Guest
La femme du Gange is the film adaptation of the novel L’amour, published by Marguerite Duras in 1971. In a preamble to the film, Marguerite Duras explains: “La Femme du Gange is in a way two films: parallel to the film that takes place in images, a purely vocal film unfolds unaccompanied by images... The two female voiceovers do not belong in any way to the characters that appear in the image. the image completely ignore the existence of the two women whose history is manifested only by the dialogue they maintain.“ The two films, however, have a close relationship. The two female voiceovers, those of Nicole Hiss and Françoise Lebrun, tell what happened in S. Thala a long time ago and then the return of the man, long after his love affair with the young girl and the Woman of the Ganges. But Nicole Hiss is also the character of the girl on the beach who doesn’t say a word. Moreover, the images of Trouville-sur-Mer very often evoke what is said in the soundtrack. When the casino or the tennis courts of S. Thala, the town where Indian history takes place, are mentioned, a large building and the tennis courts of Trouville-sur-Mer appear in the image. The Norman city is thus superimposed on the Indian city by being the current geography of a past geography, just as the present is superimposed on the past in the narration. Time and places thus maintain a ghostly, partial, floating relationship.
