Le navire Night (1979)

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Siskoid
Le Navire Night (The Ship Night) is a film about absence, about stillness, about silence, an experiment in filling in details ourselves, indeed filling in the entire film. Writer-director Marguerite Duras and collaborator Benoît Jacquot narrate a story that was perhaps born of an absence, if the prologue is to be understood, about lovers who correspond only by phone and never meet, nor ever really want to meet. Duras is well ahead of her time, imagining a relationship that only exists in the chasm of the phone line, not realizing she may well be telling an internet romance. The film is never really made. We're told the story as the camera pans over landscapes and interiors, and the actors, like us, are receptive, but never active. We see them languidly prepare for a role they will never undertake. It's a noble juxtaposition of words and images, meta-textually about all those movies (or novels, comics, paintings, podcasts) one imagines, but never ends up making. Like the lovers who can't be sure the person at the end of the line isn't a fiction, these works exist in a nowhere space, out there in the stillness and the silence. 1 year 6 months ago