It takes a moment to realize that, yes, she's eating sugar straight out of a brown paper bag. What at first seems like it's going to just be an interesting study of a human being and her emotional inner monologue turns into a strange journey through baser emotions. I can only assume the... raw eating habit is indicative of some sort of basic craving. She's ingesting pure energy, something sweet but not complex. It's not necessarily about need, but want.

Perhaps because of the focus on food throughout the film, especially the sugar and the neat way Julie's ex-girlfriend folds up the sandwich she creates, the climactic sex scene of this film reminded me of a more direct, slower Svankmajer.…

***One of the best 150 films I have ever seen.***

-Who am I? I'm a woman expecting for the inevitable, the irreversible to be erased, like a miracle that could only happen in an alternate reality, a reality that might bring me gloves when I'm in cold, or an embrace when solitude haunts me, or the concrete to seal up my heart wounds. Who are you?
-I am the one that reveals the truth, that understands your motives even better than yourself. I am the one that nudes what happens behind the curtain. I am the prophet of future consequences, and what lies beyond your destiny.
-Who is he?
-He's the typical incarnation of chauvinism, an existentialist entity of a…

Unlike any film I've ever seen, and a supremely raw display of human experience.

There's a book I've read that discusses emotions in relation to the consumption of different foods, and it explains that excessive sugar bespeaks an inner desire for love and affection. I kept thinking about that description throughout the early parts of this narrative as the protagonist sits in her lonely room ruminating over lost love and subsisting on empty sweetness.

Admittedly, it was just slightly unsettling how much I could relate to her. There was a moment in the truck where the man said, "You obey, but you're afraid. You think it's wrong." That phrase seemed as though it could be an overarching metaphor for women…

Before I proceed to my thoughts on this movie, I want to thank Edgar for his review on this incredible movie that made me step into the world of Chantel Akerman...

The movie starts with a woman who is all alone with in an apartment with a bed, her bag of sugar and few things... She is struggling with a break up, she is writing letters, same words trying to figure out. Roaming her apartment, lying naked and eating sugar and nothing else.

She gets out finally, a truck driver giver her lift. They make stops to eat and here is a journey of the truck driver, alone driving. Married, talking about his sex life. How he needs a release,…

Perhaps I might have gotten more out of this had I not already seen Jeanne Dielman (or perhaps not), but I kept unfairly comparing the two films as I watched. It's interesting to see how Akerman developed her recognizable form from her documentary-esque short films to a narrative feature. The way she surveys the domestic spaces of her characters (which in this film includes a trucker's cab) is in itself fascinating. Her camera remains mostly static, and little attention is called to camera movement when there is any. As a result, we feel the confinement of her characters in environments that are completely familiar, both stifling and somewhat comforting. What I feel this movie lacks in comparison with Jeanne Dielman…