The Meetings of Anna

Anna Silver is a director. She comes to Germany to show her new film and moves by train for several days. Essen, Cologne, Brussels and Paris. At every stop she meets someone. A teacher tells her his life. A woman describes her daughter's situation. She meets her mother at a railway station and they talk in a hotel room. In Paris a man stays with her. Anna barely speaks; those opposite her speak and she listens. Then she returns alone to her room and plays the messages on her answering machine. Chantal Akerman writes and directs. Aurore Clément plays Anna; Helmut Griem, Magali Noël and Hanns Zischler are in the cast. It is a French and Belgian co-production. Its form is a series of encounters; each section consists of a single speech and there is no exchange. The camera is mostly fixed and the characters placed at the centre of the frame; the composition follows the line of Akerman's earlier work. The matter it treats is displacement in postwar Europe; those who speak describe their own pasts and all of them speak of a loss. Railway stations, hotels and empty corridors are its spaces; none of them is a home. The film is read as close to Akerman's own life; she was travelling festivals with her films in that period. The narrative reaches no conclusion and what the character thinks is never said. Its limit is pace; the narrative is very slow, there is no event, and the speeches run long. Who it is for: viewers who like Akerman and slow cinema. Who it is not for: there is no event, the pace very low, and the narrative cold.