The Tomb of Kafka (Jean-Claude Rousseau, 2022) (Patreon)

The more work I see by Jean-Claude Rousseau, the harder it is for me to pin him down. He is a bit of an anomaly in the contemporary film world. He makes short films and featurettes that are clearly experimental in their overall approach. But they frequently have a subtle documentary element, and they also seem equally committed to painterly considerations like landscape and portraiture. He is miles away from the dominant practices in French avant-garde film -- the scene that includes folks like Frédérique Devaux, Olivier Fouchard, and Marcelle Thirache. Were I forced to compare Rousseau to any other filmmaker, it would probably be Robert Beavers, although Rousseau's clear-eyed contemporaneity has little in common with Beavers' neo-classicism.

The Tomb of Kafka, however, shares certain elements of Chantal Akerman's work, particularly her semi-structural films like Le chambre and Là-bas. Rousseau employs a stationary camera, offering multiple views of a single room where he is staying. Sometimes the director is in the picture, sometimes not. There is a desk off-center where Rousseau's signature fedora rests. The drawer opening and closing is one of the only sounds we hear, along with faint street noise from the open windows. Moving those planes of glass, Rousseau controls reflections and refractions, bringing different parts of the cityscape into the image. A window on the left-hand side is tinted emerald green, all the more striking against the otherwise muted browns and sunlit picture window in the center of the frame.

This is a minor work compared with last year's A Floating World, but then Rousseau already has a new work premiering at FID Marseille. It's rather simple, notable for its formal elegance above all. It seems to ask us to consider the various ways that someone can occupy a small, private space, the different facets of being alone, if not necessarily lonely.