A stoical sister-film to Peter Handke's '
The Left Handed Woman' (another nuanced study of a female adrift released the same year), this mesmeric drama from Chantal Akerman
filters an intensely personal subject through a distinct structural lens. Anna (Aurore Clément, presumably standing in for Akerman) is a Belgian filmmake
r on a seemingly endless promotional trip across a colorless, homogenized Western Europe. She travels via train through Cologne, Brussels and Paris (all virtually indistinguishable from one another), and has a series of brief, telling encounters with figures - from her past, as well as strangers - with whom she struggles to express herself, or develop any sort of meaningful connection. Rendered in perfectly symmetrical compositions and long, static takes, the working life of the réalisatrice becomes a dull, mechanical march, a solitary endeavor not unlike the stultifying housework undertaken by the heroine of Akerman's '
Jeanne Dielman...' This, however, is a far less grim portrait, substituting the oppressiveness and allegorical heft of the earlier feature for an
introspective melancholy that feels much closer to the heart of the director,
and is not without an aesthetic appeal. For all their rigor, the slow, hypnotic shots possess a wistful beauty, particularly those of passing landscapes from train windows and darkened cities seen from taxi cabs. The subdued, observational style simultaneously recalls Jackie Raynal's radical feminist film '
Deux fois,' and anticipates the meandering procedurals of Jim Jarmusch.
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