Les MAINS NéGATIVES

There are three decisions within this film that constitute until today its radicality and beauty:
1. Not to mount the early morning rides through the streets of Paris (that have been shot for another film), but only to link them together – and doing so, somehow to make visible the rawness of the film material (without using original sound or atmosphere);
2. To employ a simple musical motif, played by a single instrument (a violine), that is to underscore the sonority and simpleness of the stringed instrument;
3. Not to have an actor – and even less a narrator – recite the text, but to rely on the voice of the writer and its vocal substance.

These are decisions that express on all of the three levels a certain “nakedness” or “exposure” – and therewith are clearly related to the content of the text edited and recited by Duras. In other words: they are formal means, appropriate for the evocation aimed at by the text, means that comply with it, maybe in the only possible way. (Johannes Beringer)

Will be screened together with <filmlink id=\"2550\">Je, tu, il, elle</filmlink>.