Film: "Memoir of War"
A young Resistance writer’s agonized wait for her captured husband in WWII Paris.
Post-film discussion with historian Nelcya Delanoë and Prof. Jeff Ruoff
Graced by a simply sensational, breakout performance by Mélanie Thierry, La Douleur is a haunting and hypnotic adaptation of seminal author Marguerite Duras’ autobiographical novel, The War: A Memoir.
In 1944 Nazi-occupied Paris, Marguerite Duras (Thierry) is an active Resistance member along with her husband Robert Antelme. When he is deported to Dachau by the Gestapo, she dives into a desperate struggle to get him back, entering into a high-risk game of psychological cat and mouse with French Nazi collaborator Rabier (Benoît Magimel). But as the months wear on without word of the man she loves, Marguerite must begin the process of confronting the unimaginable.
Through subtly expressionistic images and voiceover passages of Duras’s writing, director Emmanuel Finkiel evokes the inner world of one of the 20th century’s most revolutionary writers—and creates one of the most memorable movies of the year.
D: Emmanuel Finkiel, France, subtitled, 2018, 2h7m
