Jeanne Dielman, 23 Commerce Quay, 1080 Bruxelles is a film structured around the daily routine of a seemingly ordinary single housewife. She runs errands, prepares healthy meals for her son, and prostitutes herself in what appears to be the household's solitary source of income. Meanwhile, Jeanne's son appears to be oblivious to exactly how much effort his mother puts into his well-being, focusing on his studying and fitting in with the other students at his school- an act which distances himself from his upbringing and his mother. The film follows Jeanne for three days as her meticulous schedule slowly falls apart around her as she makes mistakes that are frustrating in their simplicity, building tension that ultimately culminates in a climax and bloodshed.The film uses immobile wide shots that never once pan or zoom in to better track the character's in the film. Through the camera usage, the viewers are the epitome of flies on the wall- able to do nothing but watch as Jeanne goes about her routine methodically in real time, adding to the idea of Jeanne being imprisoned in her role as a single mother. Once Jeanne starts cooking a meal, the camera will stay where it is positioned, with no cuts, until the task is complete. With a lesser actress, the static camera could easily result in a disinterested audience, but instead, Delphine Seyrig's sedate actions create a sense of peace and routine that is nearly hypnotizing in its predictability. When this predictability is interrupted, the disturbance is momentous to both the viewers and Jeanne.The film, shot by an all-female crew, upholds unerringly feminist themes. Jeanne appears to have no real friends or interactions outside of her son, her clients, and the occasional shopkeeper. Without exaggeration, all of Jeanne's time is spent bettering the life of her son; she cooks, she cleans, she sells her body for cash- something that is clearly shown to be just another task in her day, rather than something Jeanne enjoys doing. When these tasks are complete, Jeanne is visually shown to be at a loss, sitting silently for long periods of time with no activity. The length of each shot helps the viewer understand exactly how much time Jeanne is forced to be on her own. The time spent idle is not sugarcoated in any way and is used instead to display how unhealthy the isolation is for Jeanne. She is trapped in the role of being a single parent and with that responsibility comes the loss of her individuality. Jeanne's lack of person-hood and frustrated loneliness eventually come to a head with a burst of violence that seems almost inevitable.Despite being over three hours of slow moving, ordinary chores being preformed over the course of three days, Jeanne Dielman is not a film to be missed. Seyrig's quiet performance explores what it means to loose one's self in the daily grind of life, inevitably leaving the viewer with a lingering sense of melancholia long after the film ends.

Rare is it that a movie is so true to life that it crosses the line into "cinéma vérité", or rather reality movies. Jeanne Dielman (...) offers a perfect example of this phenomenon. Its namesake is a widow raising her young son, Sylvain. We see her go through her routine, implacably and relentlessly. She wakes up, makes coffee, prepares supper, takes care of another woman's child for a short time and breaks the drudgery by selling herself for a short time in the mid-day before her son returns from school.The camera stays in focus on Jeanne and her environment throughout the whole affair. Rarely do we see her out of her apartment and even more rarely do we hear her speak. The silence is nearly oppressive, filled with household noises and street noises but naught else. However, the keen observer will notice subtle differences during the second of three days presented in the film. After she takes her second caller, her behaviour changes, coming to a head on the morning of the third day. Is the milk at fault, is it the coffee or is it her? We find out only mid-day through, when we peek into the otherwise shut door that hid her encounters with her callers.Intertwined in all of this is her relationship with Sylvain, who reads during supper and speaks of sex in such a manner that is telling to us as we know what Jeanne does, but he does not. "I'd never sleep with a man I would not love if I were a woman." "But you are not a woman..." and there we have the power of truth exposing the lie, as her words about her former husband belie her current state.Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles is masterful, rewarding your attention and challenging you to pay attention to every detail as only then will your concentration be rewarded. The film clocks in at three hours and some, each hour being a day in Jeanne's life. Not an easy film to watch, but a must-see nonetheless.

