It divided the critics when it was shown at the Cannes Festival although it obtained the surprising endorsement of Pauline Kael.Duras' cinema usually is light in plot and incident but here she takes her usual style to an extreme of minimalism.In a dark room the woman(Duras) and the man (Depardieu)talk for about eighty minutes. The woman talks about the film which she would have made,a film about a woman who hitches a ride with a truck driver ,coincidentally perhaps a film not unlike the minimalist "Je tu il elle" by another feminist director Chantal Akerman. Spliced between these conversations are shots of a truck driving through endless Parisian suburbs,a landscape which has a certain bleak industrial beauty.It becomes clear that Duras is both the writer/director and the woman who is hitching the ride while Depardieu is both the actor and the truck driver and between the two settings, the interior of the script and the exterior where it would be played out a film,struggling to find expression,is born in the imagination of the receptive viewer.

Marguerite Duras said, "I approach cinema with the intention to murder it." "Le Camion" is irrefutable evidence of her criminal intent. John Waters called "Le Camion" an example of truly experimental cinema because it is the absolute antithesis of anything remotely commercial. Released the same year as "Saturday Night Fever," it would be a sign of insanity to consider pairing "Le Camion" with it on a double-bill. Duras' film consists of endless shots of a blue truck driving through industrial sectors of the French suburbs, edited with the jaded-looking, chain-smoking director commenting on a script (that is never actually shot) to actor Gerard Depardieu. There is plenty of time to contemplate Duras' bracelets, wristwatch and her home decor, as well as what you might do once you're finally let out of the theater. An interior shot of the truck's upholstered bucket seats actually stuns the audience as if it were a moment of high-intensity drama. Eighty minutes long, the film actually seems much longer; in fact, it seems to take days. Oddly, it held me in a trance-like state for its duration. For his part, Depardieu -- constantly upstaged by the passive-aggressive Ms Duras -- looks bemused and feeds his co-star a lot of questions, which she answers with dismissive grandiosity, all of which is aimless. She talks about the script -- a story of a male truck-driver and an older, female hitchhiker, and their conversations, which are political, humanitarian, philosophical and all complete twaddle -- as if she has all the time in the world, and so do you. There may be something existential intended or it may, as I suspect, all be drivel. In any event, there is no question MD succeeds in strangling the life out of the cinema -- very slowly. Not to be missed, and unlikely you will want to see it twice. As Waters pointed out, introducing the film at Alliance Francaise in New York in February 2006, this film was never released on VHS and is unlikely to show up anytime soon on DVD.

Lucky to see this movie at a Duras Film Festival in Chicago many years ago. Duras and Gérard Depardieu read a script while we watch a truck make its rounds with Diabelli Variations in background.. Can't explain why it works but it does. I read an essay about this movie and it spoke to an "autism" in its style. Not sure the story matters but it is about a lone Jewish Hitch hiker who is picked up by the truck driver. I also believe it recounts Duras's involvement in the French Communist Party. I don't understand why movies directed by Duras are not on DVD. Must be something she wrote in her will. Who owns these movies? I especially would like to see "Moderato Cantabille" on DVD.