Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai de Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975)

Directed by Chantal Akerman

Women in Space and Time Part 2/3

(Her) Time

She gets up at 5 am, before anyone else in the house, and makes breakfast. Her movements are precise, she knows perfectly well what she’s doing (no bumbling about like a normal person at 5 a.m.). She navigates her bright and meticulously curated apartment in a spotless housecoat that she never needs to adjust. Her life is contained within these four walls and is entirely in service to her family, dog and, most importantly, her audience.

If you thought that I’m talking about Sight & Sound’s newly minted Greatest Film of All Time Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai de Commerce, 1080 Bruxelle, you’re mistaken (although you, dear reader, have most likely never seen this movie). Instead, I’ve been procrastinating writing about this 3-hour paragon of slow cinema by watching Honeyjubu, a very successful paragon of slow YouTube who is currently sitting at 2.1 million subscribers. But first things first.

5 A.M.

Jeanne Dielman is a 1975 movie in which we experience three days in the life of Jeanne Dielman (Delphine Seyrig), a housewife and single mother of her teenage son Sylvain (Jan Decorte). In these three days we see her clean, cook, and run errands in real time and in minute detail. Her routine is carried out with habitual robot-like precision. In the afternoons, before cooking dinner, she prostitutes herself, which seems like just another of her many daily tasks. By the time the mood starts to shift, her routine and quirks have become a familiar pattern, so when her perfect order starts to unravel, even the smallest detail becomes overbearingly important for assessing Jeanne’s mood and level of discomfort. After a particularly stressful third day, Jeanne snaps and we’re left wondering what will become of her and her daily routine.

The movie is written and directed by Chantal Akerman, who, in the span of her 30-year-long career, pioneered and perfected the art of slow avant-garde cinema. An art form that perceives time as a separate entity, not to be manipulated, but cherished and carefully coerced into filling out spaces as well as influencing the movement within these spaces. We watch Jeanne walk from room to room, cook and clean in long static shots, letting her tell her story, regardless of our gaze, by taking her time. To watch slow cinema is to surrender control to every scene and sound and to let your thoughts intermingle with anything the director chooses to show you. Not a simple task – excruciatingly boring for some, relaxing for others and even engaging for the very few (it’s me. I’m the few).

As with many a slow film, Jeanne Dielman is a very tactile experience. As the camera lingers on the pastel walls of Jeanne’s apartment, the frilly curtains, her fuzzy housecoat – masterfully lit by the cinematographer Babette Mangolte, Akerman’s long-time collaborator in all things avant-garde – you start to feel the air of the apartment the texture of its walls. As the action mostly unfolds within this single space, the lighting imitates the light’s progression from day to night, in such a natural fashion that I thought that the movie was shot without artificial lighting.

The same tactile experience goes for sound, as the movie doesn’t have a soundtrack, but opts for a rich soundscape instead. Every sound becomes part of Jeanne’s story, as we see her days unfold, in which the clattering of pots and pans, the rustle of her clients’ coats and the sound of her brushing her hair with furious intensity become a manner of communication with the outside world as well as with herself.

The movie consists of long uninterrupted scenes of all the things that are usually elided in movies, as Akerman shows us housework in ritualized regular patterns. Cooking, washing dishes and hands, making the bed – these particles of Jeanne’s universe are given careful consideration and attention to detail.

The infamous Schnitzel scene.

Take the first scene of the movie:

Day one starts in media res, as Jeanne habitually turns on the stove and puts some salt into the pot, not really registering the amount she puts in. The door bell rings and she removes her housecoat in two calm collected motions, without disturbing her cardigan underneath, before folding the housecoat and putting it away. As she opens the door, we see her torso sideways, hands folded, as she receives the coat from a visitor. She then hangs it up and goes to her bedroom, as the visitor follows. The shot lingers at the exact same frame, as light becomes dark and the two emerge from the bedroom. The man takes his coat, while Jeanne matter-of-factly waits and receives her money, before they part ways.

Belgian film legend Henri Storck as Jeanne’s first client.

This entire tableau is mesmerizing. Always being at the center of the frame, Jeanne is in full control, taking as much time and space as needed. The camera, positioned at a low height, often slightly looking up at her, follows her, recording her every movement in upfront whole-body or mid shots without zooming in. Even when she takes a bath after her afternoon visitor, her body is not fragmented, instead the camera positions her in the center, as she meticulously cleans herself and then the bathtub. There is no eroticism, but pragmatism with heavy undertones of compulsion that will become clearer in days to come. With a static impartial camera, our gaze becomes secondary to Jeanne, as we enter the world of a truly objective gaze.

