Heartache?

PostED ON 13.10.2015 AT 11:10AM

 
I, You, He, She by Chantal Akerman, 1974 - "Empty, the room is big, I think." A thin voice emerges in a gray room surrounded by black and white. This slight voice that recites information, which describes a series of small actions, small facts, is that of the director, Chantal Akerman, who also plays the heroin of her own film. A girl in a room, dressed, and later naked, consumes loads of sugar as she writes eight pages of what is supposedly a love letter. The girl can be found listening to the noise of a truck driver who eats, drives, pees and washes his face, leaving a trickle of water, producing a pleasant sound. This female filmmaker, witness to the lives of others, and to her own existence, gives us a work here quite different from what we have seen in the cinema so far, and ever since. I, You, He, She, a telling title, is indeed a perfectly unpredictable and hybrid film, not quite fiction nor quite documentary.

Nor is it an example of precursor auto-fiction either. I, You, He, She is rather all of these things at once. It also hinges on the very special, stable and powerful quality of the camera placement and the lighting; a photo exhibition on urban life, be it outdoor, indoor, or at night. Each image could compose a perfect snapshot of the interiority and illustration of humans. All the talent of Akerman then lies in creating, without anyone noticing, a story like no other, yet common to everyone: the time that passes when one thinks of a current love. To avoid the banality that sometimes drags down such a premise, Akerman, with a keen eye and a remarkable visual talent, banishes any trace of romance from the narrative of her film. And if she rolls on the ground, crawls, groans, consumes sugar obsessively, or looks at others (when she finally decides to come out of her den), she does so with an avidity that leaves no room for frills, complacency, or pathos. I, You, He, She, is thus a heartache in a contemporary art gallery. It is ultra elegant, simple, direct and softly stands out, capturing your heart in the end.

Virginie Apiou