Memoir of War (2017)

Marguerite must navigate through the hardships of the Liberation after losing her husband and starting a relationship with the enemy during the War.

Director:

Emmanuel Finkiel

Writers:

Marguerite Duras (novel), Emmanuel Finkiel (adaptation)

Stars:

Mélanie Thierry, Benoît Magimel, Benjamin Biolay

15 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Mélanie Thierry	...	Marguerite Duras épouse Antelme
Benoît Magimel	...	Pierre Rabier
Benjamin Biolay	...	Dionys Mascolo
Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet	...	François Mitterrand - alias François Morland
Emmanuel Bourdieu	...	Robert Antelme
Anne-Lise Heimburger	...	Mme Bordes
Patrick Lizana	...	Georges Beauchamp
Shulamit Adar	...	Madame Katz
Joanna Grudzinska	...	Thérèse
Caroline Ducey	...	La cliente du restaurant Saint-Georges
Salomé Richard	...	Une femme au rapatriement à Orsay
Olivier Veillon	...	Un camarade du réseau
Bertrand Schefer	...	Un camarade du réseau
Mathias Labelle	...	Un camarade du réseau
Nathan Gabily	...	Un camarade du réseau

Storyline

June 1944, France is still under the German occupation. The writer and communist Robert Antelme, major figure of the Resistance, is arrested and deported. His young wife Marguerite Duras, writer and resistant, is torn by the anguish of not having news of her and her secret affair with her comrade Dyonis. She meets a French agent working at the Gestapo, Pierre Rabier, and, ready to do anything to find her husband, puts himself to the test of an ambiguous relationship with this troubled man, only to be able to help him. The end of the war and the return of the camps announce to Marguerite Duras the beginning of an unbearable wait, a slow and silent agony in the midst of the chaos of the Liberation of Paris.

---

Plot Keywords:

year 1944 | year 1945 | german occupation of france | 1940s | female protagonist | 

---

Taglines:

From the Life of Marguerite Duras, Bestselling Authout of The Lover

---

Genres:

Biography | Drama | War

---

Did You Know?

Trivia

French visa # 145410.

---

Connections

References The Great Dictator (1940)

---

Soundtracks

La Marseillaise
(uncredited)
Written and composed by Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle
(1792)

User Reviews

Best film made in 2017 that I have seen thus far

As usual, I am at odds with the idiots who inhabit places like Hollywood, and in their ignorance dare to review films of which they have little real understanding and a lot of subjective brouhaha! The film itself is a masterpiece of film making, which unfolds, like Sunset Song, the Scottish film of a few years back, in a thickly imaged, slow-paced narrative, the tormenting loss of a young woman's husband, the destruction of her youthful dreams due to war. We must remember that there is only one war, the war of the rich against the poor, the haves against the have-nots, the propertied against the vulnerable. The woman here is not simply any woman, of course, but Marguerite Duras, who was becoming on of the foremost novelists and screenwriters of the post war era, played to the hilt by Mlle Thierry who with this role comes into her own as of the foremost actresses of her generation. It's as good as Oldham's Churchill, that good. The detail of the film, not easy to achieve, is impeccable, every frame has been thought thru to the max. They deserved the Cannes for film editing with this one at the least. There is one frame, I really don't know how they achieved it, but I felt as if I was looking through a window in metal frame door, and not at the flat screen. I'd never seen anything quite like that. Again, at the end of one frame we hear what sounds like heavy breathing or crying, in the following frame we find that this is the sound of Duras' impassioned pen on the page. Utterly brilliant stuff. They had a great source and made a classic film with too many subtleties to recount here, especially to fans of an overpriced, horribly acted and written films like Bladerunner 2049 which are simply hyped junk with dependably high ratings on popular internet movie sites where folks speak depraved Hollywoodize.

Details

Official Sites:

Les Films du Losange [France] Les Films du Poisson [France]

Country:

France Belgium Switzerland

Language:

French

Release Date:

17 August 2018 (USA)

Also Known As:

Memoir of War

Filming Locations:

Paris, France

Box Office

Budget:

EUR6,563,754 (estimated)

Opening Weekend USA:

$11,653, 19 August 2018

Gross USA:

$103,636

Cumulative Worldwide Gross:

$2,980,982

Company Credits

Production Co:

Cinéfrance 1888, Cinéfrance Plus, Les Films du Poisson

Technical Specs

Runtime:

127 min

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital (as Dolby 5.1)

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1