Curious, what do women think of a movie like this?

[deleted]

[deleted]

Masterpiece. World hasn't changed.

I deleted my other posts made on mobile.

I'm not a woman, but I'd guess that most women would be reflexively repelled by the idea of prostitution, especially with the older men that she has sex with.

I think what Jeanne Dielman does has a lot of cultural aspects to it that don't make sense outside of its culture. I suspect it was kind of quietly accepted for a middle aged widow to exchange sex for money with older men. There's an understanding that she has suffered a financial support loss with the death of her husband. And while remarrying is the normative means of re-establishing spousal support, I think there's the idea that an exchange of sex for money is some kind of reasonable facsimile, especially when the men are her age or older and she is incapable of bearing children anymore.

It might even be seen as generally pro-social, since it provides a sexual outlet for older men without partners and does not involve the corrupting the purity and innocence of younger women. A widow has lost her innocence already and there is no risk of unwanted children. It helps reduce a widow's poverty. And the lack of marriage prevents some level of familial disruption and inheritance.

In the film itself, though, I think it tends to be more about Jeanne Dielman's specific emotional pathologies regarding intimacy, although I think they are difficult to understand without the cultural context.