Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
"Elle tue le phallus. Pas forcément le phallus d’ailleurs. Ça aurait pu se produire aussi avec une femme. Mais elle tue le plaisir. Elle jouit une première fois. Elle pense que ça ne se reproduira pas. Et elle jouit une seconde fois. Cette jouissance défait l’ordre de son monde. Jusque-là, le plaisir tenait dans la reconduction quotidienne des mêmes rituels. Si on touche à ça, si quelque chose surgit en dehors de la ritualisation de son existence, alors elle devient folle."--" Jean-Marc Lalanne in 2007 in Les inrocks, English translation in Memorializing and Decolonizing Practices in the Francophone Caribbean and Other Spaces edited by Stéphanie Melyon-Reinette "Jeanne Dielman (1975) and Neil Jordan's Mona Lisa (1986). But we must guess that it is not the 'sex-for-money' aspect of the oldest profession or, pace Buñuel, the marvellous bodies of its practitioners, that makes Belle de jour so" |
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Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975) is a film by Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman. It tells the story of a housewife, her son and the clients she receives during afternoons for sex work, one of which she kills after what seems an involuntary orgasm.
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Plot
At 201 minutes, Jeanne Dielman examines a single mother's regimented schedule of cooking, cleaning and mothering over three days.
The mother, Jeanne Dielman (whose name is only derived from the title), also prostitutes herself to a male client daily (Henri Storck (first customer), Jacques Doniol - Valcroze (second customer), Yves Bical (third customer)) for her and her son's subsistence.
Like her other activities Jeanne's prostitution is rote and uneventful. The picture's third day witnesses Jeanne's routine benignly unravel with events like dropping a newly washed spoon and appearing at businesses before opening.
These alterations to Jeanne's existence climax when following coitus with the third client during which she orgasms Jeanne stabs the male customer in the neck with scissors.
Its plot is analyzed thoroughly in Afterimages: On Cinema, Women and Changing Times (2019) by Laura Mulvey.
Reception
In December 2022, it was ranked the greatest film of all time in Sight & Sound magazine's "Top 100 Greatest Films" list, becoming the fourth film to do so after Bicycle Thieves, Citizen Kane, and Vertigo.
Upon its release, the New York Times called Jeanne Dielman the "first masterpiece of the feminine in the history of the cinema." Chantal Akerman scholar Ivone Margulies asserts the picture is a filmic paradigm for uniting "feminism and anti-illusionism." The film was named the 19th greatest film of the 20th Century by the Village Voice.
Jeanne Dielman's static framing, extended duration takes and lack of reversal shots force the viewer to objectively experience its protagonist and her social role's oppression. Through exposure to "images between the images" Akerman forges new content that, resultantly, requires new form. Though the filmmaker's static frame and extended duration shots stem from structural cinema, their unique application to women's domestic work position Jeanne Dielman outside dominant patriarchal film languages and into one specifically "feminist." The picture inverts normal filmic expectations by removing drama from emotional intensity and attaching it to extended duration takes - takes, that is, connotative of boredom. Jeanne Dielman's temporal dilation equalizes its exposition and drama to transform "knowledge of an object" - Jeanne's oppression - into a "vision" of it.
Cast
- Delphine Seyrig as Jeanne Dielman
- Jan Decorte as Sylvain Dielman
- Henri Storck as the first client
- Jacques Doniol-Valcroze as the second client
- Yves Bical as the third client
See also