hunger and
thirst
Chantal Akerman (writer and
director) Je tu
il elle (I you he she) / 1975
Chantal Akerman’s death by suicide
in October 2015, led me to revisit many of her films and to watch new ones,
among them Je tu il elle of 1975.
This film begins with a kind of reverse creation myth, as the filmed figure and
narrator (Akerman herself) describes her activities for six days, as she pulls
her furniture out of the small, narrow apartment she has apparently just moved
into, writes a long letter—presumably to the “tu” (perhaps the film viewers
themselves) of the film’s title—after which she crosses much of it out, lays
her manuscript in an inexplicable manner across the floor, and almost manically
spoons from a bag of sugar. At times, the narrative voice runs ahead of the
visual actions; at other moments it lags behind, creating tension. As she lies
on the mattress nude for days at a time, that first week gradually expanding to
nearly a month, what becomes apparent is that this woman is completely
self-destructive. She waits, so the narrative voice proclaims, for something to
happen which, except for a passerby staring into her window, never comes.
He says very little but suggests she may want to take a nap in his bunk.
Later they visit a local bar where a TV set blares out American series’ such as
Cannon, whose characters, strangely, spout aphorisms such as “a child of fear
is the father of evil.”
In short, the truck driver relates his own anti-creation tale, one that
shall surely lead, like Julie’s own apartment isolation, to disappointment.
Certainly, this man’s idea of sexual gratification—entirely
self-centered—offers nothing to the world. Akerman frames the encounter so that
we do not even see Julie while she is pleasuring him, her existence having been
wiped out in the act.
I found the long act to be one of the most graphically loving sex scenes
I have ever witnessed; the women seemed to me to be passionate in each other’s
embrace, this last scene representing a true fulfillment of the hunger and
thirst that Julie had imposed upon herself. Presumably, she will remain with
the woman she had mistakenly left. It is clear that, at last, Julie has
returned home to someone with whom she can create a life.
The closing score reconfirms this with a lovely French song, suggesting
one should “kiss whom you please.”
Los
Angeles, July 10, 2016
Reprinted from Hyperallegic Weekend (August
13, 2016).
No comments:
Post a Comment