Her spoon incessantly shovels sugar from a shabby sack in her room’s stark shadow, yet Julie, played by the director, cannot sate her hunger in Chantal Ackerman’s 1974 film “Je tu il elle.” Following a breakup with her lover, Julie contends with an aching void that she desperately tries to fill — with sugar, a truck driver and finally her former lover — within the film’s 86-minute runtime. Ackerman’s lighting and blocking brilliantly convey the limerence that Julie experiences until her 13 minutes of orgasmic catharsis.
Upon Julie’s introduction, Ackerman frames the main character off center in a medium close-up shot, accented with drab lighting that spotlights the sugar she eats. Food replaces Julie’s sexual thirst, or at least pathetically attempts to. Eventually, the sugar spills and a naked Julie dives deeper into the covers; she has not entirely quenched her lust. Ackerman’s dark lighting masterfully mimics the despairful soul of Julie — creating a sense of off-kilter unfulfillment. The frame is never entirely occupied due to a desolate production design with details that are further drowned out by the dismal, shadow-favoring lighting.
Julie needs her former lover, or at least that feeling brought about by her, so she ventures onto the side of a road. She meets a married-with-kids truck driver and follows him for the night. This second sequence of the film takes up the majority of the runtime, but unlike the first and final part of the film, lighting does not play as pivotal of a role. The technical grandeur shown in the first act becomes second to the already minimal, and at times lackluster, character work. The sequence demonstrates a distinct tonal shift in the story until the climax, in which Julie gives the truck driver a hand job and Ackerman shoots the scene in close ups to emphasize the voyeuristic role that the audience holds in Julie’s desires — a return to Ackerman’s commanding direction.
Kitana Lourens of Musée credits Ackerman as a filmmaking pioneer — after all, the Belgian filmmaker is the tenacious, rhythmic mind behind “Jeanne Dielman, 23 Commerce Quay, 1080 Brussels.” However, Ackerman’s second act tangent is flaccidly contrived, rendering a frail film until she finds her footing with one of the most legendary scenes in film history. She combines ethereal white lighting, the self-assured steadiness of the camera and euphonious, raw sound design to depict Julie’s reunification with her former lover and cinema’s first on-screen lesbian sex scene.
To contrast the film’s opening setting, Ackerman shoots the two lovers with a bright white light so their two bodies turn into one form: desire unbound. There is no diegetic sound from events occurring off screen. Instead, the sound of sheets moving under the weight of the women’s pleasure adorn the soft cries of pleasure. Julie’s longing has been ridded but only temporarily, for the film ends with her leaving her lover once again. Her yearning cannot be escaped, she must merely sleep with it on her bare mattress that sits on the floor alongside her bag of sugar.
