In India Song, her best known film, Duras effectively evokes colonial India of the thirties, contrasting the indolent life of the colonialists with the squalor and suffering that lie just outside their gates and consciousness-though her camera never ventures from the abodes of the wealthy, and the film was in fact shot in Paris. The story concerns a beautiful woman (Delphine Seyrig), the wife of a diplomat, suffering from what Duras has called "colonial sickness." Despite numerous suitors and affairs, she lives in a private desolation which none can enter, haunted by the image of a beggar woman who personifies for her the cruelty of the colonial system. She detests people who "get used to" India. With its offscreen voices, a kind of distant dialogue counterpointed by image and music, India Song portrays what Richard Roud called an "India of the soul."