Agatha and the Limitless Readings (Duras, 1981): ICA Cinema, 6.30pm
This 35mm presentation is part of the excellent Marguerite Duras season at the ICA (full details here) and is also screened on August 22nd.
MOMA introduction:
Marguerite Duras called Agatha “the first film I’ve written
about happiness.” A brother and sister, as “frighteningly stiff” and
eternal as ancient Olmec statues, gaze beyond each other toward the
deserted beach and the incessant sea. In an uninhabited villa of bare
walls bathed in a cold, silent winter light, they find themselves lost
in memories of a “marvelous” summer in their youth, suspended over the
abyss of an incestuous love: blissful, violent, impossible. Duras, whose
voice we hear off camera with her then-partner Yann Andréa, filmed Agathe
in an abandoned seaside hotel in Trouville-sur-Mer, Les Roches Noires
(“The Black Rocks”), a Belle Époque retreat for Claude Monet, Gustave
Flaubert, and Marcel Proust. In 1963 Duras had purchased an apartment
adjoining what was once the suite where Proust would regularly stay with
his grandmother. There, for the rest of her days, Duras would spend
summers awash in her own memories of lost time.
Here (and above) is an extract.
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