NO HOME MOVIE

(director/writer: Chantal Akerman; cinematographer: Chantal Akerman; editor: Claire Atherton; music: ; cast: Chantal Akerman, Natalia Akerman, Sylvaine Akerman; Runtime: 115; MPAA Rating: NR; producers: Patrick Quinet, Chantal Akerman, Serge Zeitoun; Icarus Films; 2024-Belgium/France-in Canadian French & English, with English subtitles)

“An intense home video.”

Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

The final film of the legendary Brussel’s born filmmaker Chantal Akerman (“I, You, He, She”/”Jeanne Dielman, 23 Commerce Quay, 1080 Bruxelles”), who at 65 took her own life. It’s a bleak personal love homage documentary well-worth seeing on the avant garde director’s octogenarian and Auschwitz survivor Polish mother Natalie, who passed away soon after the film was completed. Natalie was a Polish-Jewish refugee during WWII, who was arrested and detained at Auschwitz.

Chantal observes her dying mom’s daily routines and talks with her on Skpe about various things that mom wants to talk about in her Brussel’s apartment, with long silent uncomfortable pauses. Mom freely talks about the Nazi occupation of Belgium, her health issues and gossips about family members.

It’s an intense home video telling of having no place to call home while being in exile for a lifetime. It’s a special film for those who always carry around with them their lonelieness, the horrors of the past and their troubles. For many viewers, this might be a torturous watch, an incomprehensible film that rubs them the wrong way emotionally and it doesn’t measure up to the kind of film they are programmed to see. For others it’s a special film that had to be made about the love of an appreciative child for her beloved mother.

It played at the New York Film Festival.

REVIEWED ON 12/11/2024  GRADE: A
dennisschwartzreviews.com