In India Song, Marguerite Duras effectively evokes colonial India of the '30s, 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, played by Delphine Seyrig, suffering from what Duras has called “colonial sickness.” The wife of a diplomat, she has had numerous lovers over the years, and is the constant center of a circle of suitors. But she lives in a private desolation which none can enter, haunted by the image of a Laotian woman who personifies for her the cruelty of the colonial system. She detests people who “get used to” India.
India Song continues the exploration of the characters introduced in Duras' earlier La Femme de Ganges, as well as that film's investigations into narrative form. Richard Roud, writing in The Guardian, describes Duras' approach, “a certain kind of distancing effect which allows one to perceive that this is an ‘India of the Soul'.... The remoteness engendered by the lack of dialogue is doubled by the visual treatment...a counterpointing of illusion and reality....”