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It seems in some ways a small film, perhaps quiet. Not so much in retrospect, in the feeling it leaves with you, but as you begin to watch it, as the events arrive in small drops, like offerings made over the shoulder. It is possible to give in a review or synopsis all of the events of Chantal Akerman's Je, Tu, Il, Elle. Or rather, it is easy to give all of the events and changes which a reader might remember and call major. There are few of these. In fact one could proceed to tell of her removing the furniture from her room, placing the mattress against the window or standing naked before the mirror without risk of bloating your essay or seeming to dwell on the wrong moments. Because all of the moments are somehow necessary despite their containing the weight of banality. There is also in these moments a balancing anxiety which holds them up though they appear so close to falling or to standing still.
The Je of the title is acted by the director. The Tu may be the screenplay, perhaps the letter the narrator is writing, the manuscript she spreads on the floor. The Il, the truck driver who picks her up hitchhiking. The Elle, the lover. We meet them in succession; the narrator, the explanation, the truck driver, the lover. There are two monologues and then a quiet dialogue. The structure moves us from the loneliness of the general, the unknown audience, the sound of the words, the mirror, passersby and a window to the particulars of an emotional and physical exchange between two women naked in bed with the lights on. The truck driver ferries her between these worlds unaware of his role. The narrator may know where she is going, but we do not, and so know only that this truck driver is guiding us, coaxing us, as if we are all becoming reacquainted with the world, with need and desire. And we are thankful, having spent so long in the one room with the narrator eating powdered sugar from a bag on a bare mattress waiting. She says she is waiting. When she meets the truck driver she eats, she drinks beer and wine, she thinks about the back of his neck and she touches him through his pants. He tells her he and his wife are too tired to have sex, his daughter turns him on, he has occasional affairs on the road. And she listens. She speaks as the narrator, but does not speak to him. She speaks to another when she arrives at her lover's apartment, saying through the intercom "it's me." This is how we know we are somewhere else : "it's me." Now she is asking. She asks for food, and then drink, and to stay. The lover is reluctant, trying to hang on to herself, but succumbs to a little bit of pleading, a little bit of persistence. And then both of them are entwined in what is perhaps the simplest depiction of two people making love on film. There is a suspension in their reserve, in the tension of their separate endurances, and in their joint struggle. But it is a frantic pause which suggests that whatever is gained is not gained jointly. The narrator leaving in the morning follows this suspicion, this feeling. She has touched, but not held.
The film is shot in black and white and the camera rarely moves. The sounds are mostly the small awkward sounds that don't always fill the space between people when there is silence. And there is a good deal of silence in this movie. The only time space opens up is with the small figure of the narrator at the edge of a highway in the rain. The rest of the film takes place indoors. The scenes most full of light are those in the bed with the lover. When the narrator leaves the room, the film is over and you can toss your hat into the air. |
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