Shades of Silk

Made as both an homage and response to Marguerite Duras’s INDIA SONG—a languorous evocation of destructive passion in colonial India—this alluring feature debut by Mary Stephen unfolds in 1930s Shanghai (though, like Duras’s film, it was shot in 1970s France), where the increasingly complex relationship between two young women ripples with unspoken yearning. What plays out is a mesmerizing, sensuously dreamlike vision of forbidden desire that explores Duras’s themes of memory and colonial alienation from an Asian woman’s perspective.

Starring Isabelle Beers, Alexandria Brouwer, John Cressey