Marguerite Duras - Nathalie Granger (1972)

The most insidious thing about the nouveau movie, which is a polite way of describing Marguerite Duras's newest, most minimal film, "Nathalie Granger," is that it traps you in its own time, unlike the nouveau roman, which can be skipped through or read at leisure in an afternoon or a year. You can't skip through "Nathalie Granger." To see it you are forced to watch it for as long as it lasts, while, in turn, it watches its characters, rather as if the camera were a Siamese cat whose feelings had been hurt. Without betraying the slightest interest, the camera records the physical appearance of two expressionless women who look a lot like Jeanne Moreau and Lucia Bose. They share a house with their two children, one of whom, Nathalie, is apparently a problem. "She wants to kill everyone," says one of the women, who seem to be interchangeable. "She wants to be an orphan, or a Portuguese maid." Nathalie, however, remains docile—this being a minimal movie. The camera paces through the house, looking into mirrors, down hallways, through windows. There is a report on the radio about a murder and a police manhunt. The telephone rings. Wrong number. "There is no telephone here, madame," Miss Moreau says into the receiver." Funny? Not really. It's too pretty and solemn. A salesman calls. He tries desperately to sell a Vedetta Tambour OO8 washing machine that comes in three colors. For a brief moment, the ghost of Pinter's wit walks over the grave of the film. Miss Bose goes into the garden, again. Miss Moreau falls asleep. A cat saunters through. The camera just stares. When a person or a cat leaves a room, Miss Duras seems to say, that room is empty. Such are the discoveries of "Nathalie Granger," a dead-end movie that, I confidently hope, few of us are ready for. The Cast NATHALIE GRANGER, directed by Marguerite Duras; screen play (French with English subtitles) by Miss Duras; director of photography, Ghislain Cloquet; editor, Nicole Lubtchansky; produced by Luc Moullet. Running time: 88 minutes. Shown last night at the New York Film Festival at Alice Tully Hall. Isabelle . . . . . Lucia Bose The Other Woman . . . . . Jeanne Moreau Salesman . . . . . Gerard Depardieu Teacher . . . . . Luce Garcia-Ville Nathalie . . . . . Valerie Mascolo Laurence . . . . . Nathalie Bourgeois General Complete name : Nathalie Granger.avi Format : AVI Format/Info : Audio Video Interleave File size : 800 MiB Duration : 1h 19mn Overall bit rate : 1 412 Kbps Writing application : FairUse Wizard - http://fairusewizard.com Writing library : The best and REALLY easy backup tool Video #0 ID : 0 Format : MPEG-4 Visual Format profile : AdvancedSimple@L5 Format settings, BVOP : Yes Format settings, QPel : No Format settings, GMC : No warppoints Format settings, Matrix : Default (MPEG) Muxing mode : Packed bitstream Codec ID : XVID Codec ID/Hint : XviD Duration : 1h 19mn Bit rate : 1 272 Kbps Width : 624 pixels Height : 368 pixels Display aspect ratio : 1.696 Frame rate : 29.970 fps Resolution : 24 bits Colorimetry : 4:2:0 Scan type : Progressive Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.185 Stream size : 721 MiB (90%) Writing library : XviD 1.2.0.dev47 (UTC 2006-11-01) Audio #1 ID : 1 Format : MPEG Audio Format version : Version 1 Format profile : Layer 3 Codec ID : 55 Codec ID/Hint : MP3 Duration : 1h 19mn Bit rate mode : Constant Bit rate : 128 Kbps Channel(s) : 2 channels Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz Resolution : 16 bits Stream size : 72.5 MiB (9%) Alignment : Aligned on interleaves Interleave, duration : 33 ms (1.00 video frame) Interleave, preload duration : 504 ms Writing library : LAME3.97 Encoding settings : -m j -V 4 -q 2 -lowpass 17 -b 128 IMDB: tt0068991 French audio: Multilanguage subpack; English, Spanish and Portuguese srt subtitles

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fotimer (2009-11-13)

I have been thinking in this film for a long time, from I knew Deleuze's words.
Thanks!
(and thanks also for spanish subtitles!)