Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles

A woman – Jeanne Dielman (Delphine Seyrig) – in an entire microcosm, for three days. In static shots, the camera observes the everyday routines of the widowed housewife and mother in minute detail and for minutes on end in a world that seems entirely cut off from everything else: tidying, making beds, dusting, doing the washing up, cooking food. In the afternoon, she receives older gentlemen; her occasional prostitution also occupies a fixed place in the precise course of the day. Barely perceptibly at first, the rigid temporal and spatial structures are shaken up on the second day, while the third day brings inexorable escalation. A silent, solitary chamber drama whose choreography of gestures and rituals bears radical testimony to emotional numbness. The visual and temporal experience is no less radical for the audience either. (mg)