The Darkroom is the script to Duras’s 1977 film Le camion (The Truck), plus “explanatory texts,” an interview with Duras, and translators’ notes. (Note: Le camion is available on Youtube, but after reading this book the English subtitles can be jarring both in their differences from this translation and Duras’s stated intentions about what she was trying to achieve.)
In 120 pages of text and 120 minutes of film, Duras creates a story that on reflection would make for a very weird episode of “The Twilight Zone,” even by its standards: A “woman of a certain” age hitches a ride from a truck driver, who pays her little to no attention during the trip, while she tells him the story of her life. When she reaches the present day in her tale, she says that her daughter gave birth today. The woman’s car has broken down, and hence the hitch hiking. After announcing this, she asks the driver her to stop and let her off where there are: on a two-lane highway in the middle of nowhere. He obliges, end of story.
Except: She apparently does this every night: hitches a ride from a stranger and tells him the story of her life, to which he pays no attention. Think of it as an inverted version of the legend of Phantom 309.
And none of it appears odd while it is happening. That’s the script.
As a film, Duras adds the following touches (quoted from the translators’ notes, which nicely sum up everything): "Neither of the characters are ever shown. Instead. . . the juxtaposed voice-over text and cutaways prompt the film’s audience members to their own images of the trucker and hitch hiker onto the screen. Between the images of the truck, juxtaposed voice-overs, and the cutaways to Duras and [Gèrard] Depardieu [reading the script], the art of film becomes the art of coordinating multiple faculties—not only the visual and aural, but also those of memory, imagination, and desire."