You can almost smell the hairspray in Akerman’s exuberant but subversive musical about the many romantic entanglements of salon workers in a shopping mall basement. Its natty 1980s style, witty song lyrics, rapturous dance sequences, not to mention a gloriously bitchy male-suited quartet, deliver all the joys of the genre.

At the same time, Akerman critiques the consumerist ‘paradise’ around them, questioning whether love, if it’s tied to conformity, really is the answer.

This May, QFT celebrates one of cinema's mavericks with a season dedicated to filmmaker Chantal Akerman, the first female director to take the number one spot on Sight & Sound's Greatest Films of All Time poll.