A utopian experiment around the time of World War 1 is contrasted with an educational concourse/seminar of today. Both experiments look at idealistic solutions for the problems humans have of living with one another. Both experiments are "polluted" by idealism itself and by the very real human beings who take part in the experiments. Making a movie about philosophy is strange enough.... but this movie is a MUSICAL... and the music is lovely. The most interesting thing is that the tragedy and madness of the first experiment is contrasted with the comedy of the failure of the second experiment to make a broad statement about the inevitable failure of idealism in a world of fallible human beings. This technique is similar to Griffith's cutting in Intolerance.... Even as you laugh at the comedy, you can see how easy it would have been to fall into tragedy. The film is a perfect delight that sticks with you.

The two utopian experiments are contrasted with a medieval story that seems to comment on the other two stories....In fact, the medieval story is an idealistic view of the world as the children see it. So there are, in fact, three ideals contrasted. This makes for a very complicated structure which you may ignore if you just want to watch the interactions of the characters or listen to the delightful music.

ALAIN RESNAIS'S film ''Life Is a Bed of Roses'' is nothing if not elliptical.

''Life Is a Bed of Roses,'' which was written by the distinguished screenwriter Jean Gruault, can indeed be humorous. But it's liable to prompt at least as much head-scratching as laughter. Mr. Resnais and Mr. Gruault, who also collaborated so much more successfully on ''Mon Oncle D'Amerique,'' have made a far more precious and facetious film this time, one whose purposes are often far from apparent. In fact, their methods have become indirect to the point of near-perfect obliqueness.

''Life Is a Bed of Roses'' exists on three levels, each of a deliberate - and at times quite delightful - eccentricity. First of all, there is a World War I scenario, if ''scenario'' can properly describe the screenplay's bizarrely theatrical style. The wealthy Michel Forbek (played by the opera singer Ruggero Raimondi) announces plans to build what he calls ''The Temple of Happiness,'' a fanciful palace that is never completed.

Enough of this cheerfully weird structure is erected, however, for Forbek to stage an experiment therein. A group of his friends is isolated in the palace, dressed in flesh-colored silk robes and delicately coaxed back into an infantile innocence, or at least that is Forbek's intention. Cries of ''Love! Happiness!'' accompany the experiment, since most of the film's characters have the habit of bursting into saccharine song.

At what seems to be the present time, a different congregation assembles on the same spot. The castle has now become an educational institution, with a staff that praises the place as ''typical of early 20th-century symbolist architecture.'' A dashing architect (Vittorio Gassman) has another opinion. ''Is that thing edible?'' he asks. ''It's not architecture, it's pastry.'' Attending a weekend conference is a very naive creature who happens to be named Miss Rousseau (Sabine Azema),and who sweetly sings ''The man I'll fall in love with is not a bar of soap.'' (This is not the complete nonsequitur it sounds like.) Also on hand is Nora Winkle (Geraldine Chaplin),an American who appears dressed for combat and who makes a wager that she can orchestrate a love affair between two of the other participants. Nora, we are told, has ''dared to masquerade as a man and work in minus-81-degree weather to write the revolutionary report 'The Sexual Fantasies of James Bay Workmen.' '' Hers is by no means the most peculiar research represented here, since Robert Dufresne (Pierre Arditi) uses toys and frantic mocking gestures in his work with children. ''You have perfectly conveyed the substance of your work,'' remarks Robert's superior approvingly after a lunatic 10-second demonstration.

Also woven through ''Life Is a Bed of Roses'' is a medieval pageant, pitting a king against a heroic young warrior in a fanciful landscape.

Although ''Life Is a Bed of Roses'' has a deliberately distancing, non-realistic style, and although its uniquely skewed logic effectively prevents the audience from trying to regard it rationally, the film winds up more purely confounding than can have been intended. Arch little asides, like the abundant choral flourishes, cannot help but feel pointless without a clear sense of what they are departures from .

The film's ''variations on the theme of dominance,'' as Mr. Resnais described them, seem incompletely expressed. Despite the film's handsome look and its fine cast (Fanny Ardant also appears as a key figure in the World War I experiment),it's more memorable for various isolated witticisms and images than it is as a coherent whole. And its flightier touches can be deadly.

About the title, Mr. Resnais explained that ''Life Is a Novel'' is its French equivalent. French parents, he said, often tell their children that ''life is not a novel,'' in the same way that American parents declare ''life is not a bed of roses.'' For anyone wondering how pointlessly knotty the film itself can become, that's a fair indication.

First off, the commonly accepted translation of the title seems to be bad-It should more properly be called Life is a Fairy Tale. This film explores two main themes. The first theme involves the idea that people never really grow up-they continue to be self centered children with unrealistic views of the world. The other theme is that no individual can be happy unless some other individual is miserable. These themes are explored in typical Resnais fashion-which is to say, in a way that is in turns brilliant and confusing. Naturally, the narrative is not straightforward, rather, it is broken into two main threads and a third crucial but brief one.

The most bizarre (and off putting) thing about this film is the singing-occasionally, a character will suddenly begin singing instead of talking. The other characters tend to respond with normal dialogue as if nothing unusual was going on. This lends a sort of surreal feeling to the already odd mood of the film. According to the special features of the DVD of this, Resnais feels that it is easier to move the story along if his characters sing instead of conversing.

I've only seen this film once, but I feel that I should see it again soon. Resnais films always reward multiple viewings and I doubt this is the exception.