Dir. Chantal Akerman
1975, France, 201 min
French with English subtitles
A singular work in film history, Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles meticulously details, with a sense of impending doom, the daily routine of a middle-aged widow—whose chores include making the beds, cooking dinner for her son, and turning the occasional trick. In its enormous spareness, Akerman’s film seems simple, but it encompasses an entire world. Whether seen as an exacting character study or one of cinema’s most hypnotic and complete depictions of space and time, Jeanne Dielman is an astonishing, compelling movie experiment, one that has been analyzed and argued over for decades.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkaEcRX3364
An unflinching portrait of the mundanity of middle-aged womanhood, Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles was subversive from the start.
– Roxana Hadadi, Crooked Marquee
A portrait of female marginalization, subjugation, and suffering that’s as strikingly empathetic and relevant today as it was in 1975.
– Nick Schager, The Daily Beast