Shot by an all-female team, the movie garnered a lot of feminist support when it came out, and for good reason. From the point of view of a 1975 feminist, this movie accurately portrays the dire consequences of a patriarchal society on women – a life in service to men, regardless of whether these men are husbands, sons or johns. Heterosexual sex is depicted as a tool of oppression, as well as obsession. Jeanne’s adolescent son talks at length about sex and how he imagines it to be. In a particularly oedipal scene, he confides in her that he was terrified of his father penetrating her, when he was told how sex works by one of his peers. In the same scene, rigid and half-hidden in the shadows, Jeanne deliberately tells him that it is something women have to endure in order to fulfil their natural roles as mothers and caregivers (no fun detected). With this background Jeanne’s work as a part-time prostitute is not depicted as sexual liberation, but another facet of servitude. It is, after all, a movie about the invisible woman and her labor. We’re shown the work that “unliberated” housewives have been doing for centuries in minute detail – so underrated that their right to exist was debated by fellow women and ridiculed by the men they served.

Modernity doesn’t negate anything the movie stood for in the seventies, but to understand the movie’s relevance for a modern-day audience, it is crucial to (re)conceive of Jeanne Dielman as a modern woman.

Billy Joel lyrics aside, the moniker of “modern woman” is a multi-faceted beast, however, I want to focus on the Millennial definition of this term. The modern woman of today has entered the work force as well as the educational system many years ago and enjoys certain liberties within these systems. In many ways, she has a lot of choices, which movies like The Worst Person in the World (Joachim Trier, 2022) portray as a kind of selfish paralysis, where the many avenues that can be pursued in life are treated as obstacles to the one thing that the protagonist finally has to settle on – and settle she must. Depending on the inclinations of the director, there are two main avenues the modern woman can pursue – family or work.

Should she choose family at the end of the movie, she is shown in serene over-exposed shots, fawning over a baby, seemingly forgetting any talents or interests that she wanted to pursue before making this crucial choice. Should she choose work, however, there always has to be a reminder of what she’s lost. In The Worst Person in the World, we see Julie working as a set photographer, after she’s finally settled on photography in the span of the movie. While wrapping up, she sees her ex, who left her because she was pregnant, with another woman happily cooing to a child, suggesting that he just didn’t want kids with her. This particular kind of scene is repeated at the beginning of the German rom-com Einfach Mal Was Schönes (Karoline Herfurth, 2022) about Karla, a middle-aged career-driven woman, who gave up on her desire to have children because of her ex, but resurrects it as soon as she sees him with a child of his own. As much as we want feminism to be obsolete, even this small sample shows how far away we still are from an actually liberated choice-driven woman.

Jeanne Dielman clearly didn’t have as many choices as Julia or Karla in life, but her depiction still speaks to a struggle that many of us still face today. She is a single parent without a support network, as we don’t see her meaningfully interact with anyone, including her own son.

Although Akerman didn’t think in these terms in 1975, she depicts something that still plagues a lot of women that are in (mostly heterosexual) relationships or have a family today – the mental load. The expectation is that they have to plan and organize family life, despite also working full time, while the men in their lives do much less to much more acclaim. The same particularity that is used for depicting Jeanne’s daily life is deployed when showing her son being serviced and propped up as the patriarch of the house, behaving like some husbands (and, let’s be honest, teenage sons) still do today. When he arrives at home, Jeanne is already waiting by the door to take his coat, and then proceeds to serve him dinner, at which he reads a book, absolutely ignoring her, only answering questions when asked. There is no talk at the table, no “how was your day, mother?”, just an entitled acceptance of all he is given. This proceeds into the second day, where he, as he doesn’t find his mother at the door, proceeds to call for her, finally finding her in the kitchen and handing her his coat there.  

