JEANNE DIELMAN, 23 QUAI DU COMMERCE

JEANNE DIELMAN, 23 QUAI DU COMMERCE, 1080 BRUSSELS, 1975

Belgium, France |DCP, Color, 201’| French

Cast: Delphine Seyrig, Jan Decorte, Henri Storck

Jeanne Dielman’s daily routine has not changed in six years, that is, since her husband died. Every day, she wakes up early, packs her son off to school, then she does household chores and goes shopping. In the afternoons, she has sex with a man for money, after which she prepares dinner. Regarded as a classic that changed film history, Jeanne Dielman gives viewers the opportunity to experience a woman’s humdrum domestic life during 195 minutes through equivalent representations of murder and cooking or the dramatic and the nondramatic. She proposes a new language not just through its story but also in terms of form.