The Super 8 Years

Annie Ernaux won the Nobel Prize for literature for a body of autobiographical body of work charting her own life. The Super 8 Years is pretty much more of the same, except in filmic form. At its most basic and off-putting level it’s a “what I did on my holidays” narration over clips from a family’s home movies. At another a snapshot of a lost era and the history of a development of a writer. In 1972 Annie and husband Philippe Ernaux (always addressed by his full name) bought a Super 8 camera. It was, she says in voiceover, “the ultimate desired object… much more than a dishwasher or TV”, and set about … Read more