Marguerite Duras’s debut as a solo director – based on her 1969 novel of the same name – is a film about love and destruction. Shot in gloomy black and white, which serves to enhance the film’s underlying but palpable violence, Destroy, She Said captures a series of encounters between a couple and another man and woman at a secluded hotel in rural France, where they seem to be the only people present. Elisabeth, recuperating after a miscarriage, catches the eye of Professor Max Thor. Meanwhile, Max’s young wife, Alissa, is drawn to an enigmatic German Jew, Stein, who sleeps in the hotel grounds and furtively observes her and Max each night. Amid wanderings and conversations in the forest adjoining the hotel, characters gaze at each other in different configurations and with ambiguous intent. Suddenly, Elisabeth’s husband arrives to take her home, and another angle is revealed.
 
While this appears to be a film about the collapse of romantic relationships, Duras conceived of it as a challenge to the conventional social order. In an interview with Jacques Rivette and Jean Narboni, she asserted Destroy, She Said to be “a profoundly political film” about “the destruction of every power”, including “memory” and “judgment”, that expresses a “revolutionary hope”. Following the more conventional La Musica, with Destroy, She Said, Duras cast aside conventional technical wisdom, and introduced a “democratic” camera that doesn't favour one character over another.

The screening will be preceded by an introduction by Janique Vigier, a curator and writer based in London and Assistant Editor at Semiotext(e).

The UK Premiere of a brand new 4K restoration courtesy of La Cinémathèque française.