Last Year at Marienbad

"WHEN Alain Resnais's gorgeous puzzle box of a movie, ''Last Year at Marienbad,'' [reopened at] Film Forum ..., New York cinephiles [may have found] themselves as mystified and delighted as their counterparts were when the film first reached Manhattan in 1962. ''Marienbad'' either does or does not tell the story of what may or may not be a love triangle that does or does not end violently, though the movie could also be presenting shards of a dream, a memory or a fantasy. What transpires among the three nameless principal characters is, the filmmakers have always maintained, up to you to figure out.

The visual style of ''Marienbad,'' with its use of glamorous, glazed-looking actors framed in mannerist poses within the glittering, implicitly decadent mirrored salons of a luxe European hotel, may no longer dazzle audiences that have seen it cribbed (and spoofed) by countless perfume ads and rock videos. But the movie's nightmarishly looping, repetitive semi-narrative, drenched in incantatory voice-over and toxically discordant organ music, is as disturbing as ever and retains its power to frustrate anybody who hopes to shake loose some answers after 93 minutes. The people who walked out (literally) of ''Inland Empire,''David Lynch's ''Marienbad''-influenced 2006 film, saying ''What was that all about?'' will find similar though more elegantly concise cause for discomfort here. "

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