A Stormy Summer Night

With a few exceptions ("Hiroshima Mon Amour" , "Une aussi longue absence" ),the simple name of Marguerite Duras makes me take to my heels : very highbrow stuff,sometimes heady (the two movies I mention above ) ,often a headache .

But as the cast and credits read " freely adapted from" , I decided to give this movie a chance ;the thirty first minutes are inconsequential and one really wonders when it's going to take off.

When the two principals meet ,one may think it does. For about a dozen of minutes,it seems like both talented actors are going to pull the whole thing together. They don't .The whole thing dies,because the characters are really underwritten,particularly the young bourgeois woman ,tired of her routine life, sick of her spouse and of her child (is she? It's not obvious at all) , comes to an Arab on the run's rescue: he has killed his wife and her lover .Does she rebel against a society that does not approve of these unions -there are many of them though - ?. Or,most likely , does she suffer from Bovarysme and does she want to live a storylike adventure ?Probably both ,and the conventional ending does not help.

Blending thriller with social comment ,this movies loses on both counts .