Golden Eighties

Chantal Akerman's 1986 film is a musical set entirely inside a shopping arcade. The shop assistants, hairdressers and owners working in a Brussels mall fall for each other, break up, misunderstand and reconcile, all of it delivered through song and dance numbers. For anyone who knows Akerman's long, still, silent films this is startling at first; she is looking openly at the Jacques Demy tradition here. But her own subject sits beneath the bright surface: Jeanne, the boutique owner played by Delphine Seyrig, is a Polish Jewish woman carrying a story that survives from the war. That memory, planted in the middle of a consumer paradise, carries the film past its genre. It premiered at Cannes. Who it's for: viewers curious about Akerman and about experimental use of the classic musical. Who it's not for: anyone expecting the austere, minimal Akerman; this is her most accessible work.