Shape-shifting architecture.

Certain places recur in in several novels of Duras. They seem to be derived from personal memories but have a strong symbolic function. When these places appear, they always have a similar history. The exterior of the café where you meet another player in Bientôt l’été will take the form of several of these buildings throughout the game. The door will always be the same, but the building around it will change.

Of course there will be a regular café. One of those typical low brow French pubs that are usually part of a long row of cafés, stores, restaurants, and residencies. Except in Bientôt l’été it will stand on its own. The sides of the building will be blank, much like the sides of many of the early villas at the seaside. The café plays a central role in Moderato Cantabile, the novel at the basis of Bientôt l’été. It is the place where the crime passionel happened that gives the two characters an excuse to meet and talk.

The villa also plays a role in Moderato Cantabile. It is where the female lead character lives. It is the home of the family that owns the factory. A place where the local bourgeoisie can indulge in their decadence. But also a place where the lonely mistress of the house slowly loses her wit. At night she wistfully stares outside her window while she hears a couple making love in the cold moonlight shadows.

The hotel is a meeting place for extramarital couples. Again, the window plays an important role as it offers an outsider, hidden in a wheat field, the opportunity to see what her lover is doing with her best friend. Or was it the other way around? Is it the lover who is curious whether she is watching?
In Bientôt l’été, the design is based on the former hotel “Roches Noires”, famously depicted by Claude Monet and inhabited by Marguerite Duras herself as well as Marcel Proust at some point.

The municipal casino serves one specific function in Duras’ œuvre: it is the place where a young woman loses her lover after he has been dancing all night with a strange woman. This event causes the young woman to lose her mind. A state that she will not recover from in years. But there is always this desire to go back to the ball room of the casino. The casino is always closed but a friendly employee is willing to show the visitor in. And then nothing happens. No memories come flooding back. No tears are shed. The episode is over.

And finally there is the colonial mansion. Referring to Duras’ childhood in French Indochina, the building appears empty, abandoned, perhaps bombed. Possibly a memory of the war (Duras was a member of the Parisian resistance during World War II and her husband was a concentration camp victim).

In keeping with the minimalist aesthetic chosen for the game, all these buildings will be rendered white, but otherwise quite realistic. Perhaps they seem to be made up of parts of each other, as if they were made from the same module kit.