Movies
My first Akerman, which is pretty unforgivable since I'm a Belgian myself. Then again, Akerman is hardcore cinephile material and not really that known over here. Not too surprising either because her work doesn't seem very accessible. Jeanne Dielman is by far her most prestigious film, though I'm not sure it was the best place to start. The mix of an extremely dry and down-to-earth presentation with a more conceptual structure didn't sit very well with me. On the one hand Akerman seems to chase realism and mundanity, but the film runs very much on rails, and isn't really subtle about it either. It's the worst of both worlds and with a 200+ minute runtime, that's not pleasant at all. The success of minimalism lives in the details, but the contrast between Dielman's machine-like routines in the first half and the way she slowly falls apart in the second is too on the nose, not to say incredibly repetitive. I even tried to read up on the intentions of Akerman afterwards, but that only seemed to make it worse. Bland cinematography, no soundtrack to speak of and mediocre to terrible performances. Very disappointing.Read all
Quite a bit shorter than Akerman's more infamous Jeanne Dieleman, but just as slow and challenging. Even more so for me, as we're talking about a documentary here, that deals with Akerman's personal relationship with her mother. The things that pass are very pedestrian, which may feel intimate for some, but created quite a distance for me. Akerman narrates letters that her mother wrote her when she was living in New York. They show a typical motherly love for a daughter, but also underhand manipulations that seek more control over a life that isn't hers. Meanwhile, Akerman shows grainy shots of New York, going about its daily business. There's a love for transport, for some reason or another, though I couldn't figure out how it related to the letters. Then again, I didn't even get how the footage and the narration were supposed to connect. Though less than 90 minutes long, it's still a real hassle to sit through when neither the form nor the drama speaks to you.Read all