Je Tu Il Elle

Director: Chantal Akerman

1975 / 90min / DCP

Akerman’s boldly minimalistic first feature stars the 24-year-old writer-director herself as a young woman who we see emerging from an existence of isolation. She hitches a ride with a truck driver with whom she has a sexual dalliance, before finally arriving at the home of a former lover, falling into her bed in a bout of joyous lovemaking which, depicted in real-time, is regarded as a landmark depiction of lesbian sex in cinema. “Filmed in an uncomfortably direct yet distanced manner,” Janet Bergstrom wrote in Sight & Sound, the boudoir scene “provided a startling new perspective on voyeurism, exhibitionism, and the woman’s image on screen.”

Introduction by Beatrice Loayza, NY Times film critic, on Friday, October 11th