From Alain Resnais, a strange mating dance in 'Wild Grass'

LOS ANGELES - In "Wild Grass," legendary French director Alain Resnais has created a quirky, comic tragedy about the ways in which the aging brain of a mild-mannered gent named Georges begins to come apart in the end. It's not dementia exactly, but a deterioration of thinking that shifts thoughts, ideas, actions and reactions in unpredictable and unsettling ways.

That didn't seem to have been the intention of the director, who was 87 when he completed the film in 2009 in time to take it to Cannes. Instead, Resnais has talked of being captivated by the strange seduction that begins between two people brought together by a stolen wallet and very fanciful imaginations. And yet the ways in which the march of time, bit by bit and without taking a breath, diminishes a life flows like a river through the film.

The story begins on the most ordinary of days with Marguerite (Sabine Azema) shopping for expensive shoes she doesn't need when a thief snatches her purse. Her wallet is dropped next to Georges' (Andre Dussollier) car. His discovery of the wallet sets in motion a series of conundrums as he debates with himself, his wife Suzanne (Anne Consigny) and eventually a policeman (Mathieu Amalric) the implications of the loss and the proper way to return it.

Based on the Christian Gailly novel, "L'Incident," and adapted by screenwriters Alex Reval and Laurent Herbiet, what should have been a simple matter becomes a strange mating dance as Georges and Marguerite begin circling each other, intrigued as much by the enigma of the unknown as the possibilities. But then Resnais has always been far more interested in the murky mysteries of the mind rather than the sharper edges of reality.

As a story goes, that in itself might have been enough, but Resnais is on his way to a gingerbread house of fright as Georges, married with two grown children and a comfortably posh life, begins to shadow Marguerite in increasingly disturbing ways. Despite the bizarre nature of things Marguerite, who turns out to be a successful dentist, well into middle age and more at loose ends than she expected, finds herself inexplicably drawn to Georges too.