Letters Home

A film dedicated to the American writer Sylvia Plath. Letters to Plath's mother Aurelia form the film's starting point. Delphine Seyrig plays Aurelia, while her niece Coralie Seyrig plays Sylvia. Through the reading of the letters, the film follows Sylvia from her teenage years up to the time before her suicide at the age of 30 in 1963. Based on Rose Leiman Goldemberg's play, the film retains some of the play's simplicity, but Akerman simultaneously makes the material cinematic through the use of music, background sounds, and overlapping dialogues.

'Letters Home' is not among Akerman's best-known films, but nevertheless brings together several of the motifs that run through her work and life: the letter as an intimate form of communication, the complicated relationship between mother and daughter and the shadow of suicide, which was already present in her very first short film.

Director: Chantal Akerman
Starring: Coralie Seyrig, Delphine Seyrig
Country/year: France, 1986
Running time: 104 min.
Formato: DCP
Language: English subtitles
Age limit: Allowed for children over 15

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.