In light of all the service she is providing, her entire being is so tied up in organizing, planning and maintaining her and Sylvain’s life to an exhausting degree, that she can’t conceive of a life outside her four walls. The rigidity of her daily routine and meal plans is curated, almost manicured, as she goes about her tasks – the ritualization lightening the burden of constant planning. Her desire for freedom is supplanted by her desire for order, as her apartment becomes the one place she can control. But with this control also comes the inability to rest, as we see on the third day. Her home becomes a map of her entire existence and the space where she can live out her quirks and compulsions. When she goes into a room and switches on the light, the room comes into being, and when she leaves it, it vanishes with the flick of light switch. Lights, menus, cleaning and a missing button on a coat become matters of utmost importance and the failure to adhere to certain patterns become the stuff of drama and suspense. The more Jeanne slips from her chronological pattern, the more she enters into a state of restlessness and despair.

So, from the perspective of these modern parameters, the three days we spend with Jeanne tell an entirely different, but not less relevant story. A story of perfection, exhaustion and loneliness. A burden so heavy, no one should be carrying it alone.

Day 1: The Dream

It was no coincidence that I started binge-watching Honeyjubu while procrastinating on Jeanne Dielman. More than any other Youtuber that ostensibly does the same, her content always struck me as otherworldly. She very rarely goes out of her immaculate apartment, outfitted by state-of the-art cooking equipment and white and beige walls with no pictures on them. The way she moves through the space and the shot of how she gets up in the morning and immediately goes to the rice container to measure out the rice and get it on the stove for breakfast is uncannily similar in every video. When she cooks, everything she makes is perfect. Perfectly cubed tofu joins perfectly sliced onions in an impossibly full pot that never ever boils over.

Just a normal week-night dinner. Nothing to see here. Very normal…

This perfection is, of course, the result of editing that achieves a level of curation that borders on dystopian sterility. So, why do so many people, including myself, enjoy this almost creepy display of perfection?

Easy. Satisfaction and pattern recognition. The same satisfaction that arises when you stick a square peg into a square hole or doodle in a zen garden, only to turn it into a perfectly smooth surface, when you get tired of the swirly patterns. In Honeyjubu’s videos as well as on Jeanne’s perfect little first day, everything has its place. There is no idleness, no confusion, no painful decision what to make for dinner or what to do next (or so it seems). You simply observe a woman who seems to have it together. Her mind isn’t frayed by a thousand different tasks. No worries about how to fit work, relationships, socialization, money, household and stimulating hobbies into a 24-hour-day cross her mind. Her world is small. Her daily routines predictable. Her habits precise and thrifty. She lives in a simple pastel world, where she has her cooking, cleaning and servitude – the dream. Does it matter then that she reads the letter from her sister from Canada in a tired, monotone voice? That her son ignores and treats her like a household slave? Does it matter how vigorously she brushes her hair? No, everything is perfect. I need that.

Dinner rolls around and everything goes smoothly. Everything is ready when Sylvain arrives, and they eat in silence, as Jeanne serves soup and then the second course. After dinner, Sylvain does his homework and then they spend the evening listening to music, while Jeanne knits a sweater. There is serenity in this scene and a suggestion that their evenings have always been like that – as Akerman lets us fill in the blanks of Jeanne’s life.

Ugh. Twat!

Day 2: Demimonde

Relaxed and refreshed Jeanne (and I) starts the next day, even before the alarm clock chimes. Like clockwork Jeanne puts on her fuzzy coat and goes to shine Sylvain’s shoes (an activity that made me hate that little twat forever), before waking him up for breakfast and sending him to school with some money that she takes from a jar in the living room.

Again, her precision is both delightful and scary, made all the more disturbing by the fact that I like it so much that I resist any social commentary that might be lurking in her movements – in the shadows, between the lines. She runs some errands, where we see her drinking coffee. I notice that this is the first and last time she does something for herself. She sits at a corner table and serenely stares into the distance, while drinking a cup of coffee – and here, I hit a snag. Looking at her at that moment, I feel exhausted, her chores suddenly becoming excruciatingly real. I feel tired and need to take a nap. There are unfortunately no naps in our future, and with a lot of the day still to go, Jeanne goes home.

At home, her neighbor drops off her baby for a while (women supporting women) and while babysitting, Jeanne starts to prepare dinner. In a steady symmetrical full-body shot, we see her as she lovingly breads thinly slices veal cutlets in elegant focused motions (the gloop, shlarp, shlop of the soundscape is weirdly delightful, too). Her head bowed in concentration, a detached look on her face, I relax again. She seems to like it, so why shouldn’t I? Maybe she’s not exhausted, maybe she loves her perfect domestic bliss of a life. As I continue to blindly hold on to my satisfaction, her neighbor stops by to pick up her daughter and chats with Jeanne about, what she wants to make for dinner – a riveting conversation. (The nagging feeling of exhaustion and being trapped returns to the back of my mind.)

