Chantal Akerman: 'I cannot see myself, because I am myself'

Not many directors have become very iconic very young. Chantal Akerman was, both for experimental film and feminist. In 1975, she broke through with Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, a film that is as disruptive as it is understated. It is her most important work, and also her most radical. The protagonist leads an existence of calm repetition, she cooks, she cleans and she receives gentlemen in her house. Every day punctually between five and five-thirty. She takes care of her son. Everything is ordered, there is no reason or room for improvisation. The film follows three days in her life, in which her existence slowly begins to unravel, to the point where she murders a client.

The radical is not even so much in the murder as in the way we follow the woman. When she takes a shower after a client, it happens in real time. With a flannel and a bar of soap. The potatoes cook in an enamelled pan, you suspect the potholders are still crocheted by her mother. Her earned money goes into an old-fashioned soup tureen. Everything is neat and raked. Akerman makes visible the invisible existence of a housewife. She gives her a voice. And she involves the viewer in the most banal things in this woman's life: peeling pies, frying Wiener schnitzel. Everything is given its time. In this universe, there is no room for quick editing.

She made this film when she was 25. Squeaky young. And she changed the world of film. Suddenly there was the women's film, and she was the figurehead. Not that she wanted to be. Years later, I spoke to her, around the appearance of Un Divan a New York, a not very special film with John Hurt as a psychoanalyst. I had bravely prepared all sorts of questions about how she saw herself as a feminist director and how film culture had changed. She immediately set that straight with the unforgettable words:' I cannot See myself, because I am myself'. At the time, I found that stand off-ish and even a bit arrogant. Only much later did I understand that it is better to write history than to write yourself into a history.

Chantal Akerman died today in Brussels, aged just 65.