Review: Gay and Depressed

Chantal Akerman's masterpiece ‘Je Tu Il Elle’ is as horny as it is melancholy

The Yearning Rating: ✰✰✰✰✰

• Romance: ✰✰½

• Sex: ✰✰✰✰✰

• Storytelling: ✰✰✰✰✰

• Performance: ✰✰✰✰✰

• Yearning: ✰✰✰✰✰

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Written by Ali Romig

Chantal Akerman is often quoted as saying, “I will never permit a film of mine to be shown in a gay film festival.” So I can only imagine what she would think of me writing about her for a gay Substack newsletter. Probably not too much.

In her life, Akerman was notoriously prickly about being labeled a “lesbian” or “feminist” artist. Of the latter, she said, “I think it is poor and limiting to think of my films as feminist. You wouldn’t say of a Fellini film that it’s a male film…When people say there is a feminist film language, it’s like they’re saying there is only one way for women to express themselves.” This debate of owning our labels versus relinquishing them is not new, nor has it been put to rest. And while some might balk at the apparent inflexibility of Akerman’s position, I think we can all understand the desire for our experiences and perspectives to be acknowledged as universal and transcending.

In her first narrative feature, Je Tu Il Elle—which she made in 1974 at the age of twenty-four and also starred in—Akerman uses a series of deceptively uncomplicated, static shots to capture the increasingly complex inner life of a young woman. By allowing the subject (in this case, herself) to sit with us, nearly uninterrupted, for eighty-six minutes, Akerman is able to highlight how no person is just one thing—a woman, or queer, or depressed, or turned on, or heartbroken, or curious, or bored. We’re often many of these things, all at once.

Je Tu Il Elle begins: “On the first day, I painted the furniture blue.” The first day of what? We’re not quite sure yet.

We see a woman, credited as Julie and played by Akerman, sitting in a room with her back to the camera. Most of the film will take place in this one room. Here, we watch Julie paint her furniture, then remove the furniture from the room, leaving only a bare mattress. The mattress, too, eventually gets discarded—pushed up against the window—leaving only the floor for Julie to sit on. As Julie performs each task, she tells us what she’s doing via narration. Sometimes the narration comes before the task, sometimes after. It’s never quite synced.

Julie starts writing a letter, laying the pages of the letter out on the floor. It begins as a three-page letter, but quickly becomes so many pages that it covers the entire room. Julie eats raw sugar out of a brown paper bag with a spoon. She gets undressed, redressed, and undressed again. Finally, over thirty-minutes into the film, Julie goes out.

The first frame we see outside of the room is a wide shot of a highway—it somehow manages to feel even lonelier than the bare room. Julie hitchhikes, getting picked up by a trucker, who takes her to a restaurant. Here, the two sit in silence and Julie eats something other than sugar for the first time in what is likely days. Back in the truck, Julie gives the driver a handjob. Afterwards, he begins to open up about his life and reveals himself to be a pretty disgusting person. He makes comments about how he is no longer attracted to his wife after she’s given birth to children, and that he finds his adolescent daughter “a dish.” Bleh.

Finally, Julie arrives at her intended destination. She buzzes for an apartment, saying simply, “It’s me.” (Why does this choice of words feel so incredibly gay to me?) When a woman answers the door, we understand what’s happening. Julie has come all this way to see her ex, the probable intended recipient for the letter. In my personal viewing of the movie, I assume that the “first day” Julie originally references is the first day of their separation. There is an interesting dynamic between the two. The woman seems happy to see Julie, even as she tells her she can’t stay. She feeds Julie and gives her wine.

As Julie eats, she undresses the woman and they make their way to the bedroom. The woman tells Julie that she’ll have to leave in the morning. And then, they have sex. The sex scene is nearly ten-minutes long and shot in the same style as the rest of the film—the camera is stationary as the two move frantically within the frame. However, now the energy is passionate and alive, rather than contemplative and morose. After they’re done, they fall asleep in each other’s arms. In the morning, Julie gets up and leaves. The cycle continues?

I don’t usually go into this much detail about plot when writing reviews, but here every minute movement feels like it carries weight. Maybe you’re reading this and thinking, “Jesus, where is the plot?” And you wouldn’t be alone. Akerman’s work has been called everything from self-indulgent to downright boring, and it’s fair for people to feel this way. But instead of boring, I would use the word uncomfortable.

She once said she liked to film the “images between the images.” The things often passed over or rushed through in more traditional narrative films. Indeed, Akerman’s work, Je Tu Il Elle especially, forces viewers to sit in the moments of our lives we’d probably rather skip past. There is no cinematic escapism to be found here, only meditation on the mundane.

There’s a line in the film, “I waited…for it to pass, or for something to happen.” Okay yeah, that’s what the experience of watching Je Tu Il Elle can be like, but that’s also what going through a depressive episode or heartbreak can be like. You’re stuck in a feeling, desperately waiting for something to break and release you.

The first time I saw this film, I was going through a particularly debilitating breakup. I was watching a lot of movies then, trying to keep myself out of reality. A lot of them were stupid, intentionally distracting. I came across this and it was the exact opposite—a reflection of my own experience. Instead of triggering, I found it comforting. Because yes, this film is about depression and grief and the absolute, mind-numbing monotony of both, but there is also this reminder running through it: there is life within. There is the passion that drives you to write a twenty-page love letter, the sweetness of sugar on your tongue before it becomes sickly, the excitement of meeting someone intriguing before they eventually disappoint you. And there is the desire to be as close to your lover as you possibly can, even if it's over by morning, or was already over when you arrived. All of these things can exist together.

Ackerman never wanted her films to be seen as just one thing. And they weren’t. Je Tu Il Elle is the proof: you can make a film about depression and lesbian sex, and that’s just life, baby.

You can watch Je Tu Il Elle on Max or Criterion.