A decade after their pivotal collaboration on Jeanne Dielman, Delphine Seyrig and Chantal Akerman reunited for Golden Eighties, a cotton-candy-colored musical that marked an 180-degree-turn away from the austere formalism of their earlier effort. In Autour de Jeanne Dielman, a behind-the-scenes documentary directed by Seyrig’s then-partner Sami Frey, the actress confessed her frustration with Akerman’s highly methodical approach on that film, which prevented Seyrig from breaking with the restrained performance style. Golden Eighties, by contrast, features luminous song and dance numbers, with Seyrig—again cast as a Jewish woman named “Jeanne”—exuding lyrical expressivity. Centered around the romantic upheavals of the employees and patrons of a shopping mall, the film situates Seyrig’s Jeanne as the ensemble’s matriarch, a nurturing shop-owner teasingly referred to as a “Virgin Mary, full of grace, trying so hard not to lose face” in a nod to Seyrig’s traditionally seraphic screen presence. When a lover from Jeanne’s past reappears in her life, her composed exterior cracks, leading not to a violent recoil but an emotional catharsis that lays bare her simmering interiority in what is arguably Seyrig’s last major role.