Time Regained

If you've never read all of Remembrance of Things Past, there's a good chance you won't have the slightest idea what this hauntingly beautiful film is about. The good news is that it doesn't really matter: Raul Ruiz's splendid adaptation of Marcel Proust's sprawling, autobiographical novel is such an enthralling visual experience that the plot details are really secondary. The film begins with novelist Proust on his death bed, hurrying to finish his seven-volume magnum opus. As he dictates, the light changes, the furniture shifts and with all the abruptness of automatic recall we're plunged into a grand, WWI-era soiree. There the novel's unnamed narrator (Ma...