Rendez-vous d'Anna, Les
Director: Chantal Akerman
Year Released: 1978
Rating: 3.5
Minimalist mood piece by Akerman about a female filmmaker (who may or may not be a stand-in for the auteur) who drifts through life, meeting people, having conversations and moving on: she has a brief semi-sexual encounter with a stranger, a talk with a man on a train about 'freedom' (hint, hint), a run-in with her mother and eventually spends a night with her French boyfriend. It's essentially about the perils and benefits of a rootless lifestyle: you get to have a multitude of experiences and engage people, but it also leaves one a bit numb: Akerman's heroine sits and listens and provides comfort for her mother and her lover (who has fallen sick and needs care), but before she knows it she's moving again. If Akerman's masterpiece Jeanne Dielman more or less argued that domesticity can lead to madness, so the well-traveled (and learned) life can be exhausting.
