Marguerite Duras Movies

This distinguished outing constitutes Cambodian director Rithy Pahn's feature adaptation of Marguerite Duras' 1950 novel of the same name (a tome typically perceived as a predecessor to her better-known volume The Lover). Panh relies on the material to provide a panoramic overview of his native country, within the context of a fictional narrative. The film, like the novel, unfolds in Duras' temporarily adopted home of French Indochina circa 1931, occupied by a bevy of French estate owners. Surrounded by the polar extremes of colonialist wealth and indigenous poverty, a young French widow (Isabelle Huppert) and her two adolescent children (a son and a daughter) attempt to carve out a meager life for themselves by farming rice fields alongside the ocean. Their efforts are hampered each year by the presence of the sea, which invariably floods the fields with saltwater and wipes out the crops. In desperation, the mother realizes that their only hope lies in the construction of a sea wall to prevent continued flooding, but the mother must cut a swath through the local bureaucracy in an almost Sisyphean attempt to make this happen. Meanwhile, her obstinate daughter, Suzanne, draws the romantic obsessions of a well-to-do Chinese gentleman, Monsieur Jo; though he could easily provide a way out, the possibility of a romantic relationship between Jo and Suzanne could just as easily fall prey to local racial prejudices that would damage or ruin the lives of both. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide

The Lover is director Jean-Jacques Annaud's adaptation of Marguerite Duras' minimalist 1984 novel. Set in French Indochina in 1929, the film explores the erotic charge of forbidden love. Jane March plays a French teenager sent to a Saigon boarding school, while Tony Leung is a 32-year Chinese aristocrat. They look at each and they both see a blinding white flash; it's kismet. He offers her a ride in his limousine and soon they meet in his "bachelor room" where they revel in a wide variety of creative sexual encounters. However, they both realize their love is doomed. She comes from a troubled family that includes a mentally-disturbed mother (Frederique Meininger) and drug-addicted brother (Arnaud Giovaninetti). It also appears that her family would not approve of an interracial tryst. But then neither would his family, since in order to inherit his father's wealth, he must not break from a traditional Chinese arranged marriage. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

In the space of a short 65 minutes, a woman enters the luxury apartment of a wealthy man with an eccentric fascination for the female form and is paid both for her sexual favors and for lying there naked and letting him examine the aesthetics of her body. For most of the hour, as the concise narration of Marguerite Duras' novel on eroticism and aesthetics fills the aural gaps, actress Marie Colbin's form fills the visual gaps. But unless viewers consider the feminine eyeball or microscopic views of skin exotic and worth lingering over, the eroticism lies more in the imagination than on the screen. In fact, the female body lying on the bed, taken away from the spirit that animates it, is really just a corpse -- raising the question, exactly what is the "malady of death?"
~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

A woman (Madeleine Renaud) whose son (Jean-Pierre Aumont) has been estranged from her for years travels to visit him in Paris. Despite offers of money and position, he would prefer to remain a petty thief, gigolo, and paid dancer rather than have anything to do with his mother. She has factories in Indochina which, despite political reverses, still run under her direction, and they could have been put under his control. The lad is happy enough to steal the jewels and money she has left lying around for just that purpose, knowing that he is too proud to accept gifts. His unhappy childhood in Indochina has left him too bitter to be approached. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Vera Baxter (Claudine Gabay) is talking to a woman in a bar. It seems that the woman was attracted to her by hearing her name called out: "Baxter, Vera Baxter." In response to her new friend's queries, Vera recounts the story of her life, beginning with marrying her no-good husband Cayre (Gerard Depardieu), who has been using her for some time as a kind of unpaid prostitute in order to keep his failing building business afloat. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Playwright Christopher Isherwood and co-writer/director Tony Richardson adapted the novel by Marguerite Duras into this romantic drama. Jeanne Moreau plays Anna, a Frenchwoman of means who experienced fleeting true love with a sailor many years before. In the interim, her husband killed himself and left Anna his vast fortune, and now she is sailing from port to seedy port, searching the world over in vain for her long-lost sailor. In the meantime, Alan (Ian Bannen), a young Englishman, argues with his girlfriend Sheila (Vanessa Redgrave), and leaves her. Alan encounters Anna and, intrigued, joins her on her heartbreaking quest, which takes them aboard Anna's sailboat to Africa and Greece. As Alan begins to realize that he's falling in love with his traveling companion, they meet Louis de Mozambique (Orson Welles), who joins them on their mission but suggests that Anna's elusive sailor may never have existed anywhere other than in her mind. Nevertheless, Anna and a smitten Alan continue their pursuit. Richardson and Isherwood had collaborated previously on the more successful, darkly satirical The Loved One (1965), adapted from the novel by Evelyn Waugh and considered a cult classic. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide

