La Femme du Gange + Les Mains négatives
From Sun 13 to Fri 18 OctAn important precursor to India Song, La Femme du Gange is the first film in which Duras makes extensive use of disassociated voices and creates an aural, wraithlike layering upon the film’s visual narrative. A young Gérard Depardieu plays a stricken man roaming the seaside of S. Thala, an imaginary location invented by Duras in her “Indian cycle”. He has returned to the site where he once lived out a passionate affair with a lover, who has since died, but whose presence is still felt, so intense and all-consuming was their love. Oneiric and mesmerising, La Femme du Gange is a haunting that proceeds in a register that looks like reality — one that is composed of nature’s sublime and a stunning mansion — but operates in another dimension entirely….
Special screening
Preceded by a new restoration of Duras’ Les Mains négatives
About Les Mains négatives
FRA | 1979, 14 mins, Cert TBC
A deep cry into the blue of night, Les Mains négatives remains one of Duras’ rawest, most moving and oft-quoted films. With material shot for and discarded from Le Navire Night, Duras’ voice-over accompanies Pierre Lhomme’s uninterrupted travelling shot along Paris’ Grands Boulevards at daybreak, evoking pain, loneliness, and a desire for visibility in its summoning of prehistoric impressions of hands on the walls of the Magdalenian Caves off the Atlantic coast. Andréa Picard (TIFF)
