Multiple Choices - Picture Perfect
1995 · 12m · Canada
Directed by Alison Burns
Genres: documentary, essay film
Tones: contemplative, tender
Young people and couples examine their expectations of relationships and marriage as changing gender roles and role models reshape responsibilities between men and women.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A 1995 essay doc about gender roles and marriage expectations—sounds like it should be a TED talk, but Burns refuses to settle for talking heads or neat conclusions, instead letting contradiction and ambivalence do the intellectual work that most films would outsource to narration.
Burns positions this squarely in the lineage of Chantal Akerman and the structural essay film, using the documentary form not as a reporting device but as a meditation on how personal testimony becomes cultural artifact—the formal restraint is the argument.
The genius move here is how Burns lets silences and the space between interviews carry more weight than the confessions themselves, a production choice so economical it reframes what documentary listening actually means.