In her many novels, plays and movies, author and filmmaker Marguerite Duras would often make herself a character in the stories she was telling, mixing autobiography and fiction into a seamless blend that the French called autofiction. It was writing with a capital I, or Je, and it would help foster in a new wave of literature, known as the Nouveau Roman, that emerged in the early 1950s.
For admirers of Duras, the French drama I Want to Talk About Duras (Vous ne désirez que moi) offers the rare chance to see the author from an angle other than her own. In fact, except for a few clips of archive footage, she’s entirely absent from this portrait of the young man, named Yann Andréa, whom she lived with during the last two decades of her life. The two had a tumultuous 16-year relationship marked by sexual exploration (Andréa was gay and nearly 40 years her junior), creative collaboration (Andréa featured in a few of Duras’ movies and late books), and a fair amount of exploitation, all of which is detailed in this dialogue-laden affair that premiered in competition at San Sebastian.
Based on interviews Andréa gave to journalist Michèle Manceaux in 1982, the movie is a hybrid combining the historical record with dramatic reenactments. It was directed by Claire Simon, whose body of work is a mix of documentary (Human Geography, Recreations), fiction (God’s Offices, Gare du Nord), and sometimes both at the same time. Here, she recreates the original text à la lettre, transposing it to the screen in a period piece that stars Swann Arlaud as Andréa and Emmanuelle Devos as Manceaux.
Set almost entirely in one room, with one guy doing most of the talking, Duras is not for everyone, especially those viewers who despise long-winded, sex-obsessed French movies. And yet, there is much to glean off its seemingly clichéd surface. For one, it’s rare to see a story about a man who’s romantically subordinated to a much older, much more powerful woman, and the movie is explicit about the allures and dangers that entails. It also proves that watching two actors stuck in the same space can be a captivating experience if the subject matter is strong enough and the direction inventive enough, with Simon leaning on Céline Bozon’s warm and colorful imagery to keep the action stimulating.
“Fascination, admiration and domination” is how Andréa (who was born Yann Lemée — Duras even changed his name) describes a relation that began with the young philosophy student discovering the author’s novels, after which he was hooked. A few years later, he met Duras in person at a screening of one of her films (clips from India Song and other works are inserted into the narrative), asking her a question during the q&a. He then spent years writing Duras fan letters until he finally obtained her phone number, showing up, in 1980, at the seaside town of Trouville where she resided and worked until her death. Soon enough, the two were living together. He was 28 and identified as a homosexual. She was 66.
“From fanboy to boytoy” would be a crude way to sum up Andréa’s trajectory. But as the film delves into his tangled life with Duras, we gain fresh insights into what the writer was like behind closed doors — as well as between the sheets, with Simon providing watercolor depictions that resemble an edition of the Kamasutra illustrated by French Impressionists — and what we learn about her is not always pretty.
After a few months of heated passion, Duras was already insulting Andréa, telling him that “you only exist through me” — a line that could have been taken from one of her books. She had violent mood swings but was also tender and effusive, encouraging Andréa to write. (He published a few novels whose subject was, of course, Duras.) Most of all, she consumed him completely, which seems to be how she did everything. “She lives like a 15-year-old,” Andréa quips to Manceaux at one point, but it’s a keen observation. Like a teenager, Duras had a go-for-broke approach to life, which could make life for those around her a living hell.
What Andréa got out of the long affair doesn’t always seem worth it, and Arlaud (Bloody Milk) artfully channels the fragility of a character trying to vocalize the sacrifices he’s made to exist alongside his idol. Toward the end of the film, Manceaux, whose attempts to understand her interviewee are conveyed by Devos in a performance that’s all in the eyes, questions Andréa about Duras’ essay The Malady of Death, whose title refers to the morbid way she viewed his homosexuality. “I agree, as far as I’m concerned,” is his response, as if he were willingly throwing himself on Duras’ funeral pyre years before it was ever lit.
And yet, I Want to Talk About Duras isn’t only about tearing down the myth of a famous author to reveal her fatal flaws. It’s also the portrait of a woman, seen through the eyes of perhaps her greatest admirer, who managed to live the height of her freedom in old age. You can tell that both Andréa and Simon respect the way Duras was unequivocal about getting what she wanted until the bitter end, even if it meant destroying others in the process. What this film proves above all is that she was the same person both on and off the page, her life bleeding into her literature and vice-versa. Duras not only helped invent autofiction: she was an autofiction herself.
Director: Claire Simon
Screenplay: Claire Simon
Cast: Swann Arlaud, Emmanuelle Devos
Producer: François d’Artemare
Cinematography: Céline Bozon
Production design: Daniel Bevan
Costume design: Dorothée Guiraud
Editing: Julien Lacheray
Sound: Virgile Van Ginneken
Production companies: Les Films de l’après-midi (France)
World sales: LuxBox
Venue: San Sebastian Film Festival (Official Selection)
In French
95 minutes
