Kino Lorber is teaming up with Redemption Films to release six films by French Nouvelle Roman author-turned-director Alain Robbe-Grillet on Blu-ray and DVD for the first time in the United States. He’s better known to most Americans as the screenwriter of Alain Resnais’ Last Year at Marienbad but in France he was a leading experimental author in the fifties and sixties and he went on to become a filmmaker in his own right, ultimately directing ten films.
Kino Lorber will release six of his directorial efforts in 2014. The first two releases in the series, Trans-Europ-Express (1967) with Jean-Louis Trintignant and Marie-France Pisier and Successive Slidings of Pleasure (1974) with Trintignant and Michael Lonsdale, arrive in February.
You can see clips from all six features in this trailer, which foregrounds Robbe-Grillet’s preoccupation with sex, sadism and bondage. No nudity here, but it’s plenty provocative.