Fifty years ago this September, Chantal Akerman made her first film. It was a short, comical fragment about distraction and suicide called Saute Ma Ville (1968). Following Akerman herself running up to her flat, the film then shows her gradually making a mess of the kitchen where she has locked herself, taping the gaps in the door and windows ready for a slow death. The screen is filled with a random assortment of objects, all abstractly dealt with by the manic character who may or may not just be Akerman not acting at all. Here is a list of things we see:

• A small bouquet of flowers which are dragged up the flight of stairs and into the flat. They may have been bought in a shop or perhaps stolen from outside a stand, rather like the camera that was used to shoot this film. Or maybe they were a gift from someone pathetically sentimental.
• A button for the lift reading ‘lift’ which is manically pushed though the lift is not actually taken. The lift is raced by Akerman running up the stairs though she loses as the lift is a lift and, being a lift, is actually faster than Akerman running up the stairs.
• A poster on a door with an angry looking smurf upon it standing under the caption ‘Go home!’ The smurf is actually Judge Smurf, a minor character from the cartoon series that barely appeared at all and which, when searching online, can only be found in the form of a physical toy rather than an image. Judge Smurf may be fond of boarders and may possibly hold resentment, even xenophobia, to those who live outside of the smurf communities (hence ‘Go home!,’ as well as the fact that Father Abrahams, the Dutch songwriter who brought musical fame to The Smurfs with a variety of novelty hits, was a supporter of Hendrik Koekoek’s populist Farmer’s Party and recorded a single with the politician blaming Arabs for the 1973 oil crisis).
• Two smaller pictures to the right of the Judge Smurf poster. One is of a photograph of Akerman herself with the words ‘C’est Moi!’ scribbled underneath, just in case the character or woman forgot whether she was playing Akerman or a performer playing someone else but who was really Akerman performing all the same. The other photograph is what looks at first to be a hand hanging down over a black background. It feels deathly and is probably not the hand of Akerman though nothing is impossible. Closer inspection reveals it, in fact, to be the face of a man looking away in disgust, probably at being misidentified as a hand that may or may not have been Akerman’s.
• A roll of dark sticky tape which is probably more accurately duct tape due to its colour. It is, however, too thick to be duct tape so, judging from its size alone, it must be cellotape. The tape is hanging from a door handle in between its use to fill the gaps so that the gas does not escape. It is also used later on to seal the window.
• A bottle of wine which is already open. The wine is red and potent enough to make Akerman choke a bit and stare into the camera when drinking it. This is because the wine is red and only those of a totally psychotic disposition can drink long since left open red wine and not in some way grimace through to the fourth wall of their lives in despair as its solidified fragments trickle down the throat.
• A black mac coat with white buttons and a white shall. This is stored in a kitchen cupboard which is far more logical a place to keep such things than first considerations suggest as, of all of the rooms in the household, only a bathroom is liable to get you wetter than a kitchen. Akerman knows this, explaining why she dons it and a white headscarf when she mops the floor which is covered in kitchen paraphernalia.
• A box of Brio dishwashing powder. Brio the company now tend to make dishwashers rather than dishwashing powder. Akerman did not own a dishwasher in 1968, like many people, and her primary concern, judging by Saute Ma Ville, was to get dishes washed as quickly and painlessly.
• A pair of black shoes and some boot polish which is used to then polish Akerman’s legs until her white socks and skin are darkened. Polishing shoes before death is a wise choice as the worst thing that could happen when someone finds your body would obviously be for them to exclaim ‘Look at the state of those shoes, I’d have died of shame anyway if I’d worn them in such a state.’ However, polishing legs with shoe polish is inadvisable.
• A copy of Le Soir, the daily Belgian newspaper (written in French) with liberal leanings. Le Soir had a notably excellent crossword section in the 1960s (probably) but was also threatened with bombs for continuing to publish the cartoons of Charlie Hebdo in later years that showed the Prophet Mohammad. It has not exploded yet (unlike Akerman’s flat which is about to blow up in the film).
• A burnt bouquet of flowers. This may be the same bouquet as seen earlier in the film (along with a box of confectionaries). Both may have been a gift from some relationship and the reason why Akerman is contemplating suicide (the relationship, not the flowers themselves that, while rather pathetic, are charming in their own weak way). This is normal as relationships often tread the fine line between flowers and suicide. These flowers are burned on the stove before the gas is left to run, perhaps in an effort to die via carbon monoxide like Sylvia Plath. However, a voice in the film cries ‘Bang, Bang!’ and it is suggested that Akerman’s character, who may or may not be Chantal Akerman, has died, not through death by carbon monoxide poisoning, but by an explosion caused by the gas coming into contact with the match and stove that burnt these flowers. She is dead either way.