As the extent of Akerman’s disconnection from “home” becomes clearer, the seemingly detached visual narrative and the city’s empty spaces acquire an emotional weight. Akerman creates a powerful sense of place, an indelible image of a now-lost New York, by underscoring her familial placelessness, her dislocation from the “home” of the film’s title. Her anonymity in these spaces, her separation from those around her, is key to her liberatory experience of the city. The emptied downtown streets enable Akerman to exist untethered
