“We thought it was a normal hotel”

Five people find themselves in a mysterious hotel somewhere in the French countryside. Alissa (Nicole Hiss) and her husband Max Thor (Henri Garcin) are a young couple on holiday. They are joined by Stein (Michael Lonsdale), a fiercely passionate academic who strikes up a friendship with Max, who fancies himself a bit of an intellectual too. The trio becomes increasingly fascinated with one of the other guests – Elisabeth Alione (Catherine Sellers), a middle-aged woman who harbours trauma from a certain event that occurred earlier in her life. She’s waiting for her husband, Bernard (Daniel Gélin) to arrive, and in the meantime eventually finds her way into acquainting with her fellow guests as they spend their time playing cards, lounging by the luxurious amenities and walking through the grounds of a hotel, which seems almost entirely abandoned, with the only signs of life coming from a nearby forest that the characters express interest in exploring, but are forced to satiate their curiosity, as the forest may harbour more sinister secrets than the enigmatic hotel they find themselves in. Over the course of their stay there, the five guests get to know each other – first they find common ground in shared interest and fascinations with certain subjects, but eventually they realize they are far more connected than merely being guests at the same hotel. They’re inextricably linked in some way, and their presence here may be more than just an ordinary vacation, but something far more puzzling, and perhaps even ominous.

Whether as an author or filmmaker, or simply a social critic, Marguerite Duras was an unprecedented force. Her work always spoke to a particular social milieu that resonates far beyond the confines of the particular time and place she’s peering at, resulting in fascinating, and often extraordinarily complex, explorations of some of life’s more challenging enigmas. Destroy, She Said (French: Détruire, dit-elle) is based on her novel of the same name, and sees the filmmaker once again venturing deep into the human condition, and flirting with various metanarrative devices, such as the incongruency of past and present, in her endeavour to represent a very unsettling social malaise that isn’t restricted to this story, but resounds with a ferocity that can still be felt and understood today. An inherently theatrical production, the film doesn’t approach difficult existential questions, it gazes at them with an incredible intensity until the mysteries underlying some of our biggest quandaries become more clear, and life itself starting to unravel in the process. Anyone who has encountered Duras’ work in some medium will understand how she’s both an exceptional writer (the way she can evoke so much emotion from situations that would otherwise be considered nothing but banal is incredible), but also capable of scathing critical commentary, which she combines with her intricate understanding of the human condition to deliver deeply meaningful character studies that feel both towering and intimate, which is a quality that all of Duras’ most prominent work shares, and which this particular film benefits immensely from.

Duras’ films, much like her writing, are approachable only through an intricate understanding of her style and intentions. It’s most prominent in the visual representation of her stories, with the director choosing to adapt her own novel to the screen, and thus conveying a vision of her own story, and offering her own interpretation, through her perspective, which may not always be the definitive version (Duras’ work always facilitates the freedom of readers or viewers to assert their own understanding of the content), but rather a series of intersecting moments that evoke the underlying themes and clarify some of the challenging questions she provokes. Destroy, She Said is a complex social drama that is made with the incredible simplicity of some of her other work, which only serves to evoke the qualities that can’t ever be fully represented visually, but rather come about as a result of arousing in-depth discussions (whether articulated or not) as to the nature of existence and the many other idiosyncrasies of life that these characters represent. This all manifests in Duras’ assured adaptation, where she constructs a nihilistic expression of bohemian ennui, where the minimalism of the story is complemented by the unadorned story that places emphasis less on the spectacle and more on the unsettling brilliance of a film that endeavours to venture far beneath the surface to attempt to understand the human spirit, and the choices we make, which the director manages to convey without appearing pretentious, or making a film that is too labyrinthine, remaining coherent and hypnotic, even when the content is often extremely complex, and requires active engagement with the material – yet this is never a problem because Duras captures our attention and leads us down a path of postmodern narrative anarchy that can only be described as purely revolutionary.

