Auld Lang Syne
January 6, 2011 in Romancesmoker
With the slightest turn of my head toward her, the conversation, which had been flowing easily for long hours, came to a full stop. She was looking straight ahead, out at the bar. I was taking her in directly. Still looking straight ahead, she issued forth the vanguard of a smile. So we remained, motionless, like a ball in flight, at its apex. This was in New York City, one summer long, long ago.
Oy vey.
Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles , which she made in 1975 when she was 25, almost immediately took its place in the syllabus of every cinema studies course this side of USC. In fact, that’s where I’d first heard of it, back when I was in school, in film theory class from a French visiting lecturer in semiotics, who, owing to both the content of what she said and the accent with which she said it, was almost entirely incomprehensible.