If audiences and even a few critics still remain divided on the cinema of Alain Resnais, there's no denying his impact on modern cinema, particularly his 1961 love it/hate it Last Year in Marienbad (L'Année dernière à Marienbad) – I once knew someone who both loved it AND hated it, if you can imagine. Two years later Resnais followed Marienbad with Muriel ou Le temps d'un retour (Muriel or: The Time of a Return), a film that did little to soften Resnais' reputation - a quick glance over the IMDb contributor comments finds headers as diverse as "A haunting and beautiful movie" and "One hot, steaming pile."

In Muriel Resnais merged the vicissitudes of his characters' personal pasts and married them to the traumas of the political present, namely the French war in Algeria. It tells the story of the middles-aged Hélène (played by Delphine Seyrig, of Marienbad, Truffaut's Stolen Kisses and Akerman's Jeanne Delman) an antique dealer located in the provincial town of Boulogne-sur-Mer, who resides amid her wares inside the same flat that serves as her business showroom. Against the backdrop of the past that exists within the immediate milleu of the film's action, an old lover of Hélène's comes to visit, and soon takes up a more permanent residence within her life, despite the presence of a suspicious tortured and sexualised stepson, who is haunted by a woman, a name, from his own past in his time in Algiers – "Muriel".

Scripted by Jean Cayrol, the co-writer of Resnais' landmark early short film Night and Fog, Muriel is regarded by its many supporters as one of the most complex and rewarding films of the 1960s whose richness grows with every viewing. We shall see.

Muriel ou Le temps d'un retour will be released on UK DVD on 30th March 2008 by Eureka Entertainment as part of the Masters of Cinema series. Boasting a new anamorphic transfer of the film in its original 1.66:1 aspect ratio and English subtitles in a new and exclusive translation, the disc will also feature the original trailer, newly subtitled, and a 36-page booklet containing new essays about the film from writers B. Kite and Anna Thorngate, writing by Henry Langlois, and excerpt from the famous 1963 Cahiers du cinéma roundtable discussion about the film.