At the moment the doorbell rings and announces the arrival of this day’s client, Jeanne’s reaction harkens back to the beginning of the movie. She salts the potatoes, elegantly removes her house frock and goes to open the door and take the visitor’s coat. They proceed to go to her bedroom.

The moment they emerge from the bedroom, however, something feels off. Jeanne’s hair is a tad disheveled; she is impatient to get the client out of the door, and as she goes to put the money into the jar in the living room, she forgets to put the lid back on. She discovers that the potatoes are overcooked, after which she proceeds to aimlessly and indecisively wander the apartment, pot in hand, until she snaps out of it and discards the potatoes (the scene is also darkly comedic). This seemingly small misstep causes her an enormous amount of stress, as we get a glimpse of what’s to come when time starts to slip out of her grasp. The subtle suspense that has been building since the scene at the café comes to the forefront, as she reluctantly buys new potatoes and very angrily starts peeling them, only to be interrupted by her incompetent son, who, as mentioned before, couldn’t fathom hanging up his coat himself.

Never has potato peeling been so riveting.

The dinner scene from the first day is repeated almost verbatim with the difference that the potatoes aren’t ready. The wait is excruciatingly silent, as Jeanne and Sylvain sit motionless at the dinner table. Being outside of her comfort zone, Jeanne doesn’t know how to be idle or spontaneous, and so she gets up multiple times to check on the potatoes, before returning to sit and stare some more. Her frustration is palpable, as Sylvain accosts her with his oedipal musings about sex and love. As an extension, by breaking the satisfying pattern of the first day Akerman also frustrates the audience and lets them sit in the uncomfortable knowledge that they might not know, what comes next.

Day 3: Surrender

Jeanne’s time seems to fold in on itself, as she tries, but fails to resurrect her daily routine. She gets up and puts on her fuzzy coat, forgetting to close a button. As usual she goes to shine Sylvain’s shoes, but can’t really concentrate on it and drops the brush. After seeing Sylvain off to school, she goes to run errands in the city, only to discover that time has betrayed her. She arrives either too late or too early, doesn’t find anything she’s looking for, and doesn’t even get her favorite seat at the café.

The tension of time not doing what it’s supposed to becomes unnerving when Jeanne returns home, but doesn’t find anything to occupy herself with. After she’s prepared dinner, she sits down and tries to drink a relaxing cup of coffee, which tastes terrible. Jeanne tries to make it taste better first adding milk and then sugar, her face and movements becoming more and more agitated before she slams the coffee cup on the table. In her serene and ordered home, this genuine expression of anger makes one jump. The film now being as suspenseful as a thriller, everything she does makes me exceedingly nervous. As she’s not able to relax, she again tries to find something to do, only to end up sitting on her lounge chair for protracted periods of time, clenching a washing rag in one hand and always reaching into her breast pocket, as though looking for smokes, with the other. Just staring, waiting (at this point, I’m exhausted).

The doorbell rings and she welcomes her daily afternoon client. This visit being the last remnant of Jeanne’s ritualized routine. As usual, they disappear into the bedroom, but this time we follow them. In a most uncomfortable sex scene, we see Jeanne lying under the man, staring straight ahead at the ceiling. At some point she tries to wiggle herself out from under him, but doesn’t succeed, before he finishes. There are definite hints of something non-consensual happening, but I think that Akerman was expressing her general unease with heterosexual sex overall. Regardless, it was very uncomfortable to watch, consensual or no.

After sex, Jeanne gets dressed at her dressing table, while staring at the dozing man behind her in the mirror. For a short moment, her movements return to the languid precision we saw at the beginning of the film, as she dresses. After zipping up her skirt, she takes a pair of scissors and stabs the man on the bed. The last seven minutes of the movie, we watch Jeanne, hands and blouse bloody, sitting at her dining table, breathing and stretching her neck. The burden of maintaining perfection and of being taken for granted has been lifted, her freedom could only be bought with blood.

After the movie ended, I also stared a lot longer at the dark screen than usual. I wondered, what would become of stupid Sylvain and the meatloaf she prepared, before murdering a dude. Can the little twat survive without someone hanging up his coat when he comes home from school? I found myself wishing for her to smartly get rid of the body, so she can get back to her small ordered world. But she won’t, and maybe, we shouldn’t either.