In Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, Jeanne’s son often, casually almost out of habit, points out her deviations from a perfect appearance – an unbuttoned button, her slightly disheveled hair, minor things like that.
I know someone, who’s been married for a couple of years – to a really perfect man : educated, rich, responsible, polite. She seems to think so too. She has told me many times.
I recently met her at a restaurant where she had too many cocktails and, in a particularly animated moment, broke a glass. She couldn’t believe it. And she couldn’t believe it so much that she started crying thinking about what her husband would have thought of her if he’d seen her break a glass at a restaurant. She was quite drunk, and absolutely inconsolable, so after a point I convinced her that it had been me.
I broke the glass, not you.
Now instead of the usual ‘how are you?’ I have a new question:
Can you break a glass?
Beyond Six Rivers 