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India Song
In 1937 Calcutta, the wife of the French ambassador takes on many lovers.
Release : | 1980 |
Rating : | 6.1 |
Studio : | Sunchild Productions, Les Films Armorial, |
Crew : | Director of Photography, First Assistant Camera, |
Cast : | Delphine Seyrig Michael Lonsdale Mathieu Carrière Claude Mann Vernon Dobtcheff |
Genre : | Drama Romance |
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Reviews
Good concept, poorly executed.
Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.
It is not deep, but it is fun to watch. It does have a bit more of an edge to it than other similar films.
Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.
This remembered this French film as one being in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, I didn't know what it would be like, but critics gave it good reviews, and it got recognition at film festivals, so I looked forward to watching it. Basically set in India in the 1930s, Anne-Marie Stretter (The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie's Delphine Seyrig) is the wife of the French ambassador. She married a French colonial administrator at the age of 18, travelling with him to Savannakhet, Laos, there she met her second husband who took her away to various place in Asia for 17 years. Now in Calcutta, Anne-Marie has grown bored with the oppressive lifestyle she leads, she begins compulsively sleeping with other men to alleviate her situation. The Vice-Consul of Lahore (Moonraker's Michael Lonsdale) fails in his attempts to begin a love affair with her. Her husband is aware of her promiscuity but is tolerant of her indiscretions. Also starring Mathieu Carrière as Attaché, Claude Mann as Michael Richardson, Vernon Dobtcheff as George Crown and Didier Flamand as Young guest. The story is told with very little dialogue, and the score by Carlos D'Alessio, mainly set in three or four parts of the mansion and the garden, with often random character voice-overs. The characters display peculiar behaviours, such as walking slowly, standing still, walking backwards, dancing together and lying on the floor, all dressed in tuxedos and glamorous dresses, hardly anything happens at all, it is both strange and fascinating to watch, but an interesting enough experimental fantasy drama. Worth watching!
This film is a landmark in feminine avant-garde aesthetics. Because of its painfully slow rhythm throughout the film, the spectator is forced to take a certain distance and a critical position to the way the film has been constructed: she/he can no longer reconcile with an illusion pretending to reflect the world as we are used to seeing it being represented ( > conventional aesthetics of cinema ), but is on the contrary obliged to take an active, intellectual position thinking about the narrative structure of this work of art - and furthermore - what might this characteristic of the film represent. In fact, the slow rhythm along with the sensual colours, shapes, perfumes and sounds transmitted through the film could easily be seen to reflect Duras'conception of "jouissance féminine".
Don't ask me what this movie is about! I don't have a clue. the plot and the characters... it's all a blur...But that's besides the point. India Song is like a visit to a museum, when you're only interested in admiring the beauty of the works of art. you can smell the deep scents of each scene. the incense, the dew on the grass at dawn, the perfume, the cigarette smoke. the musky smell of old curtains in a locked up room, next to a stagnant swamp, full of mosquitoes buzzing about. you can taste the wine. the music is like a trance. a very rewarding synesthetic work of art, if you're patient enough to really see (i nearly wasn't). just don't ask me what it's about! (and personally, I found the main actress really ugly and don't know why all those men saw in her)
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.