Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles

The camera meticulously observes the routines of Jeanne Dielman (Delphine Seyrig), a widowed housewife and mother. It surveys the seemingly uninhabited apartment with equal precision, casting its gaze on the objects and furniture whose places are entirely fixed. In this rigidly bourgeois 1970s apartment, Jeanne Dielman tidies up, dusts, does the laundry, cooks meals and receives elderly gentlemen in the afternoon. Even her occasional prostitution has a specific place, both in the apartment and within her unchanging daily routine. Ironically, it is the world of objects—potatoes, lids, a button—that will come to shatter these rigid structures. (mg)