Tell Me

(1980) - Directed by Chantal Akerman
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Documentary
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"And we were there, your mother, you too."

This is my fifth Akerman, a 45-minute documentary about seeing old women around the city and listening to their stories of the past, notably about Jewish culture and experiences in WWII. Once again, that's literally all there is, as it is a rather short one for Akerman.

If you've seen Shoah, you might get a kick out of this one. Honestly, it wasn't difficult to find at all. We're here with Akerman and the three elderly women she's interviewing, hearing various stories about being a Jewish woman in times of great suffering. Now the Jews even have a biblical history of persecution, and movies like this make me think of what these stories were like being heard from biblical figures 30-50 years afterwards. Closest I had up to this point was a chapter in Catherine Called Birdy about migrating Jews. Great book, btw. Personal fave.

Some stories are much longer than others, and there are moments in their stories that are bores in comparison to the cute and charming love stories and the depressing war stories. Honestly, Chantal Akerman really had something going on here. But there's a serious problem: this movie could even be three times as long and still be a good movie. Akerman didn't interview very many women here, only three. ONLY THREE. This isn't 3 Women by Altman, this is something that could expand all over France. Now my own grandmother was the one person I loved more than anyone, so I get a personal kick out of hearing about your parents' or grandparents' pasts as anyone rightfully should. But there just aren't enough interviews, dammit! This is EASILY one of Akerman's best concepts for an indie movie, and she under-did it, even going as far as to give the vast majority of her screen time to her own mother out of likely favoritism.

So for the drastically little we had, this was a pretty good documentary with a good sense of charm. I had a feeling I'd get into Akerman's other ventures beyond the slow cinema and the structural stuff. Honestly, I really hope other Akerman's are like this, because even though I'm not gonna rate it THAT highly, it's one of the best of her movies. But the more I think about the obvious flaws, the more grating it gets.