A look inside Hollywood and the movies. : WRITER’S REVENGE : You Can Take Your Script and . . .

It’s not uncommon for screenwriters to disown movies when they feel directors have failed to do their words justice.

But Marguerite Duras, the eminent French novelist and screenwriter, has gone one better. She was so dismayed by the adaptation by director Jean-Jacques Annaud of her best-selling novel “L’Amant” (published in the United States as “The Lover”) that she has written another version of the book in response to Annaud’s movie.

“L’Amant,” an autobiographical account of an affair Duras had at age 15 in her native Vietnam with a Chinese man then twice her age, won Duras the prestigious Prix Goncourt in 1984, and sold 5 million copies in 40 languages.

Annaud set to work on a screenplay with writer Gerard Brach, because, he says, Duras was in indifferent health. Duras, meanwhile, embarked on her own. But attempts to mesh the two proved fruitless. After a series of disputes, Annaud finally banned Duras, 77, from the set, and she began work on the second novel, which critics agree is more “filmic” than “L’Amant.” In footnotes Duras has given teasing suggestions about film adaptation, lighting, images and background music. When the book was published last summer, Duras hinted she would be happy for a film to be made of it.

As a screenwriter, Duras is best known for Alain Resnais’ 1960 film “Hiroshima Mon Amour.”

Her public spat with Annaud has not harmed the prospects of “L’Amant,” which opened in 200 French theaters last week to generally favorable reviews.

Some French critics are dismayed that Annaud shot it in English, rather than in French. He took this decision partly to help secure international distribution and partly to accommodate the young actress who portrays Duras--Jane March, an 18-year-old former model from the suburbs of London.