Alain Resnais’ (Last Year at Marienbad, Hiroshima mon amour) final film before his death in March at 91, Life of Riley is a very playful, deceptively light-hearted picture.
Adapted from the Alan Ayckbourn play, it follows three couples – including Colin and Kathryn, absorbed in preparations for their upcoming amateur dramatics production – distressed by the news that their mutual friend George Riley is terminally ill with only months to live.
When George decides to have a last holiday in Tenerife he invites each of the women in the couples to join him; causing consternation between them and their jealous, harassed partners, and bringing old tensions to the surface.
Filmed on brightly coloured, deliberately artificial sets and with numerous absurdist, surreal touches – including that Resnais has maintained Ayckbourn’s Yorkshire setting, with specifically British props, but has used French actors – he seems to be emphasising the theatricality and constructed nature of life, of even people’s most intimate histories and relationships. Life is just a game, he’s asserting – so why take it so seriously?
