

The most celebrated of writer-filmmaker Marguerite Duras’s singular features unfolds within the decaying decadence of an embassy in 1930s India, where a French diplomat’s wife (Delphine Seyrig) pursues multiple love affairs while succumbing to a sense of overpowering ennui. Sex, madness, and colonial guilt are interwoven into a hauntingly beautiful, almost incantatory experience with few stylistic precedents in the history of cinema.