Résumés(1)
A truly voyeuristic film by Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman which, among others, brings to mind Alfred Hitchcock’s masterpiece Rear Window. Akerman does not film here with any preconceived intentions. She seeks to be as open and blank as possible, to ensure that things take their own course. A remarkable self-portrait essay, open to many interpretations, embracing some of the most important elements of Akerman’s work and using the interplay of place and displacement to wrest beauty from despair. Akerman spends a brief period in an apartment by the sea in Tel Aviv, Israel. From her apartment, she spies on the neighboring apartments and films people living their ordinary daily lives. In voice-over, she reflects on her family, her Jewish identity and her childhood. She wonders whether normal everyday life is possible in this place, and whether filming is a realistic option. (International Film Festival Rotterdam)
(plus)Critiques (1)
Multiplication of theft, for which new examples of separation between the author and the world can always be found as the footage increases, reflects without grasping it, reflects without transforming it. It is pleasing that the alienation operates in the field of the work's testimony and not between the author and the work itself: here the absence of the subject in the visual field finds a perfect complement in the subjectivity of the sound track and the author's voice-over wanders through the image like the soul of an eternal Jew in the world, with which it will never merge anywhere or anytime. The merger will only be found in death, which is not advisable to postpone - on the contrary, sometimes it may be necessary to help it. A personal structural diary, describing the past and predicting the future. Suicide, suicide, liberation.
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