The film: Of all the work to come out of the French New Wave, or French cinema, in general, for that matter, probably none has been more argued over than Alain Resnais' Last Year in Marienbad. Even the Time Out Film Guide - not a volume prone to grey-area reviews - describes it as 'either some sort of masterpiece or meaningless twaddle'.

Resnais might have furrowed a few brows with Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959), audiences may have been struggling to grasp the religious metaphors in Robert Bresson's Au Hasard Balthazar (1966), and Jean-Luc Godard might have set the beard-strokers on edge with Contempt (1963), but at least some people knew what was going on with these films. With Marienbad it seemed that no one could put a finger on just what was supposed to be happening. Even Resnais himself and co-writer Alain Robbe-Grillet (a pioneer of the Nouveau Roman liter ary movement) offered varying accounts of what the film was trying to convey.

Essentially, the plot runs thus: A man meets a woman at an upmarket French country resort, and insists to her apparent disbelief that they met, and had an affair, the previous year 'at Frederiksbad, or perhaps at Marienbad'. His exposition of the circumstances is where the audience is left behind, or pulled along, depending on one's taste for Resnais' singular storytelling technique. Are we looking at what happened last year, or what's happening now, or what might happen in the future? It's seldom entirely clear, but if you stay with the film for more than 30 minutes, you'll be past caring, such is its hypnotic effect.

Thankfully this new and well-overdue release by Optimum World includes a French documentary that, while not quite providing all the answers, goes a long way towards rationalising the meaning behind this strangely attractive yet vexing work, as well as providing some closure. If you don't make it all the way to the end, at least watch this half-hour explanation, and you may find yourself going back to the main story. It's certainly worth doing, since, after watching Marienbad, everything else produced by the French New Wave will seem like child's play by comparison.

The extras: Optimum World has released two Resnais films in recent weeks: this one and Hiroshima Mon Amour. Although the latter is much better presented by the Criterion Collection, this is the only watchable subtitled DVD release of Marienbad, and it's very good. The above-mentioned documentary, Dans le Labyrinthe de Marienbad, is invaluable for anyone not wanting to spend time in cinematic rehab after seeing the main feature, while a 20-minute English-language video introduction by Resnais aficionado Ginette Vincendeau lays a fairly sturdy foundation. (On my DVD, this segment had some problems with time-coding and jumped a little, but the rest of the disc had no problems at all.) Also included is Resnais' dynamic 30-minute short film Toute le Memoire du Monde (1956), which looks inside the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris. The main feature's fabulously clear image is digitally restored and enhanced for wide screens.