Reviews of India Song
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Ogier de Beauseant
2May12
India Song 1975
Marguerite Duras wrote and directed this evocation of colonial far east in its final years, here Calcutta and for virtually the entire film, a drawing room of the French Embassy there where the players in this depiction of bored romance struggling to carry on the physical imperatives in the enervating, smothering heat, as a means of keeping the even more draining emptiness at bay, depicted in virtual tableau vivant the participants only moving in as needed to exit the scene to be replaced by another, with dialogue solely from unseen narrators, describing the scene and the circumstances, but supported by a sophisticated score of period dances and jazz ensemble, and introduced with a real time sunset where a dusky sun slips below the horizon, a metaphor for the end of Europe’s colonial adventures. Very much in the manner of Last Year at Marienbad and demaning a patient mood to appreciate.
Delphine Seyrig as the ever available Anne-Marie Stretter and her admirers.
