The Meetings of Anna

MOVIE #1,782 • 🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿 • 07.04.24 ALBERT & AKERMAN: AN AUTEURIST STUDY IN CONTRAST + CONTINUUM The (very stupid) cover art for this dueling director focus on Chantal Akerman and Albert Pyun is a picture of the latter on set standing next to Captain America, only I’ve crudely photoshopped Akerman’s face under the mask worn by the superhero. It’s fitting in a way because The Meetings of Anna is her most autobiographical work of fiction yet, and it’s also her most European, at least pragmatically, as the story flows linearly through Berlin, Cologne, Brussels and Paris, epicenters of high art I presume. It paired perfectly with Pyun’s much-derided comic book flick about the most patriotic hero of them all, in other words. I thought this chapter of the project would write itself but when I sat down to get cracking, I initially came up blank.

Not only that, but I had a minor crisis of confidence re this entire venture (this website/book, my movie criticism, in general). The idea that every word on cinema I’ve ever penned was utter shit, and maybe it is. That I’m a fraud. But the bigger problem still was how this way of thinking was and is affecting how I view movies and, more concretely, what I get out of them. I have some perverse notion that if I stop writing about the films, or even simply cataloging them, that I must cease watching anything full-stop. Music, perhaps? Have you heard about this? I could start from scratch there maybe. What’s the dawn of recorded sound? And how could I best list and grade every work of it? A new cycle (hell) and I simply don’t have the stomach for it, not to mention the time. Literature? Give me a damn break. So let’s talk about the young, but not that young, globetrotting filmmaker Chantal, I mean Anna. And also her meetings…

The main thing you should know about Anna is that she is insane. We are all somewhat insane but eating discarded hotel veggies off the hallway floor is a different level…


I think this was my favorite Akerman picture to date and it’s interesting to learn that it wasn’t even considered a top-tier effort for a long time. In a roundtable discussion at Pop Matters, Jordan Cronk writes:

the film wasn’t well received at all: Akerman, representing for many arthouse patrons a uniquely feminine alternative to a male dominated industry, chose to, with this film, rebuild her previously all-female crew with a combination of both sexes, prompting many to write off the merits of the film on principle alone. Which is all very ironic, as Les rendez-vous d’Anna is arguably the most incisive, penetrating, and downright mournful examination of the female psyche in Akerman’s catalogue.

The themes are painted very clearly and broadly. Akerman is called a difficult filmmaker but I’m starting to wonder how much of that is solely related to the run-time of Jeane Dielman? She sets out to make her points succinctly and without ever letting style get in the way (which is, of course, a kind of style and a very effective one).

I recently left my family for a weekend trip alone: my Father’s Day gift, solitutude and cinema. I spent it at the movies. I went to a double-feature at the Mahoning Drive-In for Gremlins/Gremlins 2 in 35mm then saw two new films at the Civic Theater of Allentown the following day (Wicked Little Letters and Gasoline Rainbow in not 35mm).


Watching this movie, I was reminded of this time away. I sort of envy Anna’s weird, lonely life. It’s unsustainable perhaps, but there’s an alternate universe where I’m simply taking a train and staying in hotels. Watching films and maybe making some myself. Akerman is almost always referenced as a “feminist filmmaker” but she’s equally a humanist one. Her movies are brimming with the complexities of being alive without ever getting bogged down by the melodrama the vast majority of cinema feels the need to insert to get their point(s) across.

This perhaps cuts right to the heart of the contrast with Albert Pyun. Akerman made movies that brought to life the strange pain of existence: it’s all there in the finished product. But with Pyun, not only is it about the flipside (the joy of living): it’s just as much about the struggle of producing the work as it is the final result. And this has never been more clear than with his final film for Cannon, 1990’s Captain America.

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Les Rendez-vous d'Anna (known in English as The Meetings of Anna and Meetings with Anna) is a 1978 drama film written and directed by Chantal Akerman. It was released on October 9, 1978.