For a subject, he was drawn to the novels of Christian Gailly by the author's "ironic and melancholy voice", and also by the musical quality of his writing and dialogue.

When Georges discovers a wallet discarded from Marguerite's stolen handbag and hands it in to the police, he imagines the door opening to a romantic encounter.

The story is presented with the help of a voiceover narrator (Édouard Baer) who is almost another character in the film since he seems to be inventing what we see on the spot, complete with hesitations and omissions and changes of tone.

[8] The image reflects the stubbornness of Georges and Marguerite "who are incapable of resisting the desire to carry out irrational acts, who display incredible vitality in what we can look on as a headlong rush into confusion".

For one major sequence, Jacques Saulnier constructed in the studio an extensive set of a street scene in which a local cinema, evocative of bygone years, provides the focal point.

[3] When the film was released in France in November 2009, reviews were predominantly favourable, with frequent reference to the originality and youthfulness of this work from an 87-year-old director.

Reactions to the film among English-language reviewers indicated a more polarised assessment, with a contrast between those who were unconvinced about either the coherence or the significance of the story[17][18] and those who savoured its sense of humour and cinematic invention.

Keith Uhlich of Time Out New York named Wild Grass the best film of 2010: "Alain Resnais's stalker romance brilliantly confounds at every turn.