No Home Movie

No Home Movie is haunt­ed by two ghosts. The sub­ject of Chan­tal Akerman’s film is her moth­er, Natalia, who passed away in April 2014 at age of 86, and the direc­tor her­self who died in 2015, short­ly after the film’s world pre­mière. Aker­man may not have orig­i­nal­ly intend­ed for No Home Movie to be her swan­song, but there is the inescapable feel­ing of a chap­ter being closed with this film. Akerman’s rela­tion­ship with her moth­er was one of the themes that unit­ed her eclec­tic body of work, with Natalia being a key fig­ure in many of her instal­la­tion pieces and most mem­o­rably in her 1977 film, News From Home, to which No Home Movie feels like a com­pan­ion piece.

Just as in News From Home, moth­er and daugh­ter spend part of No Home Movie com­mu­ni­cat­ing from dif­fer­ent con­ti­nents, although this time Skype makes the inter­ac­tion more direct. ​“I want to show that there is no dis­tance in the world,” Aker­man tells her moth­er who, with a look of con­fu­sion, peers into her mon­i­tor. ​“You always have such ideas, don’t you dar­ling?” Natalia smiles back. At oth­er times, Aker­man and her moth­er sit across the table from one anoth­er to con­tin­ue their con­ver­sa­tion. ​“Tell me a sto­ry,” Aker­man asks of the woman who fled Poland in 1938 and sur­vived intern­ment in Auschwitz, where her own par­ents died. Even as the pair dis­cuss the most mun­dane things, such as Natalia’s upcom­ing med­ical appoint­ments, or the best method of prepar­ing pota­toes, we get the sense that every moment is pre­cious for a daugh­ter who knows that the time she has to spend with her moth­er is rapid­ly run­ning out.

Much of the film con­sists of sta­t­ic shots of Natalia’s apart­ment, which is always bathed in a bright, cold light. There’s a cosy kitchen, a large liv­ing room with din­ing area, a bed­room and a decent sized gar­den which appears unused. She occa­sion­al­ly wan­ders around until, lat­er in the film, she is too weak to move. Akerman’s film­mak­ing style has always been one of patient obser­va­tion, her cam­era let­ting life play out in front of it at a nat­ur­al pace. Here this approach affords us an uncom­fort­able inti­ma­cy with Natalia as her con­di­tion dete­ri­o­rates and she slow­ly slips away from us. Aker­man occa­sion­al­ly cuts to images of an arid desert land­scape, filmed dur­ing a vis­it to Israel, or a tree being buf­fet­ed by strong winds. These inter­ludes cre­ate a pow­er­ful sense of des­o­la­tion. A nomadic soul, Aker­man has said that she always defined home as being where her moth­er is; with Natalia gone, where could she go?

Those of us who watch No Home Movie now will see a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent film to those who saw it before she passed away. It feels like a fit­ting final state­ment from a film­mak­er who always poured her­self into her work and shared so much of her life and expe­ri­ence with us. Reac­tions to her last film will like­ly be coloured by famil­iar­i­ty with her past work, but any­one who recog­nis­es that we lost one of cinema’s unique and most vital artists last year will find this dev­as­tat­ing. ​“Where is Chan­tal?” the ail­ing Natalia croaks in one of the film’s most pierc­ing moments. Through her extra­or­di­nary body of work, she remains by our side.