Hey! It’s May(‘s Criterion round-up for Paste Magazine)! An Ozu movie written around fart jokes is an Ozu movie well in my wheelhouse, but I did not write about Good Morning; instead I wrote about Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelle, Chantal Akerman’s landmark arthouse film, a three hour opus about a single mom as she lives her life on the clock, shopping for food, making dinner, and turning tricks to support her ingrate teenage son. Sound boring? It isn’t! It’s mesmerizing, actually, which makes the direction Akerman takes the film even more unsettling. We fall into a groove watching it just as Jeanne lives her life in a groove. The disruption of that groove mimics a very specific existential sort of horror, and if Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles isn’t a horror film (not if, because it just isn’t), its implications are nonetheless sort of horrifying.
A Constant Visual Feast 