“Today is Saturday, and I’m going to write a text on a film about laziness!” I’ve stopped counting how many Saturdays have passed while I was staring at a blank page since I first uttered this phrase. Portrait d’une paresseuse seems one of Chantal Akerman’s more playful and lighter works—a skit in which she acts out a filmmaker’s creative process of attempting (and failing) to make a film about being lazy.
Self-reflexivity and humorous distance toward the subject matter are, of course, the driving forces of the entire bit. To what extent Akerman’s struggle against inaction is staged or merely an act, remains unclear. The constant blurring between the fictive and the authentic makes the film as relevant today as ever—even inspiring this film critic to mimic the very same thing in her own writing, as a way of hiding her irresponsibility behind a stylistic device. (Or does it really?)
From the moment she wakes up to her alarm clock and throughout the entire film, the filmmaker looks and talks directly to the camera, announcing her imminent actions, some of which she never carries out. With a witty yet discreet smile in her eyes, Akerman indulges in delusive self-reassurance and procrastination. “I'll take some vitamins, then I’ll clear the table,” or, “I'll have a cigarette, then I’ll make the bed,” she says, fully aware that she won’t. Her gaze invites the audience to join her playful deviations, while the static long takes stretch time on and on.
A feeling of uneasiness begins to arise—not only because her inaction feels disturbingly familiar but also because another person is present: the verbally silent yet physically and musically loud Sonia Wieder-Atherton—Akerman’s real-life partner with whom she lives and whose evocative scores would become the distinctive voice of her cinema. The entire being of this roommate contrasts sharply with the prevailing inertia. Performing the self is one thing; doing so in the company of another person, especially someone with whom you share a domestic space, is quite another. This is why the film’s theatrics go beyond unilateral, self-absorbed, isolated expressivity, considering the boundaries and pressures that come with an interpersonal spatial setting.
Given the filmmaker’s predisposition to repetition and rumination, it’s no surprise that Portrait d’une paresseuse recycles some themes and concepts from Lettre d’une cinéaste: Chantal Akerman (1984). Both films contribute to the self-proclaimed larger tapestry of “same old Chantal, same old ideas.” It’s curious how contemporary, diverse audiences perceive Akerman’s self-image. Today, performativity and self-awareness are staples of both the art world and social media. Creating art while venting one’s difficulties in doing so seems like a banal and, indeed, lazy practice.
With Akerman’s cinema increasingly discovered by younger, often queer and/or female viewers, a posthumous reinterpretation of her work seems inevitable. Although the ultimate impact of mainstream culture reappropriating Akerman’s more austere and unfathomable films is yet to be measured, a collateral (and beneficial) outcome already emerging is that films like Portrait d’une paresseuse, once deemed minor, sloppy, or unserious, are now put under the spotlight and become as one says nowadays, so damn relatable.