As we see Jeanne, doing her daily chores, there is a hypnotic effect on us. We are transfixed by her grace. We observe her for three days of her life. At the end of the first day, it is clear that she wants to be in control of everything she does. She cannot let go of the authority she has over her own life.The movie was released in 1975 at the Cannes Film Festival. After making a series of short films, it was the first full length feature of Chantal Akerman. As a quintessential piece of feminism, the movie is as moving as it was four decades ago. Delphine Seyrig, playing Jeanne Dielman, gives a performance of a lifetime. Her expressions convey things that many conversations cannot. As she gets lost due to things spiraling out of her control, her face shows a growing sad desperation.The camera never moves. It remains stationary at various positions as we watch Jeanne doing her daily chores. As well as being used as an objective observer, the camera also functions as a door into the mind of Jeanne. The camera position is especially significant when her client comes in the afternoon. We see the door of her room from of a dark corridor to signify her disdain for the sex she has in that room. She keeps the money from the client in a bowl of the table. When her son comes, the tablecloth is spread on the other side and the camera only shows that part of the table as if Jeanne wants to block the source of her income from her son. Observing her perfection, we are sure as viewers that she can earn money from some other way if she wants. But why does she not? Jeane herself answers it. When Jeanne's son tells her, "If I were a woman, I wouldn't be able to sleep with someone I didn't love". She replies, "You don't know.You are not a woman. " She was made to marry her husband by her aunts for money even though he was ugly. So in a way she was made to sleep with someone she did not love for money. She does the same after his death. How is one thing noble and the other immoral?A lot has been said about the camera and Jeanne's activities, but who is she? Though she does work of household like other women do, there is a big difference between them and her. She wants to be the master of her life. But after her spoon drops off, and her potatoes get overcooked, she is unable to get in control of things. The next day she is not able to find buttons for a jacket. The coffee tastes sour.. The place where she sits in the cafe is taken and the waitress she knows has ended her shift. All these things go contrary to her desires. After the unexpected orgasm during another of her daily routine, she ends up doing something very drastic. But the question arises, what does the director want to convey with this? Though, there is no definite answer for this (the beauty of the movie lies in that), for me Jeanne Dielman is the perfect feminist. After her husband's death, she has done everything to be in full control of her destiny. In the end, Jeanne Dielman rebels against the society in which she does not have full control over her actions. It is a metaphor for the lack of control women have on their life because of men.One more subtle thing that is very prominent throughout the movie is the presence of women in almost every shop Jeanne visits. The only places where men are present, are places where you need to have some skill. In contrast women are present at places where mundane things have to be done (like bringing a cup of coffee, finding buttons, wool or groceries) to reflect the lack of importance given to women in the society.The movie has the touch of Yasujirô Ozu, the depth of Andrei Tarkovsky. There are some painful scenes that stay unforgettable (like that old woman trying to get the attention of the attendant to get her work done without screaming out loud like men do). Few movies linger on your mind for days and selected few linger on for years. This definitely belongs to the latter.Check out my blog at: http://djslim7.wordpress.com/

The artistic merits of the dissection of mundane, everyday life are not an unworthy aspiration, but Chantal Akerman's Jeanne Dielman takes the concept and runs it very thoroughly into the ground. Rather than establish mundane life on the normal cinematic scale and give the audience something manageable like a 20 or 30 minute setup to show just how boring and oppressive Jeanne Dielman's life is, Akerman opts to ignore any proper dramatic possibilities and just go straight for jugular (the boredom jugular). A 3 and 1/2 hour film about almost nothing. Jeanne Dielman is built mostly around themes and undertones of feminist oppression, but it lacks any kind of proper plot to give it a dramatic push. It cannot be discounted that plots as thin as "a housewife does mundane work and feels oppressed" generally can produce some proper dramatic structure and thrust. The main problem with Jeanne Dielman is that Akerman plays up the mundane as a feature of the film as if to shove it in the audience's face and say "Here! Look at this! Aren't you bored? See how oppressed she is!". It's one thing to make the audience uncomfortable by letting them sit and watch for a little too long. It's quite another to completely abandon them and not consider that your message is being totally lost among the seemingly endless slog of the narrative. What's worse is that the characters are almost so unrealistically sad that it's hard to take the film seriously. The horrid nature of Dielman's oppressive life is basically melodrama without any of the drama. The plight of the main character would mean more if she actually acted like a person every now and then. As far as the audience is informed, she's suffered some sort of brain damage that prevents her from showing any emotion except bored and disinterested. If we are meant to care about the oppression of a character (and heaven forbid sit through 3 and 1/2 hours of it) we need to at least have some idea of who she is. As far as we know, her oppression is a prison of her own making because she isn't even interested in breaking free of it. Does this character want to escape the oppression? What better life awaits her if she does? Is she happy? Is she sad? When are we supposed to figure this out? All of that said, the biggest problem isn't that Akerman leaves so many important and necessary character details out, but it's what she leaves in the film. Specifically about 2 hours of completely superfluous footage. The sense of oppression and boredom can easily be conveyed in about 10 minutes. Filmmakers have been doing it almost literally since the beginning of filmmaking. However, instead of trying to use filmmaking in any kind of artistic manner to simulate the necessary to serve the story, Akerman just forgets that she's making a film and tries to put on some sort of exercise in incomprehensible boredom. She tries to transfer the boredom of the character to the audience member in order to gain the proper effect. The problem with this is that she doesn't seem to trust the audience to get it after the first day of mundane nothingness and has to continue to beat the audience over the head with it.