JEANNE DIELMAN, 23 QUAI DU COMMERCE, 1080 BRUXELLES directed by Chantal Akerman (Belgium/France 1975)
What pleasure can be derived, Mr. Everyman cinemagoer might ask, from a three-hour plus movie in which, save for the final ten minutes, the biggest drama comes when the protagonist overcooks some potatoes?
This is not an easy question to answer for a movie which is so particular it cannot be judged in conventional terms. An informative film essay by Ivone Marguiles describes it well as “a radical experiment with being undramatic, and paradoxically with the absolute necessity of drama”.
Pleasure is the very thing that is entirely absent from a middle-aged widow’s uneventful life which we see presented in meticulous detail over the course of a three-day period.
We watch her in real-time, washing up, preparing dinner, shopping, attending to her adolescent son and babysitting. From the tiny rituals that make up her daily routine, we come to understand how she makes sure everything is in its right place. For example, she is scrupulous about turning the lights off in a room she is not using and keeps the modest one bedroom flat clean to the point of dusting objects inside a glass cabinet. Continue reading
