Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles

Godard once said, and I agree with him, that the best films take place halfway between you and the screen.  No film better illustrates this than Chantal Akerman's Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles. It was made in 1975 but not shown in America until the early 80's, when I saw it at the Film Forum and then again at the Museum of Modern Art.  Its minimalist style and 201-minute running time have put some people off, but I find the film constantly engaging and beautiful, influenced as it is by Ozu and his static camera as well as Preminger and his long takes. We see widow Dielman go about her extremely orderly routines, as the camera remains in one position, without cuts, in each room, as she makes a meatloaf, takes a bath, makes her bed, does the dishes. She has one different visitor each day, who pays her for sex, and when her son comes home from school they converse briefly about his father, read Baudelaire and listen to classical music on the radio.  Her son does not seem to have a room of his own and stays in the living/dining room to do his homework and to sleep on a pull-out couch.  Dielman (played by Delphine Seyrig) goes out every day to shop and to have coffee at a café and the exterior shots have a geometric beauty, with a bench on a square in the foreground and white, green and blue cars in the background, while the geometry of the tiny elevator to her apartment and the apartment's grey wallpaper seem to enclose and trap her.

The film takes place over three days and by the third day the routine and order has started to deteriorate:  Dielman drops the brush while shining her son's shoes, her son notices she has a button unbuttoned on her housecoat, she drops a piece of silverware and lets the potatoes cook too long.  When she goes out to shop the butcher is closed and when she sits down for coffee at the café the camera is where it was the day before but there is someone else in her seat and she has to sit on the right side of the frame, with a stranger now in the center.

When Akerman' s film came out it was seen as some kind of feminist statement but when I saw it again recently on Turner Classic Movies it seems to be much more than that.  It's about, among other things, how difficult it can be to maintain perfect order in an entropic world.