At the start of their marriage Michel (Sam Troughton) and Anne-Marie
(Emily Barclay) spent three months living in a hotel room, while they
waited for their home to be built. They return to the hotel, or at least
to its otherwise empty bar, on the last night of their marriage: Having
both been unfaithful they ended up getting divorced, a protracted
process that's gone on for three years. They've met again after all that
time on the eve of signing the decree absolute as well as, ostensibly,
to discuss what to do with a few last pieces of furniture and boxes of
books. In reality what they want to do is pick at old wounds, as
Marguerite Duras'
La Musica is essentially a post-mortem on a
failed relationship.
