mesmerizing...

I agree. That was the longest build-up ever. I had this on my DVR and normally I would have normally fast-forwarded through some of the monotany...but I was fascinated by this woman's routine.

It was funny, my husband walked in and sat down next to me for part of it. After about five minutes he asked me if they would be getting to the point any time soon! I told him "No, it's pretty much three and a half hours of...this."


Whadda ya hear, whadda ya say!

Yep, me too, although I can certainly understand why many viewers, even those who have a favorable bent toward the avant-guard and experimental, would find this film utterly boring and/or baffling. Right from the beginning though I was totally sucked in by it's pace and structure, it's Zen like focus on "doing" rather than on "action", and it's subconscious examination of rhythms and routines and their relationship to unseen things. There's nothing mocking, a la Godard, or gimmicky going on here with the film's images or the structure. The extended displays of the ordinary are very much of and about themselves and form a independent part of the film as important as any character or dialogue. And beyond that there is the repetition, the interplay between the two cycles of Jeanne's activities BOTH PRE AND POST ORGASM and the emergence in the second round of subtle breaks in her routine which in their accumulation add a sense a menace and mystery and ultimately activate an entirely new narrative level in the film. Pretty great stuff if one can sit though it. Perhaps the attraction on my part is due to the fact that my personality is of the type that is pre-disposed to a meditative and patient observation of people and things (a trait by the way which I do NOT think is a necessary requisite to enjoying this film).

Yes. At first it is all so very ordinary... then that ordinariness begins to crack, and we know that it will shatter - but not how. The tension builds, slowly, then faster (structurally, a nice parallel to the sexual crescendo). Then, when all shatters at last, it makes perfect sense at once.

Spare the rod, spoil the child, incite a civil war.

"Mesmerizing" is a great word to describe this film. JD is mesmerized into a robotic stupor by the dull routine of her life. Likewise, the audience is mesmerized by watching JD repeat the same dull routines. Then, BOOM, mesmerization abruptly ends for the audience, but seems JD is still in some kind of a trance.

That's a great word for it! I cannot tell someone else they are wrong for being bored to tears, with the static camerawork and lack of action or plot development. But somehow it's mesmerizing.