Chantal Akerman by Marion Schmid

Abstract

Schmid, Marion. Chantal Akerman. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2010. ISBN 9780 -7190-7716-6. Pp. 192. £45. The French Film Directors’series seeks to promote“the formal and informal study of French films” and “extend the range of French directors known to Anglophone students” (x). Moving beyond the editors’ goals, Schmid’s enlightening study opens with theoretical reflections on the Belgian director’s fierce resistance to appropriation into theoretical debates,artistic movements,genres,and national traditions.A proponent of fluid identifications, a defender of a hyperrealist, minimalist, non-naturalist cinema technique,Akerman is presented not simply as an intellectual director of interest to an elite of film critics,but also as a major auteur whose complex œuvre raises pressing social, ideological and ethical questions. While recognizing the originality of Akerman’s thirty-year-long production, Schmid traces the various influences which have shaped it: silent film,American musical comedy,Alfred Hitchcock, Jacques Demy, the French New Wave, the nouveau roman and the structural aesthetics of the New York avantgarde . Four chapters follow her evolving style and thematic interests, from the early experimental, anti-illusionist works of the 1970s, to the more comic vein of a narrativedriven “cinema of seduction”based on music, song and dance in the 1980s, the ethnographic seriousness of her documentary tetralogy, and her commercial ventures into the mainstream in the the 1990s and 2000s literary adaptation and burlesque comedy. Schmid’s dual approach is to provide informed and stimulating readings of iconic films (Jeanne Dielman, Golden Eighties, Demain on déménage), while establishing a surprising continuity between the different works, genres, and time periods based on a close correlation between theme and technique. Akerman’s resistance to conventional characterization, point of view, suture, and viewer identification appears as a necessary correlate to recurrent motifs of nomadism, homelessness, identity performance, and the weight of the hidden past. A comprehensive index of Akerman’s filmography through the year 2009 offers further resources to the reader. More recent releases, such as La folie Almayer (2011), are not included. Although written in a clear and accessible style, the book targets informed readers, i.e., graduate students, cinema students and researchers, rather than a general public. There is no glossary of cinema terminology, which would increase appreciation for Akerman’s experimental style among nonexperts . One single shortcoming of this exceptional book is the author’s preference for discussing English versions of the films. News from Home, for instance, exists both in a version for the American market dubbed by Akerman and in a version with a French voice-over by the director, who reads her mother’s letters in a flat, monotonous voice. Given her postmodernist play with simulacrum versus authenticity, repetition versus originality, performance versus sincerity, what is the significance of the two coexisting versions carefully produced and controlled by the director? Does one have precedence over the other,or is the question of origin(ality) part of her inquiry as in the pair Les années 80/Golden Eighties? By uncovering traces of the Holocaust experience 246 FRENCH REVIEW 87.3 Reviews 247 in Akerman’s cinematic palimpsest, Schmid initiates helpful ways of including an exceptional filmography in a variety of university courses. Meredith College (NC) Véronique Machelidon Seattle Sightings: The Seattle International Film Festival, 2013. Reporting on the presence of “French film” in Seattle’s annual spring cinematic extravaganza (447 films representing 85 countries) proved tricky this year due to the number of trans-national projects. French companies helped fund some eighteen features ranging in origin from Iran to Serbia to Hungary to Colombia and even China. Representation of French-speaking countries in the program was strong, although the number of films from France itself was diminished from years past— undoubtedly due to SIFF’s separate French festival. However, incorporating movies with connections to France (language, location, actors) made the total “French” presence quite robust. Love Is in the Air (Amour et turbulences, dir.Alexandre Castagnetti), Low Profile (Je me suis fait tout petit, dir. Cécilia Rouaud), and Populaire (dir. Régis Roinsard)—a trio of well-wrought romantic comedies (all debut features)—delighted audiences with fresh takes on traditional themes. My favorite, Populaire, a well...