THE MAN WHO LIES

Towards the end of the 1960s Boris Varissa appears in a European location that is not identified more precisely. He claims that he shares a common past with Jean Robin, the local WWII resistance hero. But alas nobody knows him. The cinematic world of this Kafkaesque tale is characterised by discontinuity when it comes to both time and place – in correspondence with the multiple levels of possibility open to Boris in his paranoia. As an author and director Alain Robbe-Grillet loved the subversion of formal conventions and provocation. Realised in Czechoslovakia during rebellious times, the film artfully mirrors the prevailing zeitgeist. French nouvelle vague meets Czech New Wave in this French-Czechoslovakian co-production.