Jaitower

4/10

his short film is yet another experimental work in Akerman's filmography. In it, a camera cyclically roams an old house, where we find Chantal lying on a bed. At first glance, if one knows a bit about the director’s body of work, one might think this is a feminist statement, a critique of the stigmatization of the domestic role that society has imposed on women throughout history, and of how the world—or inner world, the intimate space created by four walls—comes to a halt the moment a woman chooses to rest from the burdens she has been made to carry. All of this is filmed in a Proustian manner, seeking to capture a single moment of life in a seemingly endless long take—a poetic harmony between plot time and real time. But… is that really the case? Let’s see. The camera is generally like an invisible observer in the scene: present within the setting, but unseen by the characters. It’s as though we’re watching the story through a hole in the wall, without intruding on the world of the protagonists. However, this case is an exception. Chantal looks directly at the camera. Does this mean the camera is the point of view of someone physically present? If so, the short film consists of what a person sees as they merely circle around for twelve minutes. It doesn’t make sense. Each to their own opinion, but I side with Goethe. He believed that works requiring extrinsic knowledge do not deserve study, as it implies that, if a message exists, it lies in the artist rather than in the work itself. In the German playwright’s words, albeit through Eckermann: Art should appeal to universal aesthetic experience, so that the understanding of its content is accessible directly to the viewer or reader, without the interpretation depending on external information. In this case, a silent film, without explanations or symbols and which fails to justify the camera’s cyclical movement, hardly merits the applause of its audience.