In 1951, French writer Jean Genet presented a screenplay called "Les Rêves Interdits/L'Autre Versant du Rêve" to actress Anouk Aimée as a wedding gift. He then proceeded to sell the rights three times without telling her. Eventually the script was reworked by Marguerite Duras and filmed by British director Tony Richardson as Mademoiselle, with Jeanne Moreau in the title role. In its final form, Mademoiselle tells the story of a repressed schoolteacher who visits a veritable plague of deliberate "accidents" on the people of her rural French village. She sets fires, poisons animals, and causes floods -- all in a fit of thwarted passion for an immigrant woodcutter. Though Marlon Brando was originally set to play the role of the Italian craftsman, the part went to Ettore Manni when the production schedule shifted. Umberto Orsini plays Antonio, the woodcutter's forlorn son, whom Mademoiselle maliciously humiliates out of perverse desire for his father. A notoriously difficult shoot, Mademoiselle was filmed consecutively with The Sailor From Gibraltar, another collaboration between Richardson, Moreau, and Duras. As for Genet, he despised the casting of Moreau; nevertheless, she would go on to star in Querelle, another adaptation of the author's work. ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide

In this drama of lost love, Therese (Alida Valli) is a woman who runs a café in Paris; she lost her husband when he disappeared sixteen years earlier, and, while time has healed some of her wounds, she's still a lonely person. One day, a tramp (Georges Wilson) passes by humming a familiar tune, and Therese is convinced that the vagabond is her husband. She follows him to his home, a tiny shack by the river, and tries to question him about his past. She discovers that the tramp suffers from amnesia and has no clear memory of his past. Therese brings him back to her cafe in hopes of jogging his memory and renewing the love they once knew. Une Aussi Longue Absence was well-received at the 1960 Cannes Film Festival, where it shared the Golden Palm with Luis Buñuel's very different Viridiana. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Alain Resnais's multi-award-winning Hiroshima, Mon Amour is neither an easy film to watch nor to synopsize, but it remains one of the high-water marks of the French "new wave" movement. Resnais and scenarist Marguerite Duras weave a complex story concerning a French actress's (Emmanuelle Riva) experiences in occupied France, juxtaposed with the horrendous ordeal of a Japanese architect (Eiji Okada) coping psychologically with the bombing of Hiroshima. These stories are offered in quick flashback vignettes, which permeate the contemporary story of the woman's relationship with the architect in contemporary Hiroshima. The characters are of the Then and the Now simultaneously, much like the famous watch that was dug out of the ruins of Hiroshima, its hands permanently affixed at 9:15. Resnais refuses to honor the traditional "unities" of film: we are never certain at any time whether we're watching the events of 1959 or of 1945. In truth, Hiroshima Mon Amour is not quite as inscrutable as certain critics would have us believe (the central theme of the importance of coming to grips with one's past comes through loud and clear), but it confused many filmgoers upon its first release, some of whom gave up the picture as a bad job and steered clear of all future Resnais efforts. Viewers are strongly encouraged to stay with this one from beginning to end; it won't be a smooth ride, but it will be an immensely rewarding one. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide