H Story

Suwa plays a version of himself, assembling a cast and crew in Hiroshima to remake Resnais's film on its 40th anniversary. For Emmanuelle Riva's iconic role, the director hires French actress Béatrice Dalle (also doubling as herself), who objects to staging a faithful remake and fails to remember Marguerite Duras's original dialogue. Suwa, who speaks no French, struggles to salvage his disastrous production. A postmodern rumination on a modernist masterpiece, H Story, like the film within it, actively frustrates and undermines any resemblances to its source material. Rather, Suwa uses the hall-of-mirrors premise to draw connections between filmmaking, film history, and his own biographical ties to Hiroshima, his birthplace.