This remembered this French film as one being in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, I didn't know what it would be like, but critics gave it good reviews, and it got recognition at film festivals, so I looked forward to watching it. Basically set in India in the 1930s, Anne-Marie Stretter (The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie's Delphine Seyrig) is the wife of the French ambassador. She married a French colonial administrator at the age of 18, travelling with him to Savannakhet, Laos, there she met her second husband who took her away to various place in Asia for 17 years. Now in Calcutta, Anne-Marie has grown bored with the oppressive lifestyle she leads, she begins compulsively sleeping with other men to alleviate her situation. The Vice-Consul of Lahore (Moonraker's Michael Lonsdale) fails in his attempts to begin a love affair with her. Her husband is aware of her promiscuity but is tolerant of her indiscretions. Also starring Mathieu Carrière as Attaché, Claude Mann as Michael Richardson, Vernon Dobtcheff as George Crown and Didier Flamand as Young guest. The story is told with very little dialogue, and the score by Carlos D'Alessio, mainly set in three or four parts of the mansion and the garden, with often random character voice-overs. The characters display peculiar behaviours, such as walking slowly, standing still, walking backwards, dancing together and lying on the floor, all dressed in tuxedos and glamorous dresses, hardly anything happens at all, it is both strange and fascinating to watch, but an interesting enough experimental fantasy drama. Worth watching!

'India Song' written and directed in 1975 by Marguerite Duras can be either a mesmerizing or a painful cinematic experience. The French writer whose literary work largely reflected her life experience in Asia and her fascination with this continent has directed a number of films that bring to the screen or are inspired by her books. This is the case with 'India Song', which is probably one of her most extreme films to experiment with. The result is in this case a film that bears little resemblance to the films of the era in which it was created, being closer to what we call 'video art' today. Many viewers will probably not be able to overcome the barriers raised intentionally by the author and will abandon the viewing before the end or will complain about the wasted time if they resisted to the end. A few others will be excited. I confess that I was somewhere in the middle. I had a hard time watching. I didn't like the film, but I think that I understood why the author took the chosen creative paths that she took and why a minority of viewers have a good chance to like it.

There is a story in this film, but it is not what is happening that is central but the way the story is told. Anne-Marie Streyter (Delphine Seyrig),who is born in Indochina (same as the writer and director of the film),is the wife of the French ambassador accredited in Calcutta. Her life takes place in an atmosphere of boredom and decadence, sprinkled with extramarital affairs with young lovers, an attitude also attributed to Duras in her own private life. The only dissonant event would be the hopeless advances of the consul in Lahore (Michael Lonsdale) in love with the heroine, which when rejected will bring him despair. The set and the surrounding nature suggest the physical and moral erosion of the colonial way of life at its historical twilight. The echoes of the tragic events that were taking place in those years in different parts of the planet hardly reach this world suspended between dream and history, but the imminence of the tragedy is clear.

Viewers who dare to watch this film must be warned that they will witness a cinematic experience that is different than the usual. The long and slow frames have a beauty of paintings, and in them the characters move slowly, as if they want to freeze time in place. The heroes do not speak to each other, we rather have the feeling that we are visiting an art exhibition accompanied by a rich text, read off-screen, which replaces the interactions between the characters but also part of their feelings. The actors are merely silhouettes, they play their roles in kind of an almost frozen mimicry. I give a special mention to the performance of Michael Lonsdale, who is said to consider the consul in Lahore his favorite role. The filming was not done in India, but near Paris, in one of the mansions abandoned by the Rothschild family during World War II and since then fallen into ruin. The local color is therefore not the authentic one, but the one imagined by the author. The music, very appropriate, is stylish and obsessive. 'India Song' is a beautiful film, the atmosphere is dreamy, but the excess of method makes it difficult to watch. Most spectators, if they resist, will sooner or later look for the fast-forward button.

This was meant as hypnotic cinema for people who aren't hypnotized by watching junk, who aren't hypnotized by Spielberg; if you don't like it, leave it alone, it just wasn't meant for you, do not cheat—it's tricky not to cheat. What some claim it is boring only brings forth a person's own deficiencies. It only brings forth the garbage inside, your own inabilities and defects. Confronting those is certainly tough. It's the gist of the cinema to hypnotize; and it's not the storyline, or the plot, that which hypnotizes. Resnais, Robbe—Grillet, Mme. Duras, Tati do that. By asking less from the cinema, one cheats, and one feels it.

In its way, this movie by Mme. Duras is exquisite; I have seen it a quite long time ago, more than 6 yrs ago. Its leading actress, Mme. Seyrig, is certainly exquisite.