Sexually frank, cooly passionate, Chantal Ackerman's extraordinary first feature, in which she plays herself exploring lines of flight.  A room with powered sugar, the cab of a truck, the flat of a rejeecting lover. Minimal in style, maximal in impact. 

‘Je, Tu, Il, Elle’ is a breathtakingly honest film, delighting in its frank exploration of sexuality and veering between the erotic and the mundane with wild abandon. This film marked Chantal Akerman’s return to her native Belgium, and some would argue it also marks her induction into the annals of great female directors.

This movie is utterly sparse, as if superfluous detail has been torn away to reveal the nature of human passion, from its basest form to its most beautiful. Akerman revels in long, lingering shots (in crisp black and white) of her protagonists. The camera is static for much of the time, unflinching in its gaze like an obsessed voyeur. Stabs of surreality seem all the more weird amidst the films zen-like calm, too: the all-sugar diet of one protagonist, for example.

A film of three acts, with Akerman playing the lead, ‘Je, Tu, il, Elle’ is a highly personal piece of cinema, and a benchmark for other experimental filmmakers to aspire to.