She's Come Undone: Chantal Akerman's Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975) and Countercinema
2007; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 24; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/10509200500486304
ISSN1543-5326
Autores Tópico(s)African history and culture studies
ResumoClick to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size R. Patrick Kinsman teaches in the department of Comparative Literature at Indiana University, where he teaches film adaptation, and is writing a dissertation on international countercinema. Notes 1Countercinema tends to be understood, following Wollen's essay, as referring to a heterogeneous, self-reflexive, Brechtian film aesthetic, paradigmatically evident in the late sixties work of Godard. Ivone Margulies, while avoiding the word 'countercinema,' describes Akerman's aesthetic as "post-Godardian" in its minimalist homogeneity—not because it supercedes Godard's work but because it is "a reassessment of the axiomatic equation of politicized art with certain formal and rhetorical strategies" (58). My reading of Jeanne Dielman centers on Johnston's definition of countercinematic practice, which is sympathetic to that of Wollen (1972) and of Comolli/Narboni (1969); nevertheless, it does not intend to privilege Johnston as giving the accurate definition of countercinema. 2Many of Akerman's films seem to give great attention to either gesture, space or both (see Saute Ma Ville (1968), Hotel Monterey (1972), Je Tu Il Elle (1974), News from Home (1977), Les Rendezvous d'Anna (1978), and J'ai Faim J'ai Froid (1984)). Where there is containment, gesture within space feels claustrophobic; where there is transition, spaces seem grand and alien. All of the above films can be seen as operating within roughly these two characterizations. 3See, respectively, Kinder, "Reflections on 'Jeanne Dielman'," the first section of Loader, "Death in Installments," and Flitterman-Lewis, "What's Behind her Smile?" although it should be noted that many feminist critics find it necessary to wrestle with the jouissance/murder question. 4Cited in Margulies, Nothing Happens: Chantal Akerman's Hyperrealist Everyday, 217, note 16. 5Cited in Margulies, 232, note 76. 6Cited in Martin, "Chantal Akerman's Films: A Dossier," 38. 7Some saw the murder scene as a sell-out to Hollywood-style drama: Jonas Mekas, on seeing the film, asked why Akerman had "commercialized it" by including the murder. From Margulies, 241, note 54. 8This paragraph is heavily indebted to—and is a very brief summary of—a compelling and in-depth argument made about the film by Ivone Margulies, particularly in chapters 3 and 5 of Nothing Happens. 9Akerman has repeatedly said that the film shows these gestures because they are not often shown, and that this is why the film can be said to be feminist (see Martin, 24). At one point she even says that Jeanne Dielman is a love song to her mother. Without going as far as intentional fallacy, there is evidence that Akerman herself finds housework distasteful at best: from Saute Ma Ville (1968) to Jeanne Dielman, housework is combined with disaster (alternately played comically and tragically). In Akerman's later films, women are in transition (Les Rendezvous d'Anna (1978), J'ai Faim J'ai Froid (1984)) and are not located in "their own" domestic space. 10It is possible—given that Akerman acknowledges Godard's Pierrot le Fou as a primary influence—that the idea for Jeanne's prostitution grew from the same Nouvel Observateur articles from which Godard took a central idea for 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her (1966). Housewives were turning to prostitution to make money for appliances (basically, to "keep up with the Joneses"). For those pieces, see Margulies, 239, n. 18. 11Quoted in Martin, 42–3. Martin translates 'acte manqué' as 'mistake' but also notes that it comes from Freud and has "officially been translated as parapraxis," which means "Freudian slip." 12Cited in Margulies, 241, n. 49. 13Margulies cites Akerman as saying, "When she bangs the glass on the table and you think the milk might spill, that's as dramatic as the murder" (65). Few viewers are likely to grant Akerman this. In Margulies' reading, the 'actes manqués' are equivalent: tousled hair is as good as murder. The murder, in my reading, is in the film to make irrevocably clear that Jeanne's routine has failed—to show what Margulies calls "unco-optable alterity." The murder is the proof of the entire routine's arationality.
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