Screenplay: Michel Fessler, Rithy Panh
based upon Marguerite Duras's novel
Cinematographer: Pierre Milon
Editing: M.C. Rougerie
Art Director: Yann Arlaud
Sound: Pierre Mertens
Music: Marc Marder
Casting: Isabelle Huppert, Gaspard Ulliel, Astrid Bergès-Frisbey, Bandal Doug, Duong Vanthon, Stéphane Rideau, Lucie Harrison
Production:
Catherine Dussart, CDP, Studio 37, France 2 Cinéma, Scope Pictures
Distribution:
Diaphana
155 rue du Faubourg Saint-Antoine
75011 Paris
France
Tel: 0033 1 53 46 66 66
Mail: [email protected]
Year: 2008
35 mm, Color, 115 min, French Version
In the Gulf of Siam, a mother endeavors to survive with her two children. She sees how her twenty-year-old son Joseph and her sixteen year-old daughter Suzanne have grown, knowing well they will inevitably leave. Abused by the colonial administration, she has invested all her savings in a land getting regularly flooded, hence unworkable. Fighting against the corrupted bureaucrats who cheated her, and who are now threatening to expel her, she draws all her energy towards a mad project: to build a damp against the ocean with the help of the village farmers. Ruined and obsessed by her venture, she leaves Joseph and Suzanne almost totally free. This is when Jo, the son of a rich Chinese businessman, falls in love with Suzanne. The family will now try to take advantage of the situation…
“What moves me in Marguerite Duras’ work is the fact it is both fiction and documentary…With the freedom of fiction she narrates reality and gives it a symbolically universal dimension…I wanted to make a film that would be open, generous and popular, just like Duras’ novel: the drama of a family, a love story, as well as a frank account of the colonial system.” Rithy Panh.
