Marguerite Duras’ masterpiece revolves around Anne-Marie Stretter, the tortured wife of a disgraced diplomat, played silently by Delphine Seyrig. In fact, the dialogue is delivered almost entirely offscreen: a cacophony of different, disembodied voices commenting on Anne-Marie’s love life and emotional deterioration. Set in and around a decadent chateau in Calcutta (though filmed in Boulogne and Paris), this haunting portrait of colonial despair conjures a state of dissociation, with long, static shots of lonely dancers and melancholic aristocrats scored to a memorably doleful piano tune by Duras’ regular composer Carlos D’Alessio. Duras, who grew up in the colonial outpost of French Indochina, conveys the horrors of French imperialism and the disorienting state of otherness experienced by women like herself and Anne-Marie, with Seyrig—her slow gestures and anguished introspection—carrying the weight of the film’s sorrows.

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