Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles

Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (, "Jeanne Dielman, 23 Commerce Quay, 1080 Brussels") is a 1975 film written and directed by Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman. It was filmed over five weeks on location in Brussels, and financed through a $120,000 grant awarded by the Belgian government. Distinguished by its restrained pace, long takes, and static camerawork, the film is a slice of life depiction of a widowed housewife (portrayed by Delphine Seyrig) over the course of three days.

The film was met with mixed critical reception upon its release, but gained exposure in Europe and later became a cult classic, and is considered to be one of the greatest films ever made. It has been labeled an exemplar of the slow cinema genre, as well as of feminist film. In a critics' poll conducted by The Village Voice in 2000, it was named the 19th greatest film of the twentieth century. In the decennial critics' poll published by the British Film Institute's magazine Sight and Sound in 2022, it was named the greatest film of all time, the first time a film directed by a woman has been in the list's top ten.

Plot

The film examines a widowed mother's regimented schedule of cooking, cleaning, mothering, and running errands over three days. The woman (whose name, Jeanne Dielman, is only discerned from the title and a letter she reads to her son), earns money by having sex with a different client each afternoon before her son arrives home from school. Like her other activities, Jeanne's sex work is part of a mundane routine she performs daily by rote.

After a visit by a client on the second day, Jeanne's orderly behavior begins to subtly unravel. She overcooks potatoes while preparing dinner, then wanders around the apartment carrying the potato pot. She forgets to cover the porcelain in which she keeps her money, forgets to turn off lights in the rooms she leaves, misses a button on her house coat, and drops a newly washed spoon. The alterations to Jeanne's routine continue until her client arrives on the third day. During sex she either has an orgasm or is disgusted by what she is doing, then dresses herself and stabs the man to death with a pair of scissors. She then sits quietly at her dining room table.

Cast

Delphine Seyrig as Jeanne Dielman

as Sylvain Dielman

Henri Storck as the first client

Jacques Doniol-Valcroze as the second client

Yves Bical as the third client

Chantal Akerman as the voice of a neighbor in the hallway

Production

After establishing herself as a major film director in 1974 with Je, tu, il, elle, Akerman said that she "felt ready to make a feature with more money" and applied for a grant from the Belgian government for financial support, submitting a script that Jane Clarke described as portraying "a rigorous regimen [constructed] around food ... and routine bought sex in the afternoon". This script would only be the rough basis for Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles because after Akerman received the government grant of $120,000 and began production, she threw the script out and began a new film instead. Akerman also explained that she was able to make a female-centric film because "at that point everybody was talking about women" and that it was "the right time".

Shooting Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles took five weeks and Akerman called it "a love film for my mother. It gives recognition to that kind of woman". Akerman used an all female crew for the film, which she later said "didn't work that well - not because they were women but because I didn't choose them. It was enough just to be a woman to work on my film ... so the shooting was awful". Akerman further stated that the film is a reaction to "a hierarchy of images" in cinema that places a car accident or a kiss "higher in the hierarchy than washing up ... And it's not by accident, but relates to the place of woman in the social hierarchy ... Woman's work comes out of oppression and whatever comes out of oppression is more interesting. You have to be definite. You have to be".

The film depicts long moments of the life of Jeanne Dielman in real time, which Akerman said "was the only way to shoot the film - to avoid cutting the action in a hundred places, to look carefully and to be respectful. The framing was meant to respect her space, her, and her gestures within it". The long static shots ensure that the viewer "always knows where I am."