‎Je, Tu, Il, Elle (1974) directed by Chantal Akerman • Reviews, film + cast • Letterboxd

Je, Tu, Il, Elle

1974 Directed by Chantal Akerman

For more than a month, eating only powdered sugar, a woman tries to deal with a breakup: she paints her room twice, removes the furniture, writes and rewrites a letter to her lover, clarifying all she had said. She spreads the pages on the floor. She lies down and waits. Finally, her sugar eaten, she is hungry and leaves. She flags down a truck; she and the trucker drive through the dark, stopping at a diner and bars. He asks for a hand job, she complies. He talks about his wife, children, and sex life. She arrives at the flat of her lover, a woman, who tells her she cannot stay. She says she is hungry, so her lover feeds her then allows her to stay the night. They make love.

Chantal Akerman Niels Arestrup Claire Wauthion

86 mins More details at IMDb TMDb Report this film

Popular reviews

Review by Sally Jane Black 1

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.…
Review by Diogo Serafim ★★★★ 4

the images soon catch up with the narrative, but the diegesis remains enigmatic. akerman works with an approach towards non-solidity, images may fade or resist, transitions may be abrupt, but the movie structures itself in some kind of watery resistance nonetheless: what we see resists that which we perceive and vice-versa.

there is some perverse causality within the dissembling black & white and the sudden shifts of light: the anguish is palpable, but we can't fully grasp it. the entire film constructs itself within some ilusory sense of compactness, of impenetrability, as if chantal wanted to hide her pain by showing only a glimpse of it.

"i realised that life stood still no matter what, that nothing would happen, and that i had to wait until it stopped snowing and the snow melted. it snowed a long time."

the last scene tranfigures love as rage, and when it's over, she leaves once more.
Review by Serafina ★★★★ 1

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…
Review by James Healey 6

My friend told me there was a 15 minute lesbian sex scene at the end of this so I decided to check it out (the scene, not the entire film). Half of it was pretty much just naked wrestling. I think I'll stick to Blue is the Warmest Color for my art house porn.
Review by Robert Beksinski ★★★½ 8

I, You, He, She marks my first brush with famed Belgium director Chantal Akerman who also stars in the film. It was not an easy first meeting but still intriguing enough for me to eventually seek out more of her work.

The film begins almost in the same vein as The Man Who Sleeps with the same redundancy and mundane minimalistic living confined to one room. This segment of the film was the most engaging piece even though it too tested the patience of its own redundancy and repetitiveness. Despite both films containing a unique visual style (although I can safely admit The Man Who Sleeps has the upper hand in regards to cinematography), there is something strange in how…
Review by Edgar Cochran ★★★★★ 3

-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 monotonous existence, if you like to put it that way,…

Recent reviews

Review by Jana ★★½

B o r i n g.

but at the same time. I call the one scene on the cover straight girls play at sex with another girl. Kudos for the year/time in which it was produced. but still.
Review by joaopedrofaro ★★★★★

Explorar dimensões. Akerman assume esse estudo das formas e suas limitações, sendo os limites essenciais para enquadrar os corpos paralelos das paredes do quarto e do humano, sendo este último o principal. E sendo o feminino, claro, com sua sexualidade se tornando a maior manifestação de vida. Quando existe o sexo com o masculino (a cena da masturbação do caminhoneiro) nem dentro do quadro ele está, porque simplesmente não interessa, não há vida ali.

As dimensões solitárias da jovem sozinha no quarto fúnebre se transformando no último momento, quando as duas amantes se encontram. Nesse encontro, tanto o quarto quanto o humano mudam, tudo se torna vivo. Todas as dimensões estão em movimento.
Review by Trent Kinnucan ★★★

This is mostly pretentious claptrap, although I laughed when she accidentally spilled her bag-of-sugar snack on the floor, and then lazily started scooping it back into the bag with her spoon.
Review by Danny Agama ★★½

I really enjoy and respect Akerman's work but this film is just incredibly difficult - and I really love slow films like Bela Tarr's The Turin Horse or Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles. Maybe I'm trying to read more into it than I should but I would pass on this and opt for some of her other work.
Review by kmarus ★★★★

Chantal Akerman knows how to take a spartan white-walled apartment and turn it into grand theater. A very persuasive argument for all women to be lesbians.
Review by mattheweg ★★★½ 2

I worry that the more Ackerman films I watch, the more I like them.
Review by Hot Dog ★★★★

How many nutella sandwiches can u eat in one sitting?
Review by Fredrik Fyhr ★★★★

1. Woman, room. OK.
2. Truck driver. Following.
3. Women, a sandwich, sex. Right.

Great movie!
Review by Nicole Meyer ★★★

how many days did she survive off of raw sugar