India Song (1975)

Colonial Ennui Never Sounded This Good - India Song review by griggs

I’ll be honest, this is the kind of French film people warn you about — gorgeous images, gorgeous music, and characters so weighed down with symbolism they barely register as human. And yet here I am, completely floored by it.

Nobody on screen speaks. The story arrives through whispers, gossip, and disembodied monologues laid over figures drifting through a decaying château and its grounds, standing in for 1937 Calcutta. Duras, who wrote Hiroshima mon amour for Resnais, goes even further here, stripping the image of almost every dramatic convention until what’s left feels eerie, artificial, and quietly devastating. Delphine Seyrig moves through it like someone already becoming a myth of her own sadness, while Carlos D’Alessio’s melancholy tango keeps returning like a curse the film can’t shake.

It’s an intellectual experience, but not a cold one. By the end I felt less like I’d watched a film and more like I’d been wandering around inside a haunted idea. Seyrig also made Jeanne Dielman the same year, because apparently 1975 just felt like showing off.