Ray Pride

As compiled by Dominique Auvray, a friend of the late French novelist Marguerite Duras ("The Lover"), "Marguerite: A Reflection of Herself" is an interesting amalgam, taking materials like home movies and a few interviews to create a personal mosaic of impressions. The telling moments are fleeting: Duras, discussing maternal love, talking about hearing her son's laugh on a beach, observing "The idea of that laugh being carried away by the wind was unbearable." We see her at work, offering playfully mean-spirited direction to a 1984 play; we get glimpses of her Paris apartment, the only one she ever lived in, in 1997. Auvray's documentary is elusive, a modest feuilleton, a few leaves from the book of a friendship. Yet its grab bag of elements, working with the happenstance of conversation rather than a reasoned thesis or bio, has incredible charm, particularly for those who know and admire Duras' obdurate work and obstinate life. And then those weary apothegms in her nicotined voice: "If I had the strength to do nothing? I would do nothing at all." 61m. Video.

"Marguerite: A Reflection of Herself" plays Fri-Sun at Facets.

(2003-11-13)

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