AVClub: The late Chantal Akerman had a unique way of filming a room. She would place the camera below eye level, with the lens flatly parallel to a wall, forming a box of perspective that seemed to enclose characters (usually women) within their surroundings. There’s a remarkable shot in her 1978 film Les Rendez-vous D’Anna in which the title character, something of an Akerman stand-in, walks the length of her hotel room. She pulls sheer curtains down a drapery track, uncovering window after window, her movement paralleled by the smoothly tracking camera and by a train departing in the industrial cityscape that is her view. She stops at one window, opens the double casement, and stands there for about 15 seconds before closing it again, one pane at a time. The sequence is bleak and mesmerizing (both common descriptors for Akerman’s debut feature, Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai Du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles) and weighted with phantom meaning.
