L'immortale

First off, let me qualify my comment by saying that the print of this film I saw was of low quality and that makes it a bit hard to judge the visuals-I decided to give it the benefit of the doubt as they seem good from what I can tell.

L'Immortelle is about a French professor who takes a teaching post in Istanbul and finds himself in an alien society. As there are many tourists who travel to this area because of a fascination with the Byzantine era, the natives play up that aspect of their culture for everyone. Through the comments of the mysterious woman to that effect, the film calls the authenticity of the architecture and artwork into question again and again. While this may sound like it leads to a portrayal of the city that makes it seem fake, the opposite is actually true. The fake city that is shown off to tourists hides mysteries that are near impenetrable. The willingness of the natives to share the false culture is a perfect excuse for keeping the truth hidden.

The plot of the film focuses on the professor's encounters (and attempts at romance) with a mysterious woman. She constantly deceives him in a way that is similar to the deceptions of the city itself to outsiders. Paradoxically, she actually points out the faux culture that surrounds them while maintaining her own deceptions. Viewers who are looking for meaning here may see her mystery as a symbol for that of the city the film explores.

Eventually the woman disappears from our protagonist's life and despite all of his efforts to find out more about her he ultimately fails to learn anything definite. Like the viewer, he is left to ponder what (if anything) his experiences mean.

As a frame of reference, one might say that L'Immortelle is like a combination of L'Avventura and Last Year at Marienbad. Like the former film it includes an unsolvable mystery and like the latter it uses the language of cinema to call memory itself into question (late in L'Immortelle there are remembered versions of scenes from earlier in the film that are different from the originals). Still, L'Immortelle lacks the clarity and coherence of either of those films, making it a minor albeit unjustly ignored classic.