Je, Tu, Il, Elle (1974, Chantal Akerman)

Chantal/Elle spends a month alone in a plain apartment eating spoonfuls of sugar out of the bag. Voiceover narrates the action, but not exactly, and not in sync with what we’re seeing (messing with sound sync was all the rage in 1974). The first sync dialogue comes after an hour, when she’s left the house and is riding around with a trucker. I would not have guessed it’d end in an extended sex scene, probably with the ex she was mourning while eating all that sugar. Feels far more electric than the depopulated Hotel Monterey.

Trucker Niels Arestrup was also in Stavisky this year, went on to collect awards for playing in Audiard movies (lead prison gangster in A Prophet), and the girl at the end, Claire Wauthion, was in La Mémoire Courte.