Les Rendez-Vous D'Anna, Chantel Akerman (1978)

This film is like nothing I have ever seen before. Chantel Akerman’s hyperrealist style in combination with an utterly flat plot makes for a very counterintuitive film. Where a director might usually employ a realist style as a way to remove any bias and show a series of events with a natural rhythm and authenticity, Akerman seems to be doing the opposite. We see the protagonist of the film, Anna, in a highly stylized world. While the timing and movement of this film is true to neo-realism, we are constantly reminded of the directors manipulation of space in the film. In a word I would describe the visual aesthetic of this film as square. Most shots in the film are either perfectly symmetrical or have the protagonist placed in the center of the frame, also the shots are invariably static.
While this film is described on its Criterion Collection jacket as a “character study,” I would argue that it is quite the opposite. Anna is almost completely blank and generic as a character and she certainly does not seem to change or grow throughout the narrative. Information about Anna’s personality and history are only revealed through her interactions with far more interesting foil characters, thus making Anna a kind of composite more than an actual individual. For the most part I got the sense that Anna is a square woman moving about the square universe—that is until the second half of the film when she describes to her mother about a sexual encounter with another woman. This confession is certainly the most surprising moment of the film, when we are shown at last that Anna seeks something and desires something. This information is also significant when considering Anna’s tiresome sexual experiences with men throughout the film—we can imagine that Anna may be more lively if she were fulfilling her actual passions. There is a very persistent theme of time and age in the film as well, as Anna is consistently reminded of her youth, potential, and dwindling opportunity for marriage and childrearing. The duration of this rather droning film (two hours) illustrate the “wasting of time” that Anna is being reminded of. While Anna would likely not prefer motherhood, she would certainly agree that her time is being wasted on this desolate tour to nowhere