It is the story of a love paralysed at the height of passion. Around the contours of this story lingers another one: a horror story in which famine and leprosy coalesce in the pestilential humidity of monsoon season—immobilised, too, in a daily paroxysm.

Born out of one of Duras’s childhood memories in French Indochina – to which she returned obsessively across different forms – India Song follows Anne-Marie Stretter, the wife of the French ambassador to India, who spends her days inside an opulent mansion, soaked in sweat and ennui. The hostess of a lavish reception to the colonial elite, she performs her diplomatic role surrounded by many suitors (most notably the hysterical vice-consul of Lahore, in an unforgettable performance by Michael Lonsdale). India Song is the culmination of a long and rich collaboration with Delphine Seyrig, who was told by Duras to act like the “understudy” of Anne-Marie Stretter: “You are not to embody the heroine, because no one can embody her. The heroine is inside of me – that is where she is – that is where she was born, so it is impossible to project her.”
 
With beautiful tableau-like compositions (the work of cinematographer Bruno Nuytten, a frequent collaborator who shot the whole ‘Indian Cycle’ of which India Song is the centrepiece), and a regal colour palette – rich in greens, reds and whites – India Song moves as sumptuously and as gracefully as Seyrig’s Stretter, choreographed to the sounds of a chattering disembodied chorus; the desperate cries of a beggar woman; and the unforgettable tangos and rumbas composed by the Argentinian, Carlos d’Alessio .