Almayer's Folly

Somewhere in South-East Asia, in a little lost village on a wide and turbulent river, a European man clings to his pipe dreams out of love for his daughter. Working freely from Joseph Conrad's debut novel, Akerman tells the story of a trader in 1950s Malaysia whose dreams of a Western life for his Malay daughter slowly lead to destruction. A quest for the absolute, a story of passion and madness.
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Working freely from Joseph Conrad's debut novel, Akerman tells the story of a European trader in 1950s Malaysia whose dreams of a Western life for his Malay daughter slowly lead to destruction.

Programmer's Note
Chantal Akerman’s 2000 film The Captive was an ingenious reduction of the fifth volume of Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu. Almayer’s Folly, her second foray into literary adaptation, transplants Joseph Conrad’s 1895 debut novel, which concerns a Dutch trader living in Malaysia, to the 1950s. The additional decades of foreign intervention have left an indelible mark on the region that lingers in the lush periphery of this fever dream of a film.

A man sings in a bar as women dance behind him. A sullen figure approaches and stabs the man. All the dancers flee save one, who keeps performing, oblivious. She stops, and begins to sing a song of her own.

This early aria foreshadows the lyricism and generous use of music that will come to infuse so much of the film. Almayer’s Folly is a work of bold stylistic risks undertaken by a filmmaker of legendary precision. Akerman’s characteristic long takes are here, but rather than enforcing a sense of naturalism, they serve the film’s high theatrical style. The result is seductive, even intoxicating.

Almayer (Stanislas Merhar) came to Southeast Asia long ago to seek his fortune. He married the adopted Malay daughter of the wealthy Captain Lingard in the hopes of winning an inheritance, but Lingard’s fortune gradually dwindled after a series of ill-advised journeys in search of hidden treasure. Now Almayer is resigned to a meagre existence, running a trading post where no one trades. Nina (Aurora Marion), his half-Malay daughter, is his sole source of hope and comfort. But Dain, the young man Almayer had enlisted to help him find the lost treasure his father-in-law fruitlessly sought, has eyes for Nina, and threatens to steal her away from this steamy backwater forever.

Almayer’s Folly is a mature work that comments on the legacy of colonialism while telling a haunting story of greed and desire. And it’s yet more evidence of Akerman’s impressive control of the medium and restless pursuit of vital new images. Cameron Bailey
Director's Bio

Chantal Akerman was born in Brussels. She studied film at Belgium’s Institut National Supérieur des Arts du Spectacle et des Techniques de Diffusion. Her films include her breakthrough, Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (75), which screened at the Festival, News from Home (77), Anna’s Meetings (78), A Whole Night (82), Letters Home (86), Histoires d’Amérique (89), Un divan à New York (96), The Captive (00) and Almayer’s Folly (11).