Strange, What Love Does

Voices that take shape in memory, an empty house, a piano that is now missing. Vivian Forrester said that for Duras, the act of speech to achieve was love in its whole or absolute desire. The one that can be silence, or singing, or screaming. It is what governs memory and forgetfulness, suffering and hope. This video essay proposes a dialogue between two films: Morir... Dormir... Tal Vez Soñar (Manuel Mur Oti, 1976) & India Song (Marguerite Duras, 1975). On the one hand, to claim a beautiful forgotten rarity of Spanish cinema and on the other, to claim that cinema, after all, is a house with many voices.

This work arises from the random encounter of two titles having a tie in the 50th place on the Sight & Sound list in 2012, curiously enough, when considering a dialogue between these two films, we see how cinema can generate its own ghosts: in both films the dead and the living coexist; in La Jeteé thanks to time (insubordinate of movement) and in Ugetsu Monogatari thanks to movement (a panoramic view within a sequence shot, which refers to a deceptive narrative continuity). What would happen if we stripped both films of their construction?