The film is notable for Resnais' innovative use of brief flashbacks to suggest flashes of memory, which create a nonlinear storyline.

A series of closeups of the backs and arms of a man and woman embracing, amidst falling ash and then covered in sweat.

He is from Hiroshima and his family died in the bombing while he was off fighting in the war, and the woman is a French actress who is in the city to make an anti-war film.

Neither this nor the revelation that she has children change how he feels, but she, though torn, repeatedly declines to arrange another meeting.

Intercut with flashbacks, she tells how she and an occupying German soldier fell in love and planned to elope to Bavaria before he was shot while waiting for her on the day Nevers was liberated, how she stayed with him while he died over the next two days, how the villagers shaved her head when they found out about the relationship, and how her parents locked her alternately in her room and the cellar while her hair grew out and she came out of her madness and then sent her away to Paris just before Hiroshima was bombed.

She tries to convey the pain she feels about forgetting the German and their love, and indicates she has been trying to keep her distance from the Japanese man because she does not want any more such heartbreak.

In her hotel room, she feels guilty about telling the man about the German, but decides to stay in Hiroshima.

The woman goes to a train station, where she lets go of some of her issues surrounding her first love and decides she might like to visit Nevers.

[4] Among the film's innovations is the way Resnais intercut very brief flashback sequences into scenes to suggest a brief flash of memory.

Hiroshima mon amour has been described as "The Birth of a Nation of the French New Wave" by American critic Leonard Maltin.

[13] The film holds a rating of 96% from 47 reviews on Rotten Tomatoes with the consensus: "Distinguished by innovative technique and Emmanuelle Riva's arresting performance, Hiroshima Mon Amour is a poignant love story as well as a thoughtful meditation on international trauma.