Around the 10 minute mark of Hotel Monterey, it occurred to me that I was not going to be able to watch this in silence as intended, due to my house being filled with voices, the distant echo of televisions and just general noisiness. Rather than be incessantly pestered by these aural distractions, I hastily decided to queue up something I thought would accompany the film well: Eno’s seminal classic “Ambient 1/Music for Airports”.

Thankfully, this leap of faith turned out to be a marvelous choice; the album meshed perfectly with Akerman’s work. Spacial austerity through the stases of her composed images. Carefully structured, meticulously and delicately crafted impressions of a gloomy hotel in New York City. There are moments of movement though, and when they occur, this film becomes a living, breathing thing. It starts to exist outside the realm of the still frame. Transcending tableau, calmingly placid, but sentient via the fluid movement of the camera through the dim, arterial corridors of the hotel.