Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles

Name: Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles
Genre: Drama
Released: 1976-01-21
Duration: 202 min
Rating: 5
Cast: Yves Bical, Delphine Seyrig, Henri Storck, Chantal Akerman, Jacques Doniol-Valcroze

Rating

5.0 (1)

Release Date

1/21/1976

Runtime

202 mins

Genres

Drama

Overview

A lonely widowed housewife does her daily chores and takes care of her apartment where she lives with her teenage son, and turns the occasional trick to make ends meet. Slowly, her ritualized daily routines begin to fall apart.

Status

Released

Original Language

French

Budget

$120,000

Revenue

Homepage

How It Feels

Read from this film's synopsis, keywords and credits, and used to work out what it sits beside.

A meditative immersion in the minute details of a woman's domestic life that gradually transforms from hypnotic routine into something more fractured and strange. Time itself becomes the subject as the film insists you stay present with mundane repetition until the texture of ordinary life feels quietly revelatory.

Mood

ContemplativeUnsettlingMelancholicClaustrophobic

Themes

IsolationIdentityGenderFamilyMemory

Tone

Matter-of-fact

Pacing

Meditative

Look

FormalistNaturalisticLong takes

Structure

Linear

Heads up

Sexual content

Delphine Seyrig

Jeanne Dielman

Jan Decorte

Sylvain Dielman

Henri Storck

1st Caller

Jacques Doniol-Valcroze

2nd Caller

Yves Bical

3rd Caller

Chantal Akerman

Neighbor (voice) (uncredited)

Reviews

nicolascagegoons

Aug 28, 2026

I think to say the film is intentionally boring is surface level critique and praise. Rather, I think within that is a tale about the traditional wife and more so about the doomed repetition plaguing the trad wife.
Your world has a limit and boundaries, family becomes isolation and you become as clueless about who you are like everybody else.
I've watched and loved a lot of akerman films over the last year but ultimately and to the point of cliché, this is her best film because its the ultimately flex of her style, from long takes to repetition its weaponized effectively both thematically and story wise. Some might say this doesn't need to be 3 hours and that to be boring is the ultimate pretentiousness and I have to say those people are foolish and fail to meaningfully critique the film(which you obviously can)
(Watch my filmography: https://boxd.it/2A45h )