A Nos Amours: Chantal Akerman 25: La folie Almayer

Chantal Akerman’s final foray into fictional filmmaking, her adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s tale of colonial ennui.

Almayer is not a well man. His house has seen better times and the jungle aims to take it back. His Malaysian wife is mad. Their daughter has been sent away for a better life and an education.

This is Conrad’s novel about the malaise of a prospector in the dog days of colonialism. Conrad would have his protagonist forget, forget his wife and daughter, and die happy. Akerman, as we might expect, allows her Almayer no such comfort. He will see the horror of it all and die in agony.

Almayer’s Folly is Akerman’s dramatic swansong, a final statement of her imagined worlds. The metaphoric image of a filmmaker sitting amid the ruin of cinema is inescapable.

This is the end point of the two-year long retrospective at ICA.

The screening is dedicated to the memory of Chantal Akerman (June 6, 1940 - October 5, 2015).

La folie Almayer, dir. Chantal Akerman, 2011, 127 mins