India Song

15 yrs 120 minutes • 1975 • 6.1

The French colonial empire in Indochina is approaching its end and in the 1930s Calcutta, only a few decadent aristocrats remain desperately trying to keep up appearances in an increasingly desolate embassy building. Outside, an unobtrusive cultural clash is waiting, with the colorful, chaotic atmosphere in the big city. Maaret Koskinen wrote in Dagens Nyheter: "If it’s something that Duras challenges with his film, it’s the spectator's desire to know, to see: she withholds, brakes, pretends to not see - appeals, yes, demands of the spectator an extreme responsiveness to all that cannot be said, cannot be seen. It makes India Song one of the strangest films ever made: a film that cannot be seen or judged on the basis of common criteria - but just because of that, it has to be seen."