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Article: Art house films
- Article from:
- Chicago Sun-Times
- Article date:
- April 17, 2009
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright (c) 2009 Chicago Sun-Times, Inc. (Hide copyright information)
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Opening this week on the local film-society circuit:
'Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles' Rating 4 out of 4
Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman asks a lot of her audience: for over three hours, study three days in the life of Jeanne (Delphine Seyrig) doing the same things the same ways each day -- almost. Akerman and cinematographer Babette Mangolte frame her domestic routine with an exactitude that magnifies any exception.
With a masterly use of scale, Akerman crafts a clinical look at a middle-class, middle-aged woman who undergoes an internal cataclysm. Each afternoon -- while her teenage son is at school -- a client arrives for a weekly appointment in Jeanne's neat ...