Je Tu Il Elle (1974)

Directed by Chantal Akerman. Starring Chantal Akerman, Niels Arestrup, Claire Wauthion.

Akerman’s first (finished) feature-length film is a black & white avant-garde experiment that will quickly test the patience of most viewers; it’s an alienating experience, full of static and lingering camera shots, navel-gazing naturalism, cumbersome symbolism, and voyeuristic castigations. Separated into three acts where the unnamed lead (credited as “Julie” and played by the director) lingers alone in a room coping with a breakup and writing a letter and eating sugar out of a bag before finally leaving; afterward, she spends time with a trucker (Arestrup) and then a woman (Wauthion) who is most likely the former lover that she was writing to back at the beginning. Self-possessed filmmaking, a studied case of isolation yearning for connection, with conversations and narration whittled down to simple yet abstruse statements. It’s easy to make an emperor-has-no-clothes argument in this case, and not just because the protagonist is frequently naked (as it must be for such a raw and honest self-examination, yes?). Credit is due the director for filming (and performing in) an eleven-minute lesbian scene that never once panders to the male gaze; wholly lacking in eroticism, it has the effect of watching animals in the wild grapple with each other amid the mating ritual.

44/100