Down There

1/26/2026

Nope, I just didn’t get the point of this. Imagine we are the camera. For the most part, we are sitting on a chair in a darkened apartment somewhere where a woman’s voice takes some phone calls, reminisces about her past and ponders something of her future. Occasionally, for good behaviour, we are allowed to move around but usually only to go to the blinded windows so we can look, somewhat pruriently, at the neighbours in adjacent blocks. Once or twice, we even venture out to the seaside to see the people playing, but never for long and then it’s back indoors for the remainder of a month’s holiday that felt every hour of it to watch. Now the woman is acclaimed director Chantal Akerman and the venue of the building is Tel Aviv, but for most of this paceless diatribe we could be on the Falls