CHANTAL

AKERMAN
WORDS BY MISSY MOLLOY

131
Chantal Akerman’s first feature film, Je, tu, il, elle (1974), is
divided into three distinct segments (the title implies four, but
the film leaves the tu/you enigmatic). The first section features
an unnamed young woman (referred to as “Julie” only in the
end credits), played by Akerman, alone in a sparsely furnished
room. The woman attempts to write a letter, but her writing
process is marked by hesitation, boredom, frustration, and delay.
She writes and rewrites pages and arranges them on the floor,
takes her clothes off and on, moves furniture, lies down on a
mattress, and eats sugar out of a bag with a spoon. All the while,
a voiceover narration interrupts the otherwise static, precisely
composed long takes.
The scene is radical on multiple grounds: first, because it deviates
from the cinematic tendency to illustrate the creative process
through a montage of feverish activity, instead marking the
intervals between actions as significant; second, because the
images of the woman alone in the room stress an insatiable desire
for connection that drives her artistic efforts (rather than an end
product), yet the voiceover’s explicit address to the anonymous
“you” is ambiguous; and finally, because the often-naked woman
onscreen does not appeal to the desires of a male producer or
viewer. She does not strike “sexy” poses gleaned from popular
culture; her nakedness seems to result from her own preference.
Akerman’s cinematic choices are deceptively straightforward;
simple shots and understated editing mask highly complex
ideas about creativity, sexuality, and desire. Take her treatment
of sexuality and the female body; in several images from Je,
tu, il, elle, the framing and posture of Julie’s naked body are
reminiscent of the traditional function of naked women in
Western art, yet they simultaneously highlight the uniqueness of
this particular female body, which represents her desires, rather
than appealing to external measurements of sexiness. Writer
Gary Indiana commented on Akerman’s treatment of the body
in WACK! Art and The Feminist Revolution, a collection of essays
and art edited by Cornelia Butler and Lisa Gabrielle Mark: “In
"AKERMAN’S CINEMATIC CHOICES ARE DECEPTIVELY
STRAIGHTFORWARD; SIMPLE SHOTS AND TRANSITIONS
IN FACT COVER HIGHLY COMPLEX IDEAS ABOUT
CREATIVIT Y, SEXUALIT Y, AND DESIRE."
Je, tu, il, elle, ostensibly erotic, voyeuristic material is flattened
out and drained of any pornographic interest by the detachment
of the medium-long shot, by framing that crops the sexually
active areas of the actor’s bodies, and, in its final sequences,
by exhausting the voyeuristic regard, depleting one variety of
visual pleasure, replacing it with the pleasure of abstraction.”
Akerman often used distinct framing and long takes to shift
viewers’ perspectives on sexual images, which could otherwise
have provoked more predictable responses.
The formal elements highlighted above are not unique to
Je, tu, il, elle. Akerman’s other films also prompt viewers to
speculate about the intentions behind her artistic choices, which
mainstream films typically conceal (e.g., through continuity
editing). Akerman spoke about the motivations behind these
choices in the 2010 documentary, Chantal Akerman, From
Here: “When people are enjoying a film, they say, ‘I didn’t see
the time go by,’ but I think that when time flies and you don’t
see time passing by, you’re robbed of an hour and a half or two
hours of your life. Because all you have in life is time. With
my films, you’re aware of every second passing through your
body.” She obviously intended her unorthodox filmmaking
strategies to impact viewers in unexpected ways and to prompt
reflection on the artistic process and spectatorship. Akerman’s
groundbreaking work in the 1970s (produced while she was
only in her 20s) received unprecedented accolades from film
critics and practitioners in male-dominated professions, thus
cementing her place in the film canon. She was quickly deemed
an exceptional filmmaker because of the relative dearth of female
directors when she came on the scene and the critical acclaim
for her most praised work, the 1975 film Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai
du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles.
