Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai Du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles

Running time: 202 mins

Synopsis

A lonely widowed housewife does her daily chores, takes care of her apartment where she lives with her teenage son, and turns the occasional trick to make ends meet. However, something happens that changes her safe routine.

Heralded by Le Monde in January 1976 as “the first masterpiece of the feminine in the history of the cinema”, Chantal Akerman’s landmark second feature brought the then 24-year-old Akerman international recognition. Voted Sight and Sound’s Greatest Film of All Time in the 2022 Critics’ poll (the first time a female filmmaker has taken the number one spot since the poll’s inception in 1952), Jeanne Dielman is consciously feminist in its bold experimental approach to narrative subject and structure. Charting the breakdown of its protagonist, a bourgeois Belgian housewife, mother and part-time prostitute over the course of three days, the film rigorously records her everyday life in extended time and from a fixed camera position. Watching the repetitive monotony of domestic chores through static long takes, the viewer notices every hypnotic detail, forced to experience the passage of time in real time. The viewer becomes attuned to Jeanne’s practised rhythms so that when her routine starts to unravel we watch riveted.

Regarded as one of cinema’s most important and influential directors of her generation. Chantal Akerman’s work has become increasingly relevant since her death in 2015.

In French, with subtitles.