The famed French ideologue of the New Novel and author of Hiroshima Mon Amour creates a hypnotic film about five alienated people isolated in an unworldly hotel. Enmeshed in ritualistic power games, they continuously exchange personalities as each acts out his own ambigious charades. A highly stylized, non-logical dialogue creates enigmatic fear; long, uniterrupted takes and absence of close-ups evoke ennui and distance. At the end, there is a mysterious climax of revolutionary destruction. ---- Amos Vogel “Film as asubversive art”