Les Rendez-vous d'Anna

After she changed her mind about a sexual encounter the night before, touring film-maker Aurore Clément (title character) has decided to join new friend Heinrich (Helmut Griem) for a visit to his home in Bottrop, West Germany, outside Essen, where he fills her in about his life, in Chantal Akerman’s Les Rendez-vous D’Anna, 1978, a.k.a. The Meetings Of Anna.

After a long chat on the train from Germany with a stranger about her early life in Brussels, Aurore Clément as the title character, touring film-maker Anna, arrives at there and meets Lea Massari, whom we’ll soon learn is her mother, in Belgian writer-director Chantal Akerman’s Les Rendez-vous D’Anna, 1978, a.k.a. The Meetings Of Anna.

Full of decisions if not action, Chantal Akerman opens her first feature after the landmark Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, 1975, at a train station in Essen, then-West Germany, and introduces her title character, Aurore Clément, as filmmaker Anne Silver, in Les Rendez-vous D’Anna, 1978, a.k.a. The Meetings Of Anna.

Continuing her tour for screenings of her film, Aurore Clément (title character) arrives at the Hauptbahnhof (the main train station) in Cologne, West Germany, where’s she’s intercepted by family friend Ida (Magali Noël) whom she’d earlier told she wouldn’t have time to meet, in Chantal Akerman’s Les Rendez-vous D’Anna, 1978, a.k.a. The Meetings Of Anna.

With little explanation and some nudity, Aurore Clément as the title character, back at her hotel with a man (Helmut Griem as Heinrich) she evidently met at a screening of her film in Essen, West Germany, and a less than passionate parting, early in Chantal Akerman’s Les Rendez-vous D’Anna, 1978, a.k.a. The Meetings Of Anna.