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Derek Malcolm's rating
Sensitivity in The Sea Wall
By
Derek Malcolm
20 Nov 2009
Cambodian director Rithy Panh, who escaped the Khmer Rouge when young, was the right director to adapt Marguerite Duras’s first novel, culled from her own experiences as a young woman in the French Indo-China of the Thirties.
Isabelle Huppert plays the writer’s mother, who faces bankruptcy when the sea wall protecting her rice crop collapses.
Astrid Berges-Frisbey is the 16-year-old daughter (clearly Duras) who is courted by an older and richer Vietnamese man.
Mother covets his money but doesn’t want her daughter marrying a Vietnamese.
Panh and his cast traverse the story with sensitivity but the film lacks Duras’s way with words and images.
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