married, so perhaps it's a matter of staying married rather than splitting up.

Hiroshima Mon Amour was part of the French New Wave of films. It was, to my knowledge, one of the first films to call into question the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I don't think there was a film that dealt with the destruction caused by the Americans before Hiroshima Mon Amour. I saw a documentary film which dealt with it in detail, but that wasn't until well past the 1960s.

Very good film. Aesthetically disturbing with a good story.