documentarian formalism. there is a relative sense of narrativity here, achieved via akerman's eagle-eye for static geometry - it is linear in the sense that it is vertical; the camera ascends through the dilapidated hotel just as one of its guests might.. hotel monterey is not merely an exercise in observation, for it is a grand expression of life in and of itself: the camera breathes, the corridors breathe, and the people breathe, and it all sort of collapses into a perfect harmony of Being

it assumes a distantly folkloric charm in the midst of its crushing melancholy; akerman's haunted hums become the filmic foreground, ascending beyond their preinscribed sonic confines. saute ma ville is at once chokingly literal and mystically sad, perfectly telegraphing the director's future work - it is a loving portrait, and it is one that i will never watch again.

reminds me of why i love [slow] cinema so dearly.. familiarizing the viewer with a defined space—its openings, its depths, its anomalies, its grammar—and making magic. this is film-as-experience; film in its primal form—before language, there was the image, and the image speaks for itself.