My perspective on Akerman’s reputation as an exceptional
filmmaker has been strongly impacted by her well-documented
resistance to the labels frequently attached to her work, namely
“feminist” and “queer.” On multiple occasions, Akerman referred
Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080
Bruxelles. 1975
© Paradise films
Courtesy of Royal Film Archives, Brussels
Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080
Bruxelles. 1975
Courtesy of Paradise films
"IT WAS THE ONLY WAY TO SHOOT…THAT FILM—TO AVOID
CUT TING THE WOMAN INTO A HUNDRED PIECES, TO AVOID
CUT TING THE ACTION IN A HUNDRED PL ACES, TO LOOK
CAREFULLY AND TO BE RESPECTFUL."
to these reductive descriptions as “ghettoizing.” “She was a gay
woman—proudly, unabashedly—who refused to be placed in
either category,” wrote writer and Akerman collaborator, Henry
Bean, in an essay for The Forward (published after Akerman’s
death), adding that she would refuse to show her work in queer
or women’s festivals. I was reminded of Akerman’s strong stance
on exceptionality when, during a December 2015 lecture
by European film scholar Henry Bacon, a female filmmaker
interrupted to voice her objection to his bulleted list of all-male
directors, which illustrated the successful use of cinematic style
to express existential concerns. When the woman challenged
Bacon to add a female director to his list, I immediately thought,
‘he’s going to name Chantal Akerman,’ and a moment later,
he did. This is not to say that I’m clairvoyant; on the contrary,
Akerman’s default status as the visionary female film director
whose work is on par with master innovators of film form
made the response predictable. But to cite her as a postscript
is a backhanded compliment, suggesting that, while she isn’t a
primary example, she could belong on the list if a female director
was required. This inclusion after the fact illustrates the problem
with labeling Akerman as exceptional—doing so marginalizes
more than celebrates her work.
For better or worse, and in spite of Akerman’s aversion to labels,
the notoriety of Jeanne Dielman overshadows the rest of her
filmography and is frequently the go-to example for feminist
cinema in introductory film courses. For a sense of the film’s
hyperbolic reception and premiere status in the Western film
canon, you need only skim the Wikipedia pages on Chantal
Akerman and Jeanne Dielman. The following frequently recycled
quotation appears on the page for Jeanne Dielman: “Upon its
release, The New York Times called it the ‘first masterpiece of the
feminine in the history of the cinema.’” Meanwhile, the entry
for Chantal Akerman reads, “Akerman’s most significant film,
Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles [is] often
considered one of the great feminist films.” In much of the
writing on Jeanne Dielman, hyperbole abounds.
Jeanne Dielman has, like Akerman, been shaped by the double-
edged sword of exceptionalism. Set apart according to a set
of specific criteria, the film has become constrained by those
criteria over time. Pigeonholing Jeanne Dielman does a disservice
to Akerman’s other works, which are under-screened, even by
film scholars and teachers. And to students, who often receive
an under-historicized, under-contextualized introduction to
this unusual, groundbreaking film, the title of Ivone Margulies’
scholarly book on Chantal Akerman could seem apt: Nothing
Happens (Nothing Happens: Chantal Akerman’s Hyperrealist
Everyday provides the most detailed analysis of the mundane in
Akerman’s films.)
There was one label, however, Akerman always accepted: “She
never refused the ghetto of Judaism,” said Bean. “She was, it
sometimes seemed, a Jew before she was anything, even before
she was a person, and she was more of a person than anybody
I’ve known.” Her mother, Nelly Akerman, was an Auschwitz
survivor, a fact that adds weight to Akerman’s use of the term
“ghetto” to fight against restrictive art labels; through the term,
Akerman argues that separating specific groups from the norm
is dangerously isolating, rather than complimentary. In her essay
“The Long Journey: Maternal Trauma, Tears and Kisses in a Work
by Chantal Akerman,” scholar Griselda Pollock writes, “Akerman
belongs to what is called a second generation who experience the
normal unspoken transmissions between parents and children,
except that what appears to be part of the cultural passing on is
massive trauma; that which the parents do not tell, or even know
to tell.” Undoubtedly, Akerman’s films attend closely to mothers,
and her awareness of her mother being singled out for her Jewish
identity colored her strong opinions on categorization.
