A Couch in New York

With 'A Couch in New York', Chantal Akerman plunged into the romantic screwball comedy and at the same time made the genre all her own. Béatrice (Juliette Binoche), a young dancer from Paris, and the New Yorker psychoanalyst Henry Harriston (William Hurt) swap apartments with the help of a newspaper advertisement. She moves into his designer penthouse on Fifth Avenue while he takes over her bohemian apartment in Belleville. Without having met each other, they gradually get to know the other through the spaces and objects they have left behind. And it's not long before they've swapped not just housing, but also lives: Béatrice takes over Henry's work as a psychoanalyst, while Henry tries to come to terms with her chaotic surroundings. When Henry returns to New York and discovers that Béatrice has taken over his patients, he begins attending therapy with her himself. An exceptionally light and lusty film from a filmmaker who rarely devoted himself so wholeheartedly to the romantic comedy.

Director: Chantal Akerman
Starring: Juliette Binoche, William Hurt, Stephanie Buttle, Barbara Garrick
Country/year: Belgium, 1996
Running time: 108 min.
Formato: ProRes File
Language: English subtitles
Age limit: Allowed for all, but children under 7 years old are not recommended
Original title: Un divan à New York

Part of the series: Chantal Akerman's fictions
Chantal Akerman was one of the most form-conscious and innovative filmmakers of her generation. Her fiction films range from melodrama and musical to romantic comedy and radically concentrated chamber plays and testify to an incredible curiosity to explore the possibilities of fiction.