UN BARRAGE CONTRE LE PACIFIQUE (THE SEA WALL)

France/Cambodia, 2008, 115 minutes, Colour.
Isabelle Huppert, Gaspard Ulliel, Astrid Berges- Frisbey, Randal Douc, Vanthon Duong.
Directed by Rithy Panh.

Marguerite Duras, novelist and screenwriter (Hiroshima, Mon Amour), spent her early years in 1930s Indochina before moving to France. Her novels, Un Barrage Contre le Pacifique and Les Amants, draw on this experience and her relationship with an older local man. Un Barrage was first filmed in 1958 by Rene Clement with Jo Van Fleet, Silvano Mangano and Anthony Perkins and was called both The Sea Wall and This Angry Age. This time the director is from Indochina, Cambodian writer and film-maker, Rithy Panh, and it has been filmed on location.

The film is worth seeing for its re-creation of the period, specifically 1931. In the light of the subsequent history of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, the story is particularly interesting. On the other hand, it is something of a placid film, less intense than anticipated, despite the melodramatic undertones, not a great deal of onward-driving dramatic energy. It immerses its audience in the life of the region, introduces us to characters who are not so dynamically interesting in themselves and invites us to live, so to speak, with them in the ordinariness of their lives and experience how they handle the political, economic, agricultural situations as well as relationships.

The film opens with the rice crop ruined by salt water breaching the sea wall. The small acreage is managed by the widow of a civil servant, her teenage children and a local worker called The Corporal and his two little boys. We spend a lot of time with these people, in the fields, visiting the French hotel in town, at home, arguing with French colonial land officials. This is French colonialism which, we know, will come to a disastrous end within decades.

The mother is played by Isabelle Huppert who makes any film worth seeing. Quietly, with unobtrusive body language, with her eyes, she can create vastly different characters. Here she is a bitter widow, petitioning government to extend her rights to the land, scrimping and saving, urging the building of a stronger sea wall. She is also ill with consumption. At home she has a moody son, Joseph (Gaspard Ulliel) and a sixteen year old flirtatious daughter, Suzanne (Astrid Berges-Frisbey) who idolises her brother who is ambiguously argumentative towards her and then devoted. Mother favours her son over her daughter. Both children dream of getting away.

The other central character besides the loyal Corporal is the son of a local grandee, Mr Jo (Randall Douc), ( who is smitten by Suzanne and bewildered (as is the audience) by the double standards of the family who, on the one hand, encourage a marriage that would bring in income and, on the other, look down on mixed race unions. He also is hugely ambitious to acquire land to develop a pepper industry. Joseph is particularly contemptuous and offensively racist.

When the authorities show their highhandedness towards the land traditionally owned by the people, the inevitable violence breaks out and the locals are harshly imprisoned.

So, this is a picture of a past, of colonialism, greed and cultural collision in Asia as well as a portrait of ordinary people caught up in circumstances often beyond their control. (The subject is not entirely dissimilar to Isabelle Huppert's subsequent film, Claire Denis' White Material in which she is a landowner with a difficult son but this time in post-colonial Africa.)

1.A film of Indochina? The 1930s? The 21st century perspective on the 1930s and colonialism? History and hindsight?

2.The novel by Marguerite Duras? The 1959 version? Her novel and screenwriting career?

3.The Cambodian perspective, the director and his experience, his perspective, location photography, the feel for the history and the issues?

4.The re-creation of the period: the house, cars and costumes, the town and the bar? The countryside, the rice fields, the sea? The musical score?

5.The music on the radio? The music for dancing?

6.The presence of the French in Indochina, their rule, the governor, the bureaucrats and their authoritarianism, the exploitation of the land, of the people? Harsh, the military, prisons? Colonial superiority and attitudes?

7.The title, the opening, the rice fields, the mother looking at the crop, the salt water, the field on the coast, the sea wall collapsing? The importance of the sea wall, the mother and her wanting to build another, more solid, persuading the locals, their labouring at building the wall, the initial failure? The final success – and the importance of the scene in the rice fields, prospering, in 2007?

8.Isabelle Huppert as the mother: her age, experience, living in Cambodia, her husband as a civil servant, being a widow, her work in the fields, her children and her relationship with them, her control, permissiveness, hard work? Her illness and the issue of taking tablets? With Joseph and her love for him, her tending to ignore Suzanne? The financial difficulties, the discussions with the bank, with the officials, their hard attitude, her plea, writing the letter to the governor, her success?

9.Joseph, his age, his relationship with his mother, with Suzanne? His racist remarks? Working with the corporal, friendship, yet the corporal as servant? His lifestyle, hard work, going out, the envy of Monsieur Jo’s car? Antagonism towards Monsieur Jo? The ambiguity of his relationship with Suzanne, his angers, the set-up for her with Monsieur Jo, the clash? His relationship with the official’s wife, going away with her? His hunting, with the corporal, giving him the gun? Leaving, the tour guide? The return, his mother’s death? The effect?

10.The contrast with Suzanne and her age, idle around the house, flirtatious, the encounter with Monsieur Jo, how racist her attitudes, absorbed from her family? Her mother urging her to dance? Leading him on? Monsieur Jo and the gifts, the record player, the nail varnish and putting it on? Her teasing him, the breaks, refusal? The ambiguity and her being caught between the two, erratic?

11.The corporal, hard-working, victim of racist comments, his relationship with his sons, their religious observance? Working as a servant, his devotion to the family? Hunting with Joseph, the gun? The gift? Loyal, but…?

12.Monsieur Jo, his wealth, life in Paris, his elegant car, his lifestyle? His attraction towards Suzanne, smitten? Dancing with her, the gifts, discussing with her mother, giving her mother a lift, the clashes with the mother, with Joseph? The double messages? His own plans, wealth, the pepper industry? His wanting to get the land, using Khing as a mediator?

13.The officials, French bureaucrats, their harshness towards the mother, with the village people, the revolt, the beheading?

14.The military, the local military, taking people from the land? The meetings, the mother and her persuading the group to work for the sea wall, their eagerness to keep their land? The work, the arrests, the procession of criminals?

15.The mother, her illness, her death?

16.The audience observing a particular world, rather than experiencing a dynamic plot?

17.The importance of this kind of view of colonial history, the French, Indochina and the consequences?