There’s so much thinking about the history of Western European art in how the shots are composed. I thought about interiors in Dutch and Flemish art; Vermeer is there so strongly that it must have been a conscious intertext. Akerman makes use of the same motifs: a woman reading a letter, a woman thinking, a woman lost to some private experience; open windows, busily furnished rooms, dramatic light and shadow. Vermeer gives a sense of the narrowness and containment of women’s lives as well as the possible sparks of sublimity and self-possession, and Akerman does something similar albeit with a much bleaker undertow. The faint, knowing smile as Jeanne serves up dinner on the first night felt drawn directly from a figure in Vermeer — those women’s impenetrably private but totally captivating expressions. The moments of Jeanne sat at the table were unmistakably (to me!) allusions to Vermeer's A Maid Asleep, 1656, and other paintings in that style. Many of the objects we see acquire an intensified presence that isn’t symbolic but made me think about the heightened meaningfulness of ordinary things in paintings. The workbasket with Jeanne’s knitting recalls the workbaskets that occasionally turn up in Annunciation scenes to refer to Mary’s working life in the temple before she bore Christ. The blue and white china tureen looks like something from a Dutch/Flemish still life, but also brings to mind Mary Magdalene’s ointment pot — the vessel through which the sexualised sinner repents. Even the towel Jeanne lays on the bed for her clients feels like it could have been in a Vermeer painting — it communicates so much visually! — if his own social world had been slightly different. The way of seeing Akerman encourages with the long, slow shots feels different to the standard cinematic experience because it’s about sitting with an image for a duration and noticing things — as you would with a painting. Obviously I loved this — it was like being extremely absorbed in a paintings exhibition except you are motionless, sat down in silence in the dark.

Thought about this and so much else for the 200+ minute runtime. About 30 seconds in Louis turned to me and whispered, “I love this!” I loved it too, but especially because I was seeing it with him, with Vids and Will sat behind us and Sally at the end of our row. I tried to watch this six years ago on my laptop and I’m so happy I waited to see it in the cinema. It was fun to observe the audience’s attention wax and wane, and the palpable feeling of going through something together: everyone chuckling conspiratorially when a man left in a huff after a couple of hours, conspicuously slamming through the fire exit; the woman audibly exclaiming ‘fuck’ in the violent denouement.