Line #17 Film/JeanneDielman23QuaiDuCommerce1080Bruxelles


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3	''Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles''[[note]]English: "Jeanne Dielman, 23 Commerce Quay, 1080 Brussels"[[/note]] is a 1975 film written and directed by [[UsefulNotes/{{Belgium}} Belgian]] filmmaker Creator/ChantalAkerman. It was filmed over five weeks on location in Brussels, and funded through a $120,000 grant from the Belgian government.
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5	Jeanne (Creator/DelphineSeyrig) is a middle-aged Walloon woman living, as one might guess from the title, in Brussels. She lives what seems to be a pretty standard, indeed routine life: cooking, cleaning, doing the laundry, fixing dinner for her teenaged son Sylvain when he gets home. The only thing surprising about her is her job: Jeanne is a sex worker who entertains customers in the apartment when her son is out.
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7	Jeanne's job seems as routine as the rest of her life. Having sex with the similarly middle-aged men who come to her door during the day is about as uneventful as cooking potatoes or knitting a sweater for her son. However, there is a disturbance in Jeanne's life, which is about to be upended.
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9	The film premiered in the Directors' Fortnight of the 1975 Cannes Film Festival. Its meticulous take on the SliceOfLife (including a restrained pace, long takes, and static camerawork) as well as its length (3 hours and 21 minutes) divided critics upon release, but the film gained a [[CultClassic cult following]] and is [[VindicatedByHistory nowadays]] viewed as a landmark moment in several movements of film history (slow cinema, structuralist cinema, and feminist cinema). In the 21st century, it was placed on several professional lists of the greatest films of all time, but most notably (and somewhat unexpectedly) took the number-one slot in the 2022 ''Sight & Sound'' Poll, becoming the fourth film to do so and dethroning the previous number-one, ''Film/{{Vertigo}}''.
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11	Directors who have drawn influence from the film include Creator/ToddHaynes, Creator/CelineSciamma and Creator/GusVanSant (who credited it as a major inspiration for his films ''Film/{{Gerry}}'' and ''Film/LastDays'').
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13	!!Tropes:
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15	* BathtubScene: It is kind of fanservice--Delphine Seyrig nude, everyone--but it's also kind of not, as Jeanne's nightly bath is just another part of her dull and monotonous day.
16	* DramaticIrony: Surely Jeanne cringes when her son says "Well, if I were a woman, I could never make love with someone I wasn't deeply in love with."
17	* ExtremelyShortTimespan: About 48 hours in the life of a middle-aged prostitute, as three johns visit her over three days.
18	* FoodPorn: Subverted. While the film spends a great deal of time observing Jeanne prepare meals, it's presented in the most mundane fashion imaginable, and the food itself is not particularly appetizing.
19	* {{Foreshadowing}}: Hints after Jeanne's second client departs that something has disturbed her equilibrium and thrown off her formerly machine-like domestic routine. She burns the potatoes; she starts having to backtrack after forgetting to turn off lights in the apartment. On the third day of the story she drops her son's shoes while shining them. She actually steps outside to her balcony!
20	* KitchenSinkDrama: Literally! Jeanne actually washes dishes in the kitchen sink. Most of the movie consists of that, along with all her other mundane domestic tasks.
21	* LeaveTheCameraRunning: The camera sits on a counter in the title character's kitchen through long takes without zooms or reverse angles, where characters go in and out of the frame as necessary and we can only hear them. Sometimes it stays on as she leaves the house to work or do errands. Something like 95% of the movie is Jeanne going about her domestic routine--doing the dishes, boiling potatoes, shopping for groceries, making the bed--while a stationary camera runs and nothing happens to advance the story. The camera never so much as twitches, staying fixed in various locations while Jeanne goes about her business. The film ends with a ''six minute shot'' of [[spoiler:a bloodstained]] Jeanne sitting at a table, doing nothing.
22	* MundaneMadeAwesome: Inverted, as this film makes the mundane...even more mundane. Watch Jeanne Dielman brew coffee for 11 minutes!
23	* MurphysBed: Folding up her son's bed into a rather cleverly disguised sofa chair is just part of the dullness of Jeanne's day.
24	* NoPlotNoProblem: Of course the viewer's reaction may differ as to how much the lack of plot is a problem. But the film obviously sets out to depict the mind-numbing tedium of domestic tasks. It does so by--being mind-numbingly tedious, showing Jeanne going about her daily routine (even the hooking is boring, until the end) over 3 1/2 hours. Until the ending, nothing happens.
25	* ObsessivelyOrganized: Jeanne gives off vibes of this. Note how precisely she lays out the dinner ware, or how she pulls out two cubes of sugar and neatly matches them together before putting them in her coffee. When she loses a button on her coat, she has to find an ''exact'' copy of that button. She never seems to relax at home, to take some time to read a book or go for a walk or lie down and take a nap; in one scene where she is without a task to occupy her she starts polishing the ceremonial plates in the curio cabinet. She is visibly upset on the third day when her usual table at the coffee shop is taken and her usual waitress isn't there.
26	* RealTime: Not really, as the film takes place over three days. But each of Jeanne's boring little tasks is shown in its entirety. An actual CookingShow probably wouldn't spend as much time showing someone making breaded veal as this film uses to show Jeanne making some.
27	* RuleOfThree: Three days, three clients for Jeanne's services. [[spoiler:The third one regrets it.]]
28	* SexIsEvilAndIAmHorny: [[spoiler:The third client is leisurely humping away on top of Jeanne when she gets an odd look on her face. Soon, and clearly to her shock and bewilderment, she has an orgasm. She's shown looking upset while she's getting dressed. Then she murders the john by stabbing him in the neck with a pair of scissors.]]
29	* SilenceIsGolden: Long, ''long'' stretches without any dialogue. The first 15 minutes of the movie, in which Jeanne services a client and then her son comes home, have only two lines of dialogue. Most of the rest of the movie is Jeanne puttering around the house in silence. While watching the film you gradually pick up on how Jeanne never does things like turn on the radio, never visits friends, never even mutters to herself about the work she's doing.
30	* SingleMomStripper: Hooking at home to support her son.
31	* TitleDrop: Jeanne reads her address off a letter.
32	* TheUnreveal: Has Sylvain figured out how his mom is paying the bills? His comments seem strangely apropos: the first night he's home he says he can't understand how a woman would sleep with a man she doesn't love, and on the second night he talks about his father and how he didn't like it once he got TheTalk from a friend and found out his mom and dad were having sex. The film doesn't clarify.
33	* TheVoice: The woman who drops off her baby for Jeanne to babysit for a while, then returns, and goes on an exceedingly boring spiel about her day. The camera remains fixed (as always) on Jeanne inside the door, so the woman is only a voice on the other side of the door.

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