Catherine Fowlers study positions Jeanne Dielman as a contrary classic its contrariness arising from director Chantal Akermans decision to frame an unliberated housewife through a kind of slow looking. By choosing to stay with Jeanne in the kitchen the film both differences the canon and diverges from Akermans liberated early films which involved the rejection of domestic space married life and the heterosexual script. Fowler draws on original footage scripts unmade and unseen projects interview