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Her Venetian Name in Deserted Calcutta

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Son nom de Venise dans Calcutta désert is a French film directed by Marguerite Duras in 1976. (Despite the fact of her never having been to India, that country figured in her creative imagination throughout her life.) Calcutta in Duras's depiction is a place full of hidden sorrow under a veil of joy and charm. Some critics note that the film has been "hailed as an experimental feminist text that simultaneously critiques colonial culture, women's status in society, and representations of the female body. Feminist critics make much of the fact that all of the voices in the play/film are disembodied and that the characters are seen as physical bodies devoid of direct dialogue."[who?]

Duras demonstrates that the disease and suffering of the Indians symbolically infects the Europeans as well. Thus, she asserts: One of the external signs of the fissuring of the seemingly watertight compartmentalized colonial society is the deep sense of malaise and maladjustment which is wearing out its white inhabitants. In spite of the vast paraphernalia of protective artifices, the Europeans find their presence in the colony quite intolerable.

The composer of the movie is Carlos d'Alessio.