L'homme à la valise (The Man with the Suitcase). 1984. France. Written and directed by Chantal Akerman. With Akerman, Jean-Claude Brisson, Jeffrey Kime, Jerome Levy. 2K restoration courtesy INA. In French; English subtitles. 60 min.
After a two-month absence, Chantal Akerman returns home to find that her friend Henri hasn’t left. A jovial housemate, he drives her crazy. She rearranges the furniture and builds herself a writing cocoon, then devises ludicrous ways to avoid seeing him. She performs various bits of Chaplinesque clowning (waddling down the hall, speed toothbrushing, hammering away at the typewriter) to make herself entirely invisible. Yet even after a week, no amount of elaborate timekeeping or evasive action, not even video surveillance, will keep her from obsessing over him, even in his absence. It all has the makings of a new film.
Le Déménagement (Moving In). 1992. France. Written and directed by Chantal Akerman. With Sami Frey. DCP courtesy Royal Film Archive of Belgium — CINEMATEK and Fondation Chantal Akerman. In French; English subtitles. 39 min.
Restless, displaced, or seeking self-reinvention, Chantal Akerman’s characters are often seen rearranging the furniture (Je, tu, il, elle), smashing down interior walls (Day and Night), or moving from one apartment or hotel room to the next (Rendez-vous d’Anna, Le déménagement, and Tomorrow We Move). Directly addressing the viewer in a discursive (and recursive) monologue as the camera discreetly closes in on his face, Sami Frey sizes up his new apartment: its dimensions and acoustics, its degree of soulfulness. Trying to convince himself he’s made the right move, he recounts the love affair he imagined he had, in his own delicate yet undiscerning mind, with three girls from Toulouse, his neighbors in another building the year before.