New at BOP: Review: Matrix Resurrections Movie Review: Moonfall Movie Reviews: Scream The #1 Movie in America November Forecast The Many Saints of Newark October Forecast New Trivia Question All site updates Share & Save   Tweet Print this column

This is not sprung on the audience as a delayed surprise - the first appointment occurs within the film’s first 10 minutes and is followed up shortly thereafter by Jeanne washing up in her tub. Both of these incidents are examples of Akerman’s subtle but intentional humor that comes from the upending of expectations. We are not expecting the sexual liaison, and the extended scene in the bathtub, though featuring the gorgeous actress Delphine Seyrig partially naked, is thoroughly, intentionally de-eroticized. It is simply another daily household task.

The confluence of both these events so early on also trains the audience, not unreasonably, to expect similar upheavals at regular intervals. Instead, there will be mounting dread coupled with moments that play out in real time, allowing the audience the freedom to live in the action at the moment, and pass through interest, unease, fatigue, boredom (yes, even that!) and back again, while aware of a claustrophobia that comes from being cooped up within the confines of Jeanne’s apartment. (When she opens her bedroom window to air out the room or the door that leads out from the kitchen to her porch, to grab a sack of potatoes, I can always feel myself yearning to feel a breeze or see the city streets just outside.) Even so, as one example of the film’s contradictory nature I alluded to earlier, the apartment itself is far from oppressive. As stifled as the lives of its two inhabitants are, Akerman doesn’t stress any emotional echoes of past wrongs that still reverberate within the walls. Some warmth still exudes and (after spending nearly three and a half hours in its dimensions) it feels like home.

Since she is alone for the majority of her day, doesn’t provide voiceover narration, and isn’t prone to outbursts of talking to herself, she remains as verbally silent as any lead character in a film has outside of Eastwood’s Man with No Name in the “Dollars” trilogy. And even when a conversation occurs she is with few exceptions on the receiving end of the dialogue. A letter from her sister (living in Canada) read aloud by Jeanne and a pair of brief exchanges with her son Sylvain leaves us with snatches of background info, but these only serve to make her more enigmatic, not less.

Akerman also penned the screenplay, and made the decision shortly before filming started to pare down extraneous subplots and scale back on the number of characters featured. To beg a comparison from the world of music, I liken it to Prince stripping the bass line out of “When Doves Cry” shortly before releasing it on Purple Rain. It’s a bold and unexpected move that renders something mysterious by making it slightly less “accessible” and gains from making the familiar less so. And it’s what Akerman makes the decision to leave in, that gives Jeanne Dielman, the movie and the character power and mystery.

We see a woman making her bed, peeling potatoes, preparing breaded veal cutlets one night, and meatloaf the next night, cleaning the scuff off her son’s shoes - the tiny moments of everyday life, the mundanity and the reality that are simply elided in most fictional (and non-fictional) narrative films because they would be too “boring” for an audience. I will be the first to admit that I can get as restless during these sequences as any, but I am always aware of the purpose towards which Akerman deploys these moments, and as I get older, I am infinitely more grateful to be able to spend a moment at rest with a film, than be subjected to, say, an action sequence constructed and cut to within an inch of its life, daring the audience member to wonder if it is worth the bother for him or her to ascertain precisely what is going on.

Continued:       1       2       3