Yet another interesting experiment, from the always self-challenging Chantal Akerman. Not my favorite of her films, but I almost always find her brave, creative work worthwhile, even when she only partly succeeds.
This follows over 24 different characters through one night in Brussels. It's a short film (80 minutes or so) , so each character only gets 2 or 3 'visits' -- each running from about 30 seconds to 2 minutes. We don't really get to know any of the people of the film, so the challenge is filling in for ourselves the stories that lie between the almost random moments of their lives we happen to see.
Some of it's quite funny, although keeping track of the stories can admittedly be hard. It's a film I don't 'enjoy' all that much while I was watching, but find oddly moving by the end. As in her even more experimental "Hotel Monterey', and 'News From Home', Akerman uses beautiful Edward Hopper like images of apartments and windows to create a mood of bittersweet sadness..
I would like to see a better copy than the old, long out-of-print VHS, which seems to be the only version ever put out for home viewing. Perhaps Criterion will continue their great work with Akerman's films and get to this and the rest that aren't available. (hint, hint)
