Demain on déménage

I don't quite understand why this is rated so low because Tomorrow We Move is Akerman's complete understanding of closed spaces—the discomfort and tension and the anxiety they can bring— translated into a fun, quirky comedy. I may not be selling it well but it's finding hilarity in these things, and finding the people you can ultimately get on with amid the chaos. The lead character is a writer who is trying to work on a commissioned erotic piece while trying to sell her and her mom's apartment. Would-be buyers arrive, and fun chaos starts. The apartment starts out just incredibly messy and cluttered but as the film progresses, it becomes home.

Just don't. Ever. As dull as it is indulgent,with no plot or indeed any sense of purpose whatsoever. The charm of the cast is simply not enough as you feel your time on earth slowly trickling away yet somehow not fast enough. If the queen of hearts ever watched that film, Ackerman would be beheaded for killing time.

Like most advanced film buffs, I watched the majority of Chantal Akerman's output as homework assignments, enjoying JEANNE DIELMAN and TOUTE UNE NUIT while being bored out of my gourd my most of her academic efforts. It's like taking castor oil as a child: it's good for you.

But like so many once trendy (and still revered by film festival programmers and pseudo-intellectual critics) but now creatively-spent auteurs, Chantal's more recent efforts are turgid and increasingly self-indulgent. Try the latest from Sayles or Jarmusch and you'll see how boring these middle-aged directors have become.

TOMORROW WE MOVE is a flat, by-the-numbers minimalist attempt at comedy. We're in Jacques Rivette country, but without his talent, creativity and nuttiness. Instead Chantal telegraphs every gag, repeats and underlines exactly what the viewer should be receiving in almost Hitchcockian manipulative mode, and insists on proselytizing her "message" in annoying fashion. It ain't funny, and is frankly embarrassing, given the quality performers employed.

For one, Jean-Pierre Marielle as the kindly realtor wastes the famous farceur's immense talent in a truly nothing role. He gets to dance around briefly with costar Aurore Clément, but even in many bad comedies I've seen him give César-worthy performances compared to this non-starter.

Clément, who in middle age retains that incandescent beauty that made her an instant star in LACOMBE, LUCIEN, is likewise wasted as the ditzy mother of heroine Sylvie Testud, portraying the Weinsteins. Meant to be a Polish Jewish family, I'm guessing this is an in-joke to cinema's most famous (apologies to the '80s femme producer of this name) Weinsteins, Harvey & Bob, the bad boys of the ongoing indie revolution. Or not.

Sylvie, who was memorable starring in Akerman's Proust adaptation LA CAPTIVE, is dependable as always in a rather thankless role as the director's largely "unformed" young woman. In one of Chantal's more annoying affectations, Sylvie is made to take in other people's statements like a sponge and parrot them "comically" back in order to appear up to date. This notably refers to the jargon and mannerisms of house/apartment hunting which is the film's nominal subject matter, and is presented in such an obvious and repetitious way that one can only nod and keep repeating to oneself: "That was meant to be funny; that was meant to be a gag". I think Abbott & Costello did this sort of nonsense definitively and Chantal should have looked to other sources, perhaps the ultimate icons of American humor for French snobs Frank Tashlin and Buster Keaton, for inspiration.

Film gets off to a rocky start with a visual steal (they like to call it "hommage") from Theo Angelopoulos as Clément's grand piano is suspended in air en route to arriving upstairs at the new apartment. This is repeated near the end of the film to bookend the proceedings, but Akerman foolishly repeats the reaction footage of Clément gasping, with exactly the same crowd of extras nearby. It's a film rookie mistake, usually seen in porn cheapies.

Testud spends the film writing porn for her publisher, taking mama's advice to look to others for inspiration. This is extremely unfunny material, with the French dirty words for anatomical parts used over & over, and even sung in an off-key ballad at the end of the film. No Chantal, this is not hip, this is the worst form of geriatric "with it" lame-o, like wearing blue jeans to appear young.

The array of quirky house hunters visiting Sylvie to get the grand tour is fitfully amusing, and would have been actually funny under the tutelage of a less heavy-handed director. The fact that they are mere puppets being used to set up idiotic gags is what is embarrassing. It all leads to a tacked-on, feminist/lesbian manifesto type of conclusion that is completely jarring.

As long as there are snobbish video companies (Kino International in this particular case) and the good ole boy (& gal) network of film gate keepers (film festival organizers, cinematheque honchos), the work of overrated hacks like Akerman will stay in distribution. Unfortunately, even amongst her countrymen (I've been watching many vintage Belgian films lately, by the likes of Delvaux, Kumel, Van Dormael and Berckmans) she doesn't measure up.

Pianos are popular in films, aren't they? I thought in the middle of the screening. I remembered two other piano related movies: Polanski's "The pianist" and Jane Campion's "The piano". I thought about Polanski's film because it also dealt with a pianist and the holocaust and I reflected on "The piano" (which deals with a mute pianist and her daughter) because I half wished, eventually, that one of the leading characters would develop an incurable muteness.

Lengthy dialogues were a stumbling block for plenty of films (Matrix reloaded, Clerks, most of Woody Ellen's "serious" films to name just a few)and this film, it seems, suffers a great deal for it.

The plot of the film is slightly complex so I'll just give you its major outlines. Charlotte (Sylvie Testud in a wonderful performance) is a writer trying to accomplish an erotic novel while living with her widowed, piano teaching, mother in a cramped apartment. In a desperate attempt to finish the novel, Charlotte is trying to find eroticism in pretty much everything (which is a futile attempt when it comes to armchairs, we learn) and battles writers block, unpacked boxes and piano lessons held by her mother.

Soon Charlotte realizes that their new apartment will smother her unborn novel and looks for potential buyers. At this point the movie becomes the word feast I related to earlier. Also, at that point, the movie is submerged in characters with various degrees of authenticity and grace, including a pregnant jubilant woman who falls in love with the apartment, a bitter couple that are incompatible in every possible aspect and an elderly real estate agent who survived the holocaust. Speaking of which, the subject is dealt with in a very allusive and indirect manner. Maybe not to give a bleak atmosphere to an optimistic movie or maybe because the French people are not ready for a full scale confrontation with their shady history.

I guess the abundance of sub-plots, characters and endless slightly hallucinatory dialogues, together with the 10:00 am (on a Saturday morning, mind you) screening, prompted me to gaze at my watch occasionally. I kept wandering if this movie would have benefited the omittance of some of its plots and enhancing the remaining ones. I still do.

The movie's positive traits are attributed mainly to the dazzling performance of its leading actress, Sylvie Testud (Who's character, Charlotte, is based entirely on the writer/director, Chantal Akerman, according to her own testimony) and I hope that's not the last we saw of her. I also hope that more and more writers will realize that in scripts, the old Cliché "Less is more" is a good piece of advice (and many writers, even prominent ones, haven't figured that out, yet) and that a clumsy script can weigh heavily on a movie and its unsuspecting viewers.

Especially at 10:00 am on a Saturday.

5 out of 10 in my FilmOmeter.

Wow, can't believe the negative reviews here. Seriously, this is one of the funniest movies I have ever seen. My sides were splitting from laughing. Of course, Sylvie Testud is stellar, but the absurdity of the whole thing is the point. It's not a movie that "needs a plot" or a "sense of purpose." You do have to enjoy this type of movie to like it.

Maybe I'm over-compensating by scoring this a 9, but I feel the need to counterbalance what I believe is way too low a score for this movie. Anyone looking for a lighthearted movie should give this a whirl, if they can actually find someplace to watch it. I'd love to see it again but can't find it online anywhere.