Chantal
Akerman’s updated adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s novel Almayer’s Folly, which opens at Anthology Film Archives today, starts off with one of the most elegantly controlled and tense sequences I’ve ever seen.
We see an open air night club somewhere in Asia. As random people go in and out,
a shadowy figure moves into the frame and ominously enters the club. Akerman
then follows the man from behind, slowly, as he makes his way towards a stage
where a lounge singer, backed up by some awkward, scantily clad female dancers,
lip syncs to Dean Martin’s “Sway.” The man watches the performance for an
extended moment. Then, he goes onstage and stabs the singer, dragging the body
offscreen. The music stops and the dancers all flee. All, that is, except for
one -- a tall Eurasian girl with a distant look in her eyes, who continues her
clunky dance as the empty silence gathers around her. A voice offscreen
whispers, “Nina. Dain is dead.” The girl stops, and moves into close-up. And
suddenly begins singing a religious song, in Latin, looking straight into the
camera.
We
may not know exactly what just happened, but we’re riveted nonetheless. This is
what Chantal Akerman does at her best. She takes a moment and slows it down to
such a degree that anything seems possible. Some directors like to hold their
shots to give the viewer space and time to contemplate and explore. But Akerman’s
not an analyst. She’s a hypnotist. She uses shadow,
composition, and sound – just listen to this film sometime, with its mesmeric
use of water and rustling reeds, its drifting waves of classical music and timeless
pop – to pull us into this wild, twilight world.
