La Folie Almayer (Almayer's Folly). 2011. Belgium/France. Directed by Chantal Akerman. Screenplay by Akerman, based on the novel by Joseph Conrad. With Stanislas Merhar, Aurora Marion, Marc Barbe. 35mm print courtesy Royal Film Archive of Belgium. In French and English, with subtitles. 127 min.
The Museum of the Moving Image launched First Look, its annual festival of formally inventive new international cinema, in 2012. Programmed by Dennis Lim, Rachael Rakes, and chief curator David Schwartz, the 2012 edition opened with Almayer’s Folly, directed by Chantal Akerman, who was the subject of a complete film retrospective at MoMI in 1997. Of Almayer’s Folly, Schwartz wrote: “Akerman’s masterful and mesmerizing Almayer’s Folly freely adapts Joseph Conrad’s first novel. A European trader’s dreams of striking it rich in Malaysia have faded; all he has is his ruptured relationship with his half-Malay daughter. From its straddling opening—the stabbing of an entertainer at an outdoor music bar to Dean Martin’s ‘Sway’—the film unfolds with trancelike power. Beautifully photographed in thick jungle terrain, Almayer’s Folly synthesizes the long-take formalism of Akerman’s earlier work with the spontaneity of her documentaries; it is as much influenced by F. W. Murnau and Robert Flaherty’s Tabu as it is by Conrad.” Other directors featured on First Look opening nights include Bruno Dumont (Outside Satan), Alexandre Rockwell (Little Feet), Jessica Hausner (Amour Fou), Alexander Sokurov (Francofonia), Hirokazu Kore-eda (After the Storm), Blake Williams (PROTOTYPE), and Serge Loznitsa (Donbass).