Thanks to Turner Classic Movies I have begun seeing Chantal Akerman's work before and beyond Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du commerce, 1080, Bruxelles (see my post of July 7 2014), including Je Tu Il Elle, made the year before Jeanne Dielman, when Akerman was 24. It's a film in three parts: Akerman alone in her bare apartment eating sugar and writing letters; Akerman hitching a ride with a truck driver and listening to him recount the woes of working-class married life; Akerman with her girlfriend, eating and making love. The first and third parts are shot in high contrast black-and-white; the middle part takes place on the truck and rest -stops and is in grainy black-and-white.
The film is effectively downbeat, with Akerman finding life alone or with another woman or a man to be unsatisfying and at the end just walks out on her girlfriend, presumably to look elsewhere. There is little dialogue and Akerman's narration in the first part is disorienting, as she describes in the present tense things that have already happened or are yet to happen. In the second part the truck driver does all the talking while in the third part Akerman only speaks when she wants another sandwich and her lover hardly speaks at all, the implication being that we are all alone in this world, a common theme in Akerman's films, made with static shots and little camera movement. Je seems to mean Akerman, Tu is the viewer, Il is the truck driver and Elle is the girlfriend.
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