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The battered walls of back streets make for cogent diagonals, at dusk a phosphorescent lamppost at the top of the frame provides an artificial moon: New York City vu par Chantal Akerman, a distinctive state of mind. Herzog's Fata Morgana is the formal precedent, the alien cosmos of urban vanishing points and green-tiled stations. (The subway is at first a phantom express, the filmmaker is briefly reflected in door panes as they slide open and shut.) The stoicism of the images is complemented by the Belgian voice that periodically reads aloud the contents of maternal letters from Europe, pliant words amid the musique concrète of car horns. "Dearest little girl. How I wish I could hold you in my arms..." Mother writes of weddings and breakups, pregnancies and deaths, the struggle of the family store and the journey of a $20 bill, plus a grain of criticism: "I received your screenplay. It's well-written but you know my taste, I find it sad and gloomy." Akerman's reply is a procession of moving postcards, her loneliness and independence imprinted in every cavernous corridor and empty staircase. Edward Hopper and George Bellows are the modalities, storefronts glow in the dark (a busy chef is framed through bars and slates for a screen within a screen), a rain-slicked corner brightened by a fleet of yellow cabs suddenly reminds you this is Taxi Driver terrain. Passersby as faceless as Baldessari's, one is dumbstruck by the camera while most others amble past it like Valli in The Third Man. A long drift down 10th Ave, mist and seagulls for the wondrous final view from a departing barge. "We only ask one thing—that you don't forget us." No Home Movie nearly four decades later is the shattering sequel. Cinematography by Babette Mangolte.
--- Fernando F. Croce |