No Home Movie

Darkness and a road in which the phrase "C'est Chantal" is heard. We cannot see her face, but not because of the darkness. We cannot see it for the whole film because the camera is covering her. The camera, like the eye of a Jew, who on an eternal journey seeks his Canaan, never loses sight of the most precious object in her life, to which she always returned and wanted to return. Mother. The mother who traveled through a concentration camp to Belgium, to this apartment, where the city will forever stand, the city to which the Messiah (will not) return. As a daughter, she was never without her mother, and as a pilgrim without a pilgrimage, similarly, this film is nothing by itself because it is a supplement to the author's entire work. Akerman, moreover, proved once again that she is able to use her film techniques even with the most sensitive material, creating distance with her uncompromising and avant-garde style. Perhaps the distance that was always present between mother and daughter in that part, where for the daughter it turned into a lifelong trauma, transferred to the language of film in her youth. Yet perhaps I am not someone who is able to judge this. (21/03/2018)