Jeanne Dielman is considered director Chantal Akerman’s magnum opus and, since its release, has become a cult feminist masterpiece. At over three hours long, it’s already not an easy watch and it is made tougher by the fact it is a very slow movie.
The lead character of Jeanne is played by Delphine Seyrig and we are very much inserted into a certain three days of her life. Akerman deliberately makes us spend time with Jeanne in order to understand her as a human and sympathise with her. But that means we spend a lot of time with Jeanne.
When Jeanne peels potatoes, we sit and watch her peel potatoes for five minutes. When Jeanne is having a bath, we sit and watch her wash herself for ten minutes. Much of the movie is taken up by non-events, everyday events that are never normally depicted on screen, yet events we spend most of our real life doing.
Because of this, Jeanne (and the audience) spends most of the time in isolation. There are only the occasional smatters of dialogue. Jeanne’s son, Sylvain, (Jan Decorte) eats dinner with her, but doesn’t have much to say himself. Jeanne takes the odd trip to the shop and has more of a conversation with a shopkeeper than with Sylvain. In order to make ends meet, Jeanne also has sex with male clients - and there isn’t much room for conversation there, either.
It’s a rigorous and often infuriating watch. There shouldn’t exactly be much entertainment value in watching someone perform mundane acts for over three hours, yet Akerman occasionally finds something for us to latch onto. The relationship between Jeanne and Slyvain is integral - having seen Jeanne get up to nothing the whole day, we want Sylvain to empathise and have a conversation with his own mother but, of course, he hasn’t seen what we have. It would be odd to say this was entertaining or even enjoyable - it is more of a tedious experience, but an unregrettable one. The ending is naturally divisive, but the ending isn’t the point. It’s the journey that is important; a long one but a thought-provoking one. Score: 65/100