ABSTRACT
Aurélia Steiner, dite Aurélia Melbourne. 1 It is not the only film Marguerite Duras will make of Aurélia Steiner, not the only time Duras will tell Aurélia's story by way of a narration that is utterly unreliable, even if every word speaks a truth seldom heard in literary or visual works of art, murmured rather than spoken, reflected rather than seen. “When I speak, I have a negative concern, I'm taking care not to move away from the neutral ground where all words are equal.” 2 So if one accedes to the truth in Duras's film, it is in terms of a muted view of the Seine in which oily waters lap up around the footings of bridges or merely slap against the sides of things … a barge, a retaining wall, a small boat. Here the eddying waters have already flattened before a procession of endless bridges, as if in anticipation of the dark openings and black toxins which have collected near the pontoons. While the arching darkness approaches, an ominous humming of motors can be heard, as if to suggest that something unpleasant and industrial is at hand. Then the sound subsides with an apprehension whose cause one cannot rationalize. A bright sky reappears and famous buildings reassure us that the world is whole. The sound, it turns out, was just sound. The people who stand on the bridges appear as feeble shadows, anonymous outlines. “We shot Aurélia Melbourne against the light. The faces are erased, you see only their outline, the camera swallows them, the river takes them.” 3
