Patrice Leconte is probably best known for directing a strangely affecting story of aging and regret, Man on the Train. The French filmmaker brings an entirely different perspective in form and content to Dogora, a wordless documentary on Cambodia set to music. The 2004 film will be released in May on Blu-ray and DVD.
The music of contemporary French composer Etienne Perruchon is the film’s through-line. Beautifully melodic and insistently rhythmic, spanning sacred and profane with a libretto in a made-up language, the composition called Dogora suggests Carl Orff and became the basis for the film’s editing. Leconte had no trouble finding diverse and lovely images in Cambodia, from misty mornings on the rice paddies to bustling city streets crowded with motorcycles. The impression left by Dogora is of a nation that has healed at least in part from the murderous Khmer Rouge years, embracing its Buddhist and dynastic past while speeding into the future.
