Watching as Many of the Films I Blind Bought this Year Before the Year is Over 23L’enfant Aimé ou Je Joue à Étre une Femme Mariée (or The Beloved Child, or I Play at Being a Married Woman), directed by Chantal Ackerman, 1971
The second film on Criterion Collection’s Chantal Ackerman’s Masterpieces 1968-1978 is one that Ackerman herself has dismissed. However, I find that it is an important part of her formative years. While I can understand her desire to disavow her efforts there, with its clumsy intercutting and plodding pace that makes its short half-hour runtime feel much longer, the film is still engaging for the way it explores womanhood in relation to sex, family, and society at large. The idea of “playing” being a “married woman” while also being “the beloved child” shows us how these gender roles are thrust upon women and practiced upon until they are a second nature of sorts. Those that question them - as Ackerman has done over her career - are still expected to adhere to them in one way or another lest they forfeit womanhood, a title not inherent to them but rather a conditional title that can be stripped away and then re-forced onto them when convenient
Watching as Many of the Films I Blind Bought this Year Before the Year is Over 23L’enfant Aimé ou Je Joue à Étre une Femme Mariée (or The Beloved Child, or I Play at Being a Married Woman), directed by Chantal Ackerman, 1971
The second film on Criterion Collection’s Chantal Ackerman’s Masterpieces 1968-1978 is one that Ackerman herself has dismissed. However, I find that it is an important part of her formative years. While I can understand her desire to disavow her efforts there, with its clumsy intercutting and plodding pace that makes its short half-hour runtime feel much longer, the film is still engaging for the way it explores womanhood in relation to sex, family, and society at large. The idea of “playing” being a “married woman” while also being “the beloved child” shows us how these gender roles are thrust upon women and practiced upon until they are a second nature of sorts. Those that question them - as Ackerman has done over her career - are still expected to adhere to them in one way or another lest they forfeit womanhood, a title not inherent to them but rather a conditional title that can be stripped away and then re-forced onto them when convenient
