Golden Eighties. 1986. Belgium/France/Switzerland. Directed by Chantal Akerman. Screenplay by Akerman, Pascal Bonitzer, Henry Bean, Jean Gruault. With Delphine Seyrig, Myiam Boyer, Fanny Cottencon, Lio. Restored in 4K in by the Royal Film Archive of Belgium — CINEMATEK in collaboration with Chantal Akerman Foundation at L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory, from the 35mm original negative and the original sound mix, restoration supervised by Luc Benhamou; DCP courtesy Janus Films. In French; English subtitles. 99 min.
Chantal Akerman’s giddy, clever meta-musical comedy is the crowning achievement of years of tinkering and experimenting in films like Family Business, Hôtel des Acacias, All Night Long, and Les années 80. The film stars Delphine Seyrig (Jeanne Dielman, Letters Home) as Jeanne Schwartz, the bourgeois Polish-Jewish proprietress of a clothing boutique at the Toison d’or (Golden Fleece) shopping mall in Brussels. Jeanne is the centrifugal force of love, commerce, gossip, and morality around which all the other flirtatious shopkeepers, beauticians, and suitors revolve. Her kindness, however, masks wartime trauma, and when a former American GI reenters her life (played by John Berry, the blacklisted director of He Ran All the Way) the film’s frothy proceedings, its catchy tunes and dance numbers, its merry-go-round of hopeless romantics and heartthrobs, even the single film set itself, take on a more darkling, imprisoning cast. Golden Eighties is perhaps the last great original movie musical, wedding gravity to lightness, chaos to order.