Destroy, She Said is a film about secrets – the characters we follow throughout the duration of the story all hide who they really are, a fact that is very clear to each other and the audience, yet Duras rightfully isn’t compelled into accounting for who they really are – the film thrives on this sense of unease and mystery, and to justify their behaviour is to dismantle exactly what makes this film so potent. Moreover, the location they find themselves in also harbours many secrets that the characters are actively trying to decipher – a mysterious, almost otherworldly place, the hotel represents their mental state, and much like these characters, there’s always something lurking just out of sight, occupying the shadows that these characters are too afraid to peer into, for fear of finding something they would rather avoid. These individuals are all trying to escape something, but rather than being avoidant of something tangible, they’re absconding from reality, seeking the solace of some ambiguous state that manifests as this enigmatic hotel that is detached from all logic. Ultimately, Destroy, She Said is a film about existence, taking the form of a metaphysical drama with broad overtures of a psychological thriller. The characters at the core of the film are investigating their own mental states, and trying to make sense of a world they don’t understand. It doesn’t aid them that they are all equally complicit in introducing moral ambiguity to their lives, often being quite adversarial in how they are all actively infusing more confusion into the minds of their fellow guests.

The deliberate pace of the film works towards understand exactly what Duras is trying to demonstrate, namely the stasis of the archetypes she forms into her protagonists, and how their lack of growth is a response to their unwillingness to adapt, but to remain comfortable, even if that means worsening the conditions of those around them. As one of the characters notes, he is a professor who teachers “the history of the future” – this correlates with how Duras employs one of her most common qualities into this film: storytelling. Destroy, She Said is almost entirely constructed as a series of conversations between these characters. However, rather than being meaningful discussions between friends or lovers, they’re elaborate tales that propose different realities depending on how the audience responds to it – much like the characters in the film, we’re given a choice to believe or doubt absolutely everything said by these characters. Duras is not all that interested in the truth, questioning whether or not these individuals, like anyone, can be fully trusted. This allows for some truly impressive work to be done by these actors, as playing such morally-ambiguous characters gives them the chance to challenge themselves. Its Catherine Sellers who commands the screen more than anyone else, with Duras’ camera gazing on her with more generosity than her scene partners, but not without reason: Elisabeth is the impetus for so much of the plot (ultimately, it is her that represents the titular “she”), and in the midst of the liberal dishonesty and contradiction surrounding her, we get to know her the most, which is still relatively little. There are glimpses of brilliance in her performance, quiet moments of ferocious intensity that are balanced with the rest of the cast and their own individual qualities, whether it be the pseudo-intellectual machismo of Henri Garcin, the uncompromising arrogance of Michael Lonsdale, or the doe-eyed innocence of Nicole Hiss, that makes this such a tremendously fascinating ensemble, who are so convincing in these roles, we are happy to surrender to the fact that we will never truly understand exactly what it is that made these characters so compelling.

Destroy, She Said is such an incredibly captivating film, and features some of Duras’ most underpraised work. It’s beautifully-written (there are so many moments in this film where the dialogue manages to portray an awe-inspiring sense of tension), subversive in the themes it looks at, particularly in how the director captures the visceral desire underlying these characters and their relationship with one another. It’s often highly experimental, and can often seem like its keeping the audience at a distance, which is immediately remedied when Duras draws us in with her visual poetry, composing a uncompromisingly human story about deception, venturing deep into the psychology of a set of individuals trying to understand the intricacies of their existence, standing on the precipice of realizing the true depths of their carnal lust – whether it be for another, or for some sense of belonging in a world they feel alienated from, the director captures that with an incredible sense of authenticity, but still making use of her natural literary playfulness in how she develops this story less as a stark realist drama, but rather as a complex, darkly comical satire that derives humour from the often absurd interactions between these people suffering from delusions of grandeur, which only serve to underpin the bleak emotional resonance of the film. Destroy, She Said is an incredible work of deconstructionist postmodernism, where the director intentionally dismisses logic without resorting to outright surrealism. It’s a choice that serves the film exceptionally well, and allows it to incite a lingering existential dread in the viewer, provoking thought and starting some discourse about the nature of reality – it may not always make sense, but the brilliance of the film comes in simply surrendering yourself to the brilliance of Duras, and allowing her to take us on this utterly unforgettable psychological journey of discovery and revelation that challenges everything that we hold to be sacred.