How do you write about Chantal Akerman's brutally demanding, three-and-a-quarter-hour "Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles" (1975) without making it sound like a Gitmo stress position? It's a film about a widowed Belgian housewife (Delphine Seyrig) who meticulously attends to housework all day, which we watch in real time, except when she's making cash being an afternoon prostitute, which is the only thing we don't watch her do. "A film about..." is a misleading construction -- Akerman's film just is, a life experience rather than a convenient story told. But it's not what you'd call a consciously pleasurable experience: the undulations of frustration, fascination, tedium, fury and epiphany you feel watching the movie are built in, part of the scheme, intrinsic to the point. Just don't touch the fast-forward button.
Movies aren't supposed to work like this -- Nero-like mega-consumers that we are, we expect a movie to hold our...
Movies aren't supposed to work like this -- Nero-like mega-consumers that we are, we expect a movie to hold our...
- 8/25/2009
- by Michael Atkinson
- ifc.com
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