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Better Late Then Never

The acting in this movie is really good.

If you're looking for a typical movie India Song is definitely not for you. The highly experimental movie is both long and smashes a lot of the rules for conventional cinema. It teaches YOU how to watch IT. The plot, such as it is, is about the wife of a French Ambassador living in Calcutta. Bored she engages in a series of love affairs. This information is provided completely in narration that plays over a series of ghost like images in which we see the ambassador's wife dance and walk and flirt with a handful of other people in a mostly empty and abandoned looking mansion. It's essentially a ghost story. I have nothing against slow films or unconventional ones but this simply wasn't for me. Delphine Seyrig acts out the part of Anne- Marie Stretter, the wife, but watching her I was reminded of that OTHER famous movie she did in 1975, also experimental and unconventional and also directed by a woman who was a cinematic powerhouse: Chantal Akerman. In terms of plot there's not a lot to tie Chantal Akerman's Jeanne Dielmann to Marguerite Duras' India Song, but the two feature a similar style of long shots and repetition. That said I find Jeanne Dielmann by far the easier of the two to watch. While that movie is hypnotizing and entrancing Duras' movie feels stale, like a book of hers that was never quite able to come to fruition. A movie that perhaps only Duras devotees or Seyrig fans will love.

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.

This film was a real surprise when I discovered it in the early '90s and it became one of my favorites. I enjoyed the general slow pace of the film, its dreaminess and yet its inner violence.It's exactly what I imagine tropical climates do to influence your mood .In the same vein Marguerite Duras made "L' Amant ", a semi autobiographical film. Anyway, you CAN find the video VHS-SECAM . I "stumbled" on it in a bookshop in Montpellier a couple of years ago. Here are the details :India SONG Ecrit par Marguerite Duras Entretiens Dominique Noguez Réalisation Jérôme Beaujour et Jean Mascolo Benoît Jacob Vidéo 2001

I was completely hypnotized and paralyzed while seeing this film. The first time I saw it, I was so deeply moved that I couldn't even move my fingers, let alone any other parts of my body. I sat very still and tried to breathe as quietly as possible. This film has a profound effect on my state of mind. It seems to be beyond any definitions, any explanations, any limits, any boundaries. There is nothing ordinary from the first image to the last image. Nearly every image in this movie makes my heart want to stop beating:the sunset, the shadow on the ground, the smoke lingering in the air, the ballroom, the mirror, etc. "Time" and "space" in this movie were transformed into something undescribeable. Every movement of Delphine Seyrig is sublime. Nearly every shot, scene, and detail of each scene, is full of a kind of feeling--and I hardly get this kind of feeling from other movies. I'm not even sure if I should call it "feeling." But it's full of "something" very strong, something that I feel, but that something is very different from "feelings" I usually experience. The music is very beautiful, but it is the voice-over in this movie which brought me to the strange and unique state of consciousness, and uplift this movie to the realm of the unknown. The voice of the crazy woman in this movie somehow makes me think about the radio announcement of murderers in "Nathalie Granger." I have seen "India Song" in a cinema here four times but I still can't get enough of it. This movie is my friend's most favorite film of all time and it is one of my top ten favorites,too.