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Touches You

Thanks for the memories!

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

My first impression on The Meetings of Anna was that Lost in Translation directed by a gloomy Wes Anderson. This is my first Akerman, so I didn't know what to expect from this. The more I think about it it feels like this is the kind of film that grows on you as time passes. The loneliness of Anna all the while everyone she meets is opening up to her although she always seeming distant was quite relatable. There are so many choices that life offers you, but you are confused and miserable so that you reject all that and yearns for something you don't know yet or something you are denying. I saw it a couple of days ago but it has a deeper impression on me now since it has been in my head for these days.

When a single woman, in her early 30's with plain features - starting with expressionless eyes and thin lips unadorned by cosmetics, attempts to deal with people in her professional career world of film-making, in her personal world of family, and with her few, select friends, her inability to ignite a spark of spontaneity in even the most casual social encounters foreordains a shallow, isolated existence from which there can be no respite.At no time are we given a hint as to why this young woman has become traumatized and de-sensitized to the point where her inter-personal responsiveness is mechanical and roboticized, and to where she is so emotionally-blocked she cannot even return a wave from a man who befriended her on a train trip from Cologne to Brussels, just walking out of his life as though they had not spent several hours in mutual soul-searching for a meaning in life beyond mere existence and attending to business matters. And to where, when her brief visit with her mother at a train station, and overnight in a hotel room, ends with her mother pleading with her to say "I love you," she coldly obliges, but then, instead of the natural follow-up of a shared hug, she just turns around and walks out of her mother's life for another extended period of separation.Even given Anna's embarrassing lack of social communications skills she does have some redeeming positive qualities, starting with two of the most important attributes anyone can have and outwardly convey - honesty and integrity. This is a real person with inner contentment and the confidence to let the world in and see her as she truly is, which is consistent from the inner soul to the outer countenance, with no cosmetics and no theatrical affectations - just as earthy and unassuming as a human being can possibly be. And while she never projects in dress, speech, or manner the contemporary, overt "sensuality" to which her generation of young women routinely aspires, she seems comfortable with her ample female physical endowments in her two sexual encounters with males she dallies with, one a "ships in the night" encounter with a German man, the other with her current lover who is based in Paris, and who becomes physically ill as a result of her ascerbic verbal rejoinders, at the expense of failing to consummate their fleeting and perhaps final romantic tryst. Because the protagonist in this film appears completely detached from societal conventions and contemporary behavioral patterns, this film elicits a pallor of honesty and in-depth psychological reflection far beyond the superficial treatment accorded most cinematic leading ladies. It takes guts to produce such a mundane subject matter film without succumbing to the temptation to over-reach and titillate the mature audience this starkly depressing material is intended for.Well worth viewing on a repeat basis, if simply because Sigmund Freud would have had a "field day" analyzing the eccentricities of such a complex and disturbed soul as this one.********

Amazingly shot, with the film always demonstrating a tremendous, disciplined use of image to convey mood and story. The film is full of long takes using striking symmetry; the camera is always finding frames within frames. For me, the story itself is interesting intellectually, but does lack emotional power; traveling to a film festival, a young femme filmmaker has a series of sadly empty encounters with people, leading to long, well-written monologues by the various lost souls. Sometimes too on the nose and speechy with its ideas, but always intelligent, physically beautiful film-making. For those with patience and an interest in image as well as story.

At the end of the 'French new wave' era, it seemed European directors were looking to make films more based on emotion and human interaction. This film is really a collection of stories that the viewer pieces together to understand the full story of the main character, Anna. What is wonderful is how the stories or 'meetings' are so contrasting in terms of emotion, yet all seem so natural and all are very relevant in order for us to understand just who Anna is. No doubt it is a film that requires patience, but that seems to be the very point, like Anna the viewer must be patient. It may be speckled with scenes of joy and nostalgia, but for the most part it is an alienating tale showing all to well that with success comes a price of some sort.