Marguerite Duras was a prolific French writer of the XXth century, whose influences drew on her upbringing in the defunct Indochina, prior to the Second World War. And me, as someone who lived in the neighbourhood (India) for just 5 months, I can testify on the effect that Asia can have on the Westerner’s views and sensibility. Given the right circumstances, Asia is devastatingly rapturous. This being said, although India Song, a film that Duras directed, is by no means connected to Indian nor Asian culture, it is connected indirectly to its effects.
The film is almost unwatchable, if you naively approach it - with no prior proper documentation. Because it’s an experimental film. It offers a sensual universe where immobile members of a lost bourgeoisie interact and talk to each other, in post-modernistic fashion, without their lips moving.
Besides this, Duras is also the scriptwriter of a classical masterpiece, Hiroshima, mon amour, directed by Alain Resnais.