‎Blow Up My Town (1968) directed by Chantal Akerman • Reviews, film + cast • Letterboxd

Blow Up My Town

1968 ‘Saute ma ville’ Directed by Chantal Akerman

A young girl comes back home, shuts herself away in her apartment, goes about her business in a strange way, hums as if she was mad, polishes her shoes and her legs as well, throws her cat out of the window and ... kills herself.

Chantal Akerman

13 mins More details at IMDb TMDb Report this film

Popular reviews

Review by Willow Catelyn ★★★★ 1

In 1965 Chantal Akerman saw Pierrot Le Fou and decided that night she was going to be a filmmaker so it comes as no real surprise that her first short feels very inspired by Godard's work in the sixties. It's a little frantic in a way and Akerman almost personifies a Karina-esque character toiling away in her kitchen for the night. Where it gets a little weird and distant from those early Godard inspirations is where it takes up some of the same themes that are visible in second wave feminist filmmaking in this time period. It almost recalls Daisies brash feminism without the visual circus of Chytilova's picture. She would toil away in her kitchen, rebelling more and more…
Review by Sally Jane Black 1

CW: feminism, suicide, mental health

It's sad knowing that there are still people who would argue against this film's sentiment. Second wave defiance that eats a poor kitty along with it, a disorderly breakdown of urban European domesticity, this film gradually but not slowly, loudly but not violently peels away normality, each new chore shedding yet more reason until she is taping up the doors, no longer bearing any resemblance to household chores. This breakdown is less a depiction of mental distress and more a gob of spit in the eye of expectation, ending in darkness. My main objection is the use of the Plathian exit; it feels like a cheap shock. At its time, perhaps an opening cinematic salvo…
Review by Graham Williamson ★★★★

I'd never seen anything by Chantal Akerman before - I'd been put off by her difficult reputation, which is what happens when your signature film is nearly three and a half hours long. From what I understand of Jeanne Dielman, this twelve-minute short is an early exploration of the same idea; the use of apparently banal, unremarkable scenes from a woman's life to create a cumulative portrait of her despair.

After watching Blow Up My Town I watched this 2011 interview with Akerman. I could identify with a lot of what she said, particularly when I learned she got into film as a teenager. When you get into films as a teenager rather than a kid, your tastes follow a…
Review by Willow Catelyn ★★★★

"Saute Ma Ville is the mirror image of Jeanne Dielman"
-Chantal Akerman

"In Jeanne Dielman there is a woman who lives her life through rituals. She cooks and cleans every single day. It's mechanical, perfectly shaped and fills her life with purpose. When there are slight breaks in those tasks the woman of that film begins to fracture. Jeanne Dielman shows a structure to live in. Saute Ma Ville seeks to destroy those structures."

Read the entire piece over at Curtsies and Hand Grenades
curtsiesandhandgrenades.blogspot.ca/2015/10/female-filmmaker-project-saute-ma-ville.html
Review by Auteur ★★★½

A slice of absurdist domestic feminism from Chantal Akerman. Even at thirteen minutes it's a tad repetitive for its abrupt ending, but if you begin to get distracted or annoyed at the obvious, intentionally obnoxious soundtrack, asynchronous with the images of Akerman doing mundane things around the house, the final shot is sure to bring you back. A clear influence on the work of Catherine Breillat, I'm told this is a notable precursor to Akerman's career high, Jeanne Dielman. I'm not able to really comment on that, except to say that I cannot wait to watch it.
Review by 48ONIRAM

My first Akerman.

I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Recent reviews

Review by Orxbane ★★

Loved the ending.
Review by Mara ★★★

ok but why did she eat her pasta like that
Review by kmarus

As a man, I can never truly relate to the distinctly female anxieties that Akerman explores in so many of her films, but even the watered-down version I experience creeps into my core. At only eighteen years old, it's sad how much she already knows about what the world offers women. Saute Ma Ville and her later masterwork Jeanne Dielman both revolve around women in confined spaces who see the insanity of the ordinary (the shoe shining which struck me so deeply in Jeanne Dielman has its roots here). While Jeanne Dielman's nearly four hour runtime provides more context for its subject's spiraling behavior, Saute Ma Ville's thirteen minutes are a burning fuse, ending in a literal explosion of frustration of frustration and existential angst.
Review by joaopedrofaro ★★★

Desconstrução da harmonia da rotina quase numa antítese do Jeanne Dielman. Lá é a tragédia fatal do acaso, aqui é a ação direta e a escolha da fatalidade. Anarquismo em sua face mais infantil (no sentindo positivo da palavra).
Review by Filipe Furtado ★★★

A declaration of principles if one that still very indebt to its influences.
Review by youngcarolion ★★★★

immediately thought of Chytilová's Daisies -- so here 4 this
Review by Deadite_237 ★★★

Very odd. I quite liked it. I liked how it just continued to get stranger and stranger. I'm not sure what it's trying to say. Maybe it isn't trying to say anything.

I really liked the part where the girl was putting shoeshine on her leg. That was great.
Review by Fesapo ★★★½

78/100
Review by Zach Cheney ★★★

Bears witness to Akerman's deep-seated cinematic drives, a comment by which I follow common suit in watching this film through an auteur lens and as the seedling of her subsequent output. It has a wonderful youth vibe to it that's still present in her early 70s work but almost disappears by the time of Jeanne Dielman, which is emphatically mature. Quite fascinating how focused this is on character, which shifts by Je Tu Il Elle to include her more trademarked studies of spaces.