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A singular work in film history, Chantal Akerman's Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles brilliantly evokes, with meticulous detail and a sense of impending doom, the daily domestic routine of a middle-aged widow - whose chores include making the beds, cooking dinner for her grown son, and turning the occasional trick - just as it begins to break down. In its enormous spareness, Akerman's film seems simple, but it encompasses an entire world. Whether seen as an exacting character portrait or one of cinema's most hypnotic and complete depictions of space and time, Jeanne Dielman is an astonishing, compelling movie experiment, one that has been analyzed and argued over for decades, and is finally making its long-awaited DVD debut.
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