Perhaps the ultimate “family plot,” Resnais' first English-language film plays off the fantasies of a dying novelist (John Gielgud) as he passes away a galling night of rectal pain by re-inventing his own family. In this fantasy his son (Dirk Bogarde) is a priggish lawyer with a knack for the self-satisfied one-liner matched only by that of his father. His daughter-in-law (Ellen Burstyn) distracts herself from her cold-blooded husband with a hot-blooded physicist (David Warner)--who might also be Gielgud's illegitimate son. Bogarde distracts himself from himself with Elaine Stritch, who is either his mistress or his father's dead wife--or both. All this takes place on a shifting set that makes no pretense to reality--unless the seashore on a painted backdrop is reality. Which question brings us to the end of the film, in which the “fantasy” is revealed on the sweeping lawn of an elegant chateau in the depths of the country--and one is reminded that Marienbad, too, was a far-off, elegant land.