The first Akerman film I watched was her most famous film "Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai Du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles." I hated this movie. I'll tell you why. A big part of movie-watching for me is entertainment. I want to watch things that stimulate me visually, emotionally and intellectually. That's simply not the case in a movie where almost nothing happens for at least 180 of its 200 minutes. We spend hours watching Jeanne clean her house in real time. I understand that the statement is meant to be that these everyday chores and activities say just as much as a conventional storytelling plot line, but I just don't agree. I also didn't much like the bedroom scene toward the end of the film. It was meant probably to shock the audience and punctuate the lonely repression that is Jeanne's life, but it came too far out of left field for my liking. There was no real build to this moment and its randomness just didn't fit the rest of the almost non-existent storyline that was playing out. That's not to say that I think this movie is all bad or completely worthless. I consider it a conceptually and thematically important film. Its clearly feminist themes are compelling and identifiable. I find brilliance in the symmetry of every shot and the eye-level viewpoint that makes the happenings all the more real.
Next I watched "The Captive", a newer release. This is an adaptation of a Proust novel, but I haven't read the book so I can't comment on how well the filmmaker tansmitted the themes and mood from the source material. Judging it solely as a film, I loved this story. The protagonist Simon becomes obsessed with fully knowing his lover Ariane. As he follows her around town, almost as a detective looking for clues, he tries to figure out if she cares for him or has homosexual feelings. The statements on male jealousy, insecurity and obsession are so subtley brought forward that you don't even feel the filmmaker unfolding it. You feel only the characters. The slow pace of the film mirrors the gnawing doubt or the protagonist, bringing to the mind the question: Who is really the Captive in this relationship? If there's any part of this film I less than loved it would be the ending, though even that had congruency, as the final scene is set on the same beach as the event that initiated Simon's investigation.
Lastly I watched "Je Tu Il Elle", Akerman's first feature film. This, too, felt like too much of a neorrealist waste of time. The first 30 mins literally take place in the protagonist's (played by Akerman herself) bedroom where she performs ordinary task, half of which naked. Finally she leaves the room and proceeds to hitchhike, accepting a ride from a trucker. The two ride together for seemingly a long while. All of it is pretty boring with dark, fuzzy, long, uncomfortable takes. In the final 20 minute or so sequence of the film the protagonist reaches her apparent destination, the apartment of a female friend, who feeds her and makes love to her. The film seems to me to be about the search for identity in relationship to sexuality and the concept of home. The protagonist never finds a home and the film ends with her leaving the apartment for who knows where.
Though I only have these three films to judge off of, it feels to me like Akerman makes very unified work. You know what you're going to get with one of her films, more or less. The variable for me is whether or not she will make it likeable.
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