Actor

Delphine Seyrig

3: briefs
13:00: average
39 min: in total

On film.briefs3

Last Year at Marienbad

Alain Resnais · 1961

Last Year at Marienbad (1961) is a French avant-garde drama directed by Alain Resnais from a screenplay by Alain Robbe-Grillet. Set in an ornate, unnamed hotel, it follows a man’s insistent claim that he and a woman met there the previous year — a claim she denies. With no named characters, nonlinear editing, repetitive dialogue and meticulously composed black-and-white imagery, it explores memory, persuasion and the instability of time. Shot in Munich palaces using Dyaliscope widescreen, it won the Golden Lion at Venice and remains a landmark of modernist cinema.

13:00

The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie

Luis Buñuel · 1972

Luis Buñuel’s 1972 surrealist comedy follows a group of French bourgeois and a South American ambassador as they repeatedly fail to share a meal. Structured around five thwarted gatherings and four interwoven dreams, the film uses repetition, deadpan performance, and seamless shifts between reality and fantasy to dissect ritual, class, and the quiet violence of politeness. Shot by Edmond Richard and edited by Hélène Plemiannikov, it won the 1973 Academy Award for Best International Feature Film.

13:00

Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles

Chantal Akerman · 1975

Chantal Akerman's 1975 film spends 201 minutes tracking a widowed Brussels housewife, played by Delphine Seyrig, through the exact domestic routine that structures her days, including the afternoon clients she sees for money while her teenage son is at school. Shot by Babette Mangolte from a fixed, eye-level camera that never enters Jeanne's private space and rarely cuts within a task, it was made on a budget of $120,000 and has since been named, in one major critics' poll, the greatest film ever made, a status built almost entirely on how literally it commits to watching unglamorous, repeated labour.