In this most talky and personal of films, director Marguerite Duras and actor Gerard Depardieu do an on-camera read-through of a movie script. Occasionally, the director comments about the characters or their motivations, and sometimes the actor does. That's all -- there is no action, there are no location shots, no one pretends to be anything else. The script itself tells about an encounter between a blank-slate of a woman hitchhiker, and a communist truck driver. As the reading progresses, Duras comments bitterly about the failed ideals of communism and the glorious revolution that will probably never happen.
Writing
Duras's script-as-ghost, mourning what cinema could be
Acting
Depardieu's voice carrying worlds of unperformed action
Direction
Meta-commentary that destroys and rebuilds film itself
Director
Marguerite Duras
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Made after May '68, the film enacts the Left's exhaustion: talking about revolution instead of making it.
Duras called this 'the only film I ever made'—her others were 'just films,' this was cinema stripped to its wounded essence.
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