Lauren C. Byrd’s entry on Chantal Akerman (in her blog titled
“52 Weeks of Directors”) includes some interesting details
about Jeanne Dielman’s production: “Akerman, who was 25,
has said she was able to make a film about a woman–an older,
widowed woman–because, ‘at that point, everyone was talking
about women’ and that it was ‘the right time.’” Akerman’s bold
approach to a subject that cinema had conventionally neglected
is balanced by the sophistication of the film’s structure, design,
and execution. Akerman explains the film’s extreme long takes,
three hour plus running time, and clinical compositions in
WACK: “It was the only way to shoot the film—to avoid cutting
the woman into a hundred pieces, to avoid cutting the action
in a hundred places, to look carefully and to be respectful. The
framing was meant to respect the space, her, and her gestures
within it.” Her intent to focus on an “older, widowed woman”—
not as a revolutionary statement, but in keeping with the interests
of her time—resonates with film scholar Janet Bergstrom’s
commentary on this era of film studies, which she describes
as defined by sustained attention to female representation
and authorship (in “Chantal Akerman: Heartfelt,” published in
Sense of Cinema, volume 77). Akerman’s use of an all-female
crew is further evidence of her audacity. As she explains in
Criterion Collection: Chantal Akerman  on Jeanne Dielman, “It
was important at the time that 80% of the crew be women.
But people didn’t trust a woman cinematographer, for example.
It was really considered a man’s job. Female sound recordists
practically didn’t exist. There were script girls, and women that
were editors or in charge of wardrobe or makeup. But there was
no one for lighting. Quite a few positions were very much off
limits to women. So I wanted to show that it was entirely possible.
So we did.” She clearly delighted in overturning expectations.
During a heated, post-screening class debate about Les
rendez-vous d’anna—my favorite Akerman film—I came to the
disappointing realization that many of my students, including
most of the women, didn’t like the film or Anna, its main
character. They used many clichéd euphemisms (“I didn’t find
her character relatable”), but the gist was that they didn’t like
her the way they liked many female characters in mainstream
cinema; ultimately, their dislike resulted in a rejection of Anna,
whose character they criticized as detached, reserved, and
unappealing. In the film, Anna rarely visibly empathizes with the
people she converses with, who volunteer unusually intimate,
psychologically sensitive details about themselves without
prompt while Anna remains silent. If Anna had expressed
sympathy toward those she encountered, would students have
liked Anna more and consequently approved of her other
characteristics—notably, her sexual fluidity? The discussion left
me feeling frustrated at mainstream conventions that continually
limit female representations and make experimenting with
unusual female characters risky.
Akerman’s work radically illustrates issues of identity and
sexuality. Complex existential concerns ground Akerman’s style,
which unrelentingly focuses on the basic elements of human
experience and its boundaries in space and time. In an interview
with Bergstrom (in 1976), Akerman explained her position on
“feminist” film: “I do think [Jeanne Dielman is] a feminist film
because I give room to the things that were never, almost never,
shown in that way. Like the daily gestures of a woman, which are
the lowest in the hierarchy in movies . . . [But] I don’t think we
know enough about women’s film even to . . . speak in a general
theoretical way at all.” Luckily, many women have made films
since Akerman’s statement; however, the vast majority of films
continue to be directed (and produced) by men, making the act
of watching a female-directed film in 2016 still exceptional.
The world-weary Anna in Les rendez-vous d’anna (1978) is often
thought to resemble Akerman, who at the time of production
was, like the character, a pioneering female director trudging
around Europe promoting her films and collecting answering-
machine messages in her empty Paris apartment. Anna appears
emotionally drained at points in the film, which suggests that
being a pioneering female film director is not easy. Surely it
would be less exhausting to be one of many female film directors,
so that the specific qualities of your work receive more attention
than your gender or sexuality.