alr

Golden Eighties

Directed by Chantal Akerman.
With Myriam Boyer, John Berry, Delphine Seyrig.
France/Belgium/Switzerland, 1986, DCP, color, 99 min.
French with English subtitles.

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 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.

Part of film series

Read more

The Reincarnations of Delphine Seyrig

Other film series with this film

Read more

Breathing Through Cinema
The Films of Chantal Akerman

Current and upcoming film series

Read more

Ben Rivers, Back to the Land

Read more

Harvard Undergraduate Cinematheque

Read more

Make Way for Tomorrow. Carson Lund’s Eephus

Read more

Jessica Sarah Rinland’s Collective Monologue

Read more

David Lynch, New Dimensions

Read more

Museum Hours: Mati Diop’s Dahomey

Read more

Albert Serra, or Cinematic Time Regained

Read more

Wang Bing’s Youth Trilogy

Read more

The Shochiku Centennial Collection