User Reviews

Je tu il elle (1974) was shown with its French title. It translates into I you he she. The movie was co-written and directed by Chantal Akerman.

Chantal Akerman portrays Julie. She is the "I" of the title. For the first third of the movie, Julie stays in her small apartment. We hear her thoughts in voiceover. Often the thoughts don't match what we're seeing on the screen. Akerman has built in a lag. For example, she might say, "I undressed and lay on my bed." What we see is Akerman sitting on a chair, eating sugar. Later, we may see her undressed on her bed.

This part of he film is strange, because all Julie eats is sugar, which she eats by the spoonful from a bag. She also tells us that she has painted the furniture different colors, although we can't see this because it's a black-and- white movie. She's waiting for someone or something, although we don't know for whom or for what. (I was waiting for her teeth to rot out.)

In the second part of the movie, Julie hitchhikes and gets picked up by a truck driver. He's played by Niels Arestrup, who is apparently a active actor in France, although I hadn't heard of him. He's a decent enough person, and doesn't harm her in any way. I assume he is the "il" in the title.

In the final third of the movie, Julie arrives at the apartment of "Girlfriend." (She must be "elle.") She's portrayed by Claire Wauthion, a well-known Belgian actor with whom I'm not familiar.

It's clear in context that she and Julie had been lovers, and they had a serious breakup. We know that because the first thing Girlfriend says to Julie is, "I want you to leave."

However, Julie doesn't leave. What follows is a ten-minute scene of lesbian lovemaking. No subtle shadows and sighs--the real thing. If it weren't art, it would be porn.

That's why I labeled this review as having a spoiler. If lesbian love turns you off, watch another movie. If not, this one is interesting. Strange, but interesting. Akerman has her unique style, and you have to accept it to enjoy her work.

This movie is part of the Eclipse Criterion Collection. (Series 19: Chantal Akerman in the Seventies.)

Je tu il elle has an IMDb rating of 6.8. I agreed, and rated it 7.

(spoilers abound, if such a thing is applicable for such a bare-bones narrative...)

Chantal Akerman's first feature is also her first work to play with narrative structure (I do not include her early short, SAUTE MA VILLE, because it is loose and spontaneous). This film has three spare sequences. The first features Akerman ("je") in an empty apartment, spending days writing and re-writing a letter (which is read in the voiceover- "tu" us, the audience). The narration is diary-like, chronicling the number of days and monotonous routines that occur even in this minimal environment (writing, moving around a mattress, her sugar diet). Representative dialogue: "I wrote six pages to say the same thing."

Suddenly, the scene shift to an extreme long shot of Akerman at the side of the highway during a hazy overcast. This begins the second movement, as a trucker ("il") picks her up. He is a ruddy, blue-collar man who drinks beer in one big gulp (she in little sips). There is no onscreen dialogue until he gives her instructions on how to masturbate him. After that, there is one long take where the driver talks about his wife and kids. The "il" sequence ends on an ambiguous scene with him shaving in the bathroom. Suddenly, this driver appears to be rather dashing! (on the way home to his family perhaps?)

The final third begins with Akerman buzzing an apartment ("It's me"). A woman ("elle") answers the door. "I don't want you to stay," she says. They embrace. "I'm hungry", Akerman replies. Then there is a long take of her eating, and a much longer take of the two women making love. In the morning, Akerman gets up to leave. The end.

In this remarkable debut feature, there are several indications of Chantal Akerman's signature. Most tellingly, the film shows her use of long single takes, in real time. Most viewers would be apprehensive about this, but actually this style is highly addicting. The use of the single take may seem rather improvisational ("Let's keep the frame wide, and see what the characters do."), but I believe this film was much more meticulously planned. Akerman's long takes force the viewers to study the relationships on the screen. The more one stares at these unbroken compositions, the more one understands their properties, and their relation to the central character. In the long scene in a restaurant (where she and the trucker are in a booth watching TV), or in the bar (where he is among some acquaintances), she seems to be pushed right to the edge of the frame. During unbroken sequences in the truck (particularly when she "stimulates" the driver), she is entirely offscreen. Once one realizes what happens (or does not happen, for that matter) in the "plot", this artistic choice begins to make sense. It is evident she is not comfortable in this situation. We realize this sequence is just a ploy for her to get to her lover. When she nonchalantly masturbates the trucker, the screen is also devoid of passion because she is offscreen.

Another Akerman-esque property is when scenes are separated with overlong stretches of black leader. This is not a budget-conscious device, but a way of putting the temporal logic of the film at bay. With sequences being broken up, or for that matter, being highlighted by their black brackets, we are uncertain of the time that passes from one to another-- we are purposely frustrated in understanding their connection to each other. Again, with her ambiguity, she is forcing the viewer to analyze the characters (not too many filmmakers explicitly trust the audience this much, to know they can figure it out themselves instead of being spoon-fed everything).

It has been said that Akerman wanted to be a filmmaker once she saw Godard's PIERROT LE FEU. Perhaps what she most learned from Godard is what he refers to as "the moments between the plot". In Godard, the plot is forgotten- it merely becomes a springboard for him to run with his ideas. In Akerman, the story is often quickly explained away in voiceover, so then she can spend the duration of the film studying the implicit characterizations.

A trend in her characters is that they tend to operate on the basest of instincts- the spare dialogue mostly correlates to their hierarchy of needs: "I'm hungry, "I'm cold". (is it any wonder that she also made a film titled just that?) Akerman has adapted a near-Bressonian minimalist use of dialogue. The speech is condensed to the marrow- telling one very little, but everything.

Often sad, and sometimes absurdly funny. A three part film with little obvious plot, its a delicate character study of a young, neurotic woman. Part one shows her stuck alone in her room over a period of days, trying to write a letter to a lover, eating sugar, struggling with her emotions, walking around naked - spiritually as well as physically. Part 2 is her journey with a truck driver who picks her up hitchhiking on her way to meet her female lover, and the complex relationship that develops between them, and part 3 is her arriving at her lover's apartment, spending the night making love with that woman, and finally resolving their relationship. The images, though often striking, don't have quite the power of her very best work, and while some moments have a real charge-- sexual or emotional -- others feel awkward. An intelligent and complex film, ultimately wistfully touching, but missing that last step to greatness. The first third is very strong, the second almost as good, but the last 'act' feels less complete, and the 15 minute love making scene is sort of awkward in that it's very explicit, but never seems quite real. None-the- less, an impressive first narrative film, that sets the ground for her great dramas to follow.

The white space in a movie has a great emotional impact, making the events that follow an act or a monologue intriguing and giving a lot of time to chew on them. It also gives the movie a touch of "unprocessed" feeling close to reality, like a cinéma vérité.

In this film, Chantal Akerman has taken this kind of behavior to the extreme as a first work of genius.

What's more interesting is that at the end of the final segment, there is a face on the screen in the upper left corner, what does this mean? Chantal Akerman has taken this kind of behavior to the extreme as a first work of genius.jjjj.

Few are the films I've watched that could possibly claim to be minimalist as this is. This is more or less the story of a disaffected woman struggling with and working through her depression and existential stagnation, but it's also very pointedly an art film, and so casual and disaffected in that very approach that those unaccustomed to such fare will surely be turned away. The camera moves very little within a space, and sometimes not at all; the setting for the entire first third of the picture is only a scantily furnished room; movement or "action" on-screen may often be only very slight, or otherwise mundane; "dialogue" consists at first only of the protagonist's description of what we're already watching transpire (and thereafter, still mostly just conversation or media broadcasts heard as part of a scene). The extra low-key tenor of the production is even reflected in the credits as director, co-writer, and producer Chantal Akerman also stars. Yet just as plainly as the title presents to us, there is no also obfuscation in its intent or storytelling - 'Je tu il elle' is artistic, but not abstruse. It's also oddly beautiful, and unexpectedly deep and entrancing.

All the silence and ambient noise that are broken by dialogue only at particular times and in particular ways, all the plainspoken narration and imagery, and all the effort to inculcate a sense of discomfort or outright nothingness results in a fascinating, somewhat ruminative portrait of malaise and aimlessness. The dialogue (such as it is) and scene writing, Akerman's orchestration of shots and scenes, and Bénédicte Delesalle's cinematography all help that portraiture to feel both very personal and specific, and very detached and universal. So it is with how the bare few characters are written, and how they're depicted: protagonist Julie, quiet, passive, and introspective, reflected in Akerman's serene yet pensive comportment; the truck driver - more outwardly ebullient and talkative but revealing another side of daily doldrums in the words he speaks to fill the quiet - and the natural, masking composure in Niels Arestrup's portrayal of him; the unmistakable agitation of the unnamed woman, split between anger and desire, and the bristling energy in Claire Wauthion's acting. There's relatively little that actually happens in this movie, and a completely synopsis might well require only a handful of sentences. Yet the ideas and moods that it explores are boundless, and the superficial appearance of meager content belies a full richness of detail to soak in for those who can get on board with the emphatic minimalism.

As if to accentuate the point, 'Je tu il elle' famously, cheekily, positions a sex scene as its narrative "climax." It's strikingly long and comparatively graphic for mainstream (international) cinema in the mid-70s (and arguably even for today's cinema), and frankly kind of daring for the fact of it. Nearly fifty years later it's still inherently noteworthy and spellbinding, not for its explicitness or eroticism, but rather its simple beauty. There is no embellishment here, no lascivious close-ups or shots tracing a person's form. I think it's a total of only three mid-distance shots that bring this scene to us - and in that straightforward, observational tack, the love scene is allowed to speak for itself, and be all the more fulfilled and fulfilling as a result. Akerman and Wauthion share sparking chemistry for the time they have on-screen together, but still the union is kept at a deliberate low boil in line with the preceding length - as is the unspoken question hanging in the air, at the end of this scene and our narrative, of where this leaves our protagonist. "Lacking resolution" is the order of the day in the overarching themes, echoing how in real life the seeming conclusion of a matter may or may not bring meaningful closure. The uncertainty the protagonist carried as our tale began is twisted into another shape for we viewers as it ends; what have her cumulative experiences over this time meant for the individual we're following?

Clocking in at a hair under ninety minutes, boasting three discrete acts, and having very limited storytelling relative to most any point of comparison, I can surely understand how this may have equally limited appeal for many viewers. At the same time, I feel like my assessment remains incomplete and insufficient. By all means this is a title suggested only for those viewers who are receptive to the most lofty, far-flung, and high-minded of fare, where conventions fall by the wayside and artistic airs dominate. For such an audience, however, 'Je tu il elle' bears gratifying intelligence in its conjuration and craftsmanship, a wealth of thoughts to tease our mind in examination. Even at that I don't know if I'd go so far as to say that it's altogether a must-see in that capacity, yet if such films are appealing and one has the opportunity to watch, Akerman's picture earns my high, hearty recommendation.

This is one of the most intensely annoying and meaningless films I've ever tried to watch. I've sat through Bergman films that were slow and annoying, but none were as awful as this so-called "art film." I don't care what others say or think, to me this was just agonizing, stupid, and pointless. Confession -- I couldn't stand to watch it, I kept skipping, skipping, and finally just gave up and turned it off with the equally boring and pointless lesbian scene (possible spoiler).