Contact Lens

In this radically sensory homage to Jeanne Dielman, Chantal Akerman’s masterpiece becomes a canvas for reimagining women’s emancipation from both the constraints of daily life and the limits of the cinematic frame.

A young woman goes about her day as a shot-by-shot remake of Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles – complete with a Chinese actor in a wig – plays on a projector screen in her small apartment. Through the process of repeatedly watching a film that depicts a woman’s daily routine slowly unravelling, the protagonist becomes transfixed by the possibilities of changing her own perspective, both literally and symbolically.

The debut feature of Ruiqi Lu, which won her Best Director in the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival’s Rebels With a Cause competition, Contact Lens is a love letter to the empathetic power of cinema. Formally meticulous, the film plays with focus and framing as the protagonist inserts and removes her contact lenses, while its heightened sound design – microwave beeping, kettle boiling and bug zapper zapping – hypnotically emphasises the confines of domestic life.

“Contact Lens feels like revelatory work, turning to cinema history to combat ennui and show us a path to making our lives a better place.” – In Review Online