Le père de Barbara
Barbara, a young girl, lives in an old country house with her father and her teacher. One night, she dreams that a fireman enters her room through the window. Having grown, Barbara leaves her father to travel across the world, before coming back to her childhood fantasies: one day, she calls the firemen, and locks herself with one of them in her bedroom.
The full soundtrack to Marguerite Duras' 1975 film India Song, about a French ambassador's wife in 1930s India, is here repurposed with all new cinematography. As we hear all the dialogue of a bygone movie, we travel visually through images of absence and decay, bereft of life. It's the ghost of a film, and a further commentary on colonialism.
Voix Intemporelle (voice)
India, 1937. Anne-Marie Stretter is the wife of the French ambassador and leads a solitary yet privileged life in Calcutta. The tedium of her existence is relieved by numerous illicit love affairs with government officials, young men who find her an object of desire and fascination. The Vice Consul is driven insane by his love for her and, expelled from the ambassador’s palace, cries like a sick animal. Life continues for Anne-Marie Stretter, the same tedious existence…
Traveler
A man returns to the place he once lived a passionate love affair with a woman who is now dead. So powerful are the emotions that seize him that he imagines she is still alive, and begins to live as if this were the case...
M. Granger
With little or no embellishment, filmmaker Marguerite Duras offers a simple, often wordless chronicle of a woman's day. She and her friend are seen doing yard work, talking about their families and receiving the occasional visitor. The brightest spot in the day is when a washing machine salesman comes to call.
Le père
A young woman escapes her father's house and goes to live in the city. There, she realises her father may still be controlling her life through the people she meets.
Un juif
The whole film takes place in a single room where representatives of the two political forces and their enemy "the Jew" are gathered. A female character establishes the dialogue between these individuals and comments on the ideology of each; Until the final scene where everyone seems to rally to a common idea.
