Friday, December 26, 2014


Movie Review

Jeanne Dielman 23 quai du Commerce 1080 Bruxelles (1975)

March 23, 1983


Published: March 23, 1983

LIKE its blunt title, Chantal Akerman's ''Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles,'' deals in unadorned facts. It's about the looks and sounds of ordinary things and people, which it records with such precise, unsettling clarity that it has the effect of finding threats in mundane objects and doom in commonplace characters.

It's not difficult to understand the extraordinary underground reputation of this lengthy (three hours and 18 minutes), very beautiful Belgian film, made in 1975 and starring Delphine Seyrig, a screen presense comparable, perhaps, only to Garbo. Miss Seyrig has participated in a number of supposedly experimental films over the years, but in none as original and ambitious as this.




Jeanne Dielman is first discovered in the tiny, immaculate kitchen of her Brussels flat, her back to the camera, washing dishes in the sink. For some time, she doesn't turn around, and the camera simply waits until she does. She wears a smock to protect her sensible skirt, blouse and cardigan sweater from unsightly soap or grease stains. The door bell rings.

Jeanne walks out of the frame and, after a bit, the camera follows her into the hall where, just outside the frame, she greets that afternoon's client. When the pair disappear into Jeanne's bedroom, the unmoving camera stares down the hall at the closed door for what seem to be several minutes, like a well behaved dog.

In the course of these three days, the perfectly ordered, utterly empty world of Jeanne Dielman comes apart, but Miss Akerman's method of dramatizing this breakdown has little to do with ordinary theatrical gestures.

Instead, we are forced to watch this woman so closely that when her routine is interrupted in any way it has the emotional force of a tragic event. Jeanne's life is held together by habits, by the mechanics of housekeeping. She never leaves a room without switching off the light. She washes herself in exactly the same way every morning, shines her son's shoes in the very same order. When she talks, it's only to correct her son or to supply some requested information. Any other communication is to be avoided.

Miss Seyrig, though she has never looked more beautiful, is a fascinating, self-mockingly frumpy Jeanne Dielman, who is less a character than some nightmarish representation of a woman. Curiously, Miss Seyrig's elegant features do not look out of place in this bourgeois world, which, as recorded in the photography of Babette Mangolte, is as stylized as Miss Seyrig's presence.

''Jeanne Dielman'' is not a movie to see if you're in a hurry to go somewhere else. It demands total attention. If one gives it anything less its revenge will be a boredom so complete it might be fatal.

It's also not a movie to see on an empty stomach. At various points in the film the camera watches Jeanne as she cooks. Without cutting away or using any other ellipses, the movie attends to Jeanne's cooking as if it were a documentary, showing us how she prepares, among other things, what seems to be a succulent meat loaf and paperthin, breaded, veal cutlets. At the film's end, I was both moved and starved.

A Life of Habits
JEANNE DIELMAN, 23 QUAI DU COMMERCE, 1080 BRUXELLES, directed by Chantal Akerman; French with English subtitles; photographed by Babette Mangolte. At the Film Forum, 57 Watts Street. Running time: 198 minutes. This film has no rating.

WITH: Delphine Seyrig, Jan Decorte, Henri Storck, J. Doniol-Valcroze

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