The Cinema of Catherine Breillat [1 ed.] 9789004343849, 9789004326941

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The Cinema of Catherine Breillat

Contemporary Cinema Editors Ernest Mathijs Steven Jay Schneider Editorial Advisory Board Martin Barker (University of Wales-Aberystwyth) – Wanda Bershen (founder, Red Diaper Productions) – Mark Betz (University of London, King’s College) – David Bordwell (University of Wisconsin-Madison) – Sean Cubitt (University of Waikato, New Zealand) – Roger Garcia (former Director, Hong Kong International Film Festival) – Joke Hermes (University of Amsterdam) – Jim Hillier (University of Reading) – Mark Jancovich (University of Nottingham) – Douglas Kellner (University of California-Los Angeles) – Soyoung Kim (Korean National University of Arts) – Amy Kronish (Consultant in Jewish & Israeli Film) – Barney Oldfield (General Manager, Angelika Entertainment) – Murray Pomerance (Ryerson University, Canada) – Michael Renov (University of Southern California) – David Schwartz (Chief Curator of Film: American Museum of the Moving Image) – M.M. Serra (Executive Director, Film-Makers Cooperative) – J. David Slocum (New York University) – Christina Stojanova (Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada) – Kristin Thompson (University of Wisconsin-Madison) Institutional support The Centre for Cinema and Media Studies at the University of British Columbia

VOLUME 7 The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/coci

The Cinema of Catherine Breillat By

Sophie Bélot

LEIDEN | BOSTON

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Bélot, Sophie author. Title: The Cinema of Catherine Breillat / by Sophie Bélot. Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill Rodopi, 2017. | Series: Contemporary cinema ; volume 7 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017030475 (print) | LCCN 2017034591 (ebook) | ISBN 9789004343849 (E-Book) | ISBN 9789004326941 (hardback : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Breillat, Catherine--Criticism and interpretation. Classification: LCC PN1998.3.B7528 (ebook) | LCC PN1998.3.B7528 B47 2017 (print) | DDC 791.4302/33092--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017030475

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. issn 1572-3070 isbn 978-90-04-32694-1 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-34384-9 (e-book) Copyright 2017 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill nv incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi and Hotei Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill nv provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, ma 01923, usa. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

Contents Acknowledgements vii List of Figures viii Introduction : Catherine Breillat’s Scènes Intimes 1 The Personal as the Intimate 2 The Intimate: ‘X’ for Censorship 7 The Manuscript’s Structure and Synopsis 12 1 ‘Le Cinéma de Catherine Breillat’ 18 An Intertextual and Transgressive Cinema: Sex is Comedy and Une Vieille Maîtresse 18 The Script of ‘Intimate Scenes’ in Sex is Comedy 18 Breillat’s Original Film Adaptation : Une Vieille Maitresse 29 2 Viewing (Dis)pleasure 44 The ‘Cinematic Spectator’ in Tapage Nocturne 44 3 The Teen Years in Une vraie jeune fille, 36 fillette, and A ma soeur! 55 The Repressive French Society 56 Revisiting the Lolita Syndrome 67 Real ‘Becomings’/Young Girls 74 4 A Male Adolescent Sexual Journey 91 ‘The Male Crisis’? in Brève traversée 91 5 Adult Female Sexual Desire 106 The Genre Film: Crime Drama in Sale comme un ange and Parfait Amour! 106 Empowerment in Masochism: Romance and Anatomie de l’enfer 118 Conclusion 133 Adaptation of Fairy Tales: Reading and Dreaming 133 Fairy Tales and Gender Expectations 137 Intimacy in Catherine Breillat’s Cinema 142 Bibliography 145 Filmography 156 Index 159

Acknowledgements Special thanks to the Brill | Rodopi team for their patience, their support, but above all their trust in making this book possible. Thank you to Catherine Breillat’s producer, Jean-François Lepetit, and his company Flach Film, for his prompt reply in dealing with my requests. I am grateful to Jonathan Neves for his proofreading and his valuable suggestions to this volume. Any inaccuracies are my own. Finally I would like to acknowledge Peter Neves for his encouragement. ­Sophie Bélot

List of Figures 1. The dinner party in Une vieille maîtresse 35 2. The oppressive colour blue in Une vraie jeune fille 66 3. Lili’s defiant smile facing the camera in 36 fillette 78 4. The mirror scene in A ma soeur! 83 5. Deblache sliding along the armchair in Sale comme un ange 113 6. Frédérique putting her arm above her head during intercourse in Parfait Amour! 116 7. A frontal shot of Marie in Romance 121 8. The woman poses for the man in Anatomie de l’enfer 127

Introduction : Catherine Breillat’s Scènes Intimes This study aims to highlight and explore the close relationship between ­Catherine Breillat ‘the person’ and her ‘work’. As exemplified in the evocative title Scènes intimes, a close interconnection exists between ‘Breillat’ and ‘her cinema’ that underscores the idiosyncrasy of her entire corpus of work. This unique interplay between Breillat’s personal life and her career and films forms the framework for my explorations throughout this book. By the end of the 1990s, Breillat had achieved widespread acceptance as a filmmaker in France and abroad. Her ‘success’ resulted from the international release of her sixth film, Romance (1998) and its critically acclaimed reception. As her name gained recognition nationally and internationally throughout the 1990s, various retrospectives were devoted to her work allowing her first films to be presented to a wider ‘public’. Indeed, Breillat’s cinematographic career began in the mid 1970s, when she was given the opportunity to adapt her third novel, Le Soupirail (1974) to the screen under the title Une vraie jeune fille (1976). Breillat draws on aspects of her personal life in Une vraie jeune fille to express her own vision of the 1960s linked to ideas of repression and rebelliousness. The lack of ‘physical mobility’ experienced by young girls is a common feature in her three films about adolescence: Une vraie jeune fille, 36 fillette and A ma soeur! In many ways, all her films deal with women’s lack of freedom and ways to escape this oppression so often accompanied by masochism; examples include: Une vraie jeune fille, Tapage nocturne, Parfait Amour!, Romance and Anatomie de l’enfer. It is interesting to note that in interviews, Breillat stresses Une vraie jeune fille’s relationship with Romance in its reference to the landscape of the Landes region; but, more specifically, in the woman’s quest of her sexual self and identity. This first film also bears obvious resemblances to A ma soeur! At the beginning of the film’s production, Breillat told her producer, Jean-François Lepetit, that she was shooting Deux vraies jeunes filles.1 Breillat’s work is joined together by elements that reoccur in many of her films and across her oeuvre. Her films are characterized by this thematic interaction and reflect each other as shown in Sex is comedy, which focuses on the filming of a scene of A ma soeur!. Breillat’s career spans several decades, from the late 1970s to the early 2000s. Although her films were made in different decades, they are linked together 1 In ‘L’abécèdaire de Catherine Breillat’, she declares to Clouzot: ‘J’ai téléphoné à mon producteur Jean-François Lepetit et je lui ai dit: “je suis en train de tourner Deux vraies jeunes filles!!!”’. (Breillat as cited in Clouzot, 2004, p. 162).

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���7 | doi 10.1163/9789004343849_002

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by a personal cinematographic space defined by Breillat’s unique style and vision. Her films mostly emanate from her personal reading and viewing of news reports and journalistic accounts. A ma soeur!’s plot is based on a French tabloid story while Parfait Amour! is adapted from newspaper articles. Most of her other films are adaptations of her novels: Une vraie jeune fille is an adaptation of Le Soupirail (1974), Tapage nocturne and 36 fillette are based on her novels with the same name, and Anatomie de l’enfer is an adaptation of Pornocratie (2001), which is Breillat’s own interpretation of Marguerite Duras’ La ­Maladie de la mort (1982). I therefore argue that her films are linked together by a personal/’her-story’ as exemplified by her film, Une vieille maîtresse. Having read the novel, she had known for a while that she would adapt it to film. Une vieille maîtresse is her eleventh film and its position (xi) within her body of work is symbolic of her life story – referring to her stroke in 2004. Instead of autobiographical explorations, it becomes apparent that Breillat’s films bear rather strong personal creative characteristics where boundaries between personal experiences and fiction, as well as between popular and high culture, are blurred.

The Personal as the Intimate

The notion of personal creativity is demonstrated in Breillat’s self-reflexive films, Tapage nocturne and Sex is comedy. The latter, in particular, can easily be read as an autobiographical text. The uncanny physical similarities between Breillat and Jeanne, the protagonist and director of the film-within-the-film in Sex is comedy, in addition to the film’s focus on film as a process, can be read as autobiographical signs. In a Sight and Sound review, Ginette Vincendeau (2008) remarked that: ‘Most films about film-making invite the viewer to draw parallels between the director in the film and the director of the film, and here more so than usual. Parillaud is presented as physically resembling a younger version of Breillat’ (Vincendeau, 2003, p. 20). By contrast, Breillat emphasizes the film’s fictional status: ‘c’est de la fiction’, she claimed in an interview with Claire Clouzot (cited in Catherine Breillat. Indécence et pureté, 2004, p. 115). Looking at Sex is Comedy through a purely autobiographical lens could lead to perpetuating the predominant perception of reflexive films; yet, Breillat draws attention to her personal filmmaking practice instead. The film focuses on shooting of a particular scene in A ma soeur! and points to a broader issue present throughout her work. In this scene Elena and Fernando have sex in Elena and Anaïs’ bedroom. In Sex is comedy, Breillat shows the actor’s confrontation with the director regarding the issue of filming her

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vision of what cinema is. The confrontation is significant as it centres on their diverging ways of viewing this scene, which involves the nudity of, and sexual intercourse with a young girl. The director of the film-within-the-film ­challenges the scene, which would commonly be referred to as a ‘nude scene’. The film contains long philosophical exchanges between the director and her assistant and the director and her actor on the meaning of ‘intimate scenes’ as opposed to ‘nude’/‘sex scenes’. In other words, the film centres on the director’s personal view on an aspect of filmmaking and the film’s meaning and its interpretation. In a sense, the film’s narrative functions as a mirror to Breillat’s personal cinematographic concerns. The personal, in Breillat’s cinema, is closely intertwined with the notion of the intimate echoed and reinforced, for example, in Sex is comedy’s initial title, Scènes intimes (Intimate Scenes). The fact that this title is kept for the filmwithin-the-film is significant as it emphasizes Breillat’s position. Texts created and sometimes recited by Breillat, such as in Anatomie de l’enfer, recur. In A ma soeur! Anaïs sings Breillat’s texts, Anaïs’ songs, and other elements from Breillat’s films, are rooted in her imagination. For example Breillat declares that she dreamt the bizarre scene in Anatomie de l’enfer when a man inserts a three-pronged fork into a woman’s behind. A scene in Une vraie jeune fille further accentuates her films’ imaginary/intimate origins – when Breillat recreates the atmosphere of the 1960s. Television programs are recreated and the songs, mostly written by Breillat, are performed by her actors/actresses, or her older sister, Marie-Hélène Breillat. In these recreations we encounter and experience Breillat’s unique imagination. For instance, in Une vraie jeune fille, she stresses the creative aspect by translating the ‘reality’ of French society in the 1960s into images that highlight the idea of re-construction. The distinction between authentication and reconstruction is invalidated, but what prevails is the visual image emanating here from her intimate scenes/self. Developing this position further, I argue that Breillat’s self on screen is her authenticity, her sincerity, and what Clouzot (2004, p. 91) calls ‘SA vérité’. It is not a social, cultural or historical authenticity that her films try to reproduce, but her own sincerity: ‘dans mes films, j’exprime ma réalité’, Breillat declares in an interview with Clouzot (2004, p. 92). As a result, the notion of the intimate is useful for emphasising and maintaining the effect of echoing or self-referentiality that characterises Breillat’s oeuvre and ties it together. It provides a framework for the comprehensive investigation, and appreciation, of her (future) work. Breillat’s films are thus intimate in the sense that they are an expression of Breillat’s personal life. They need to be understood as sincere visions of subjects and subject matter, which are also deeply intimate. In this sense, Breillat’s artistic contribution follows a trend popularised after the Second World

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War when women’s stories were exposed to the public. Indeed, the French cultural scene saw the appearance of personal accounts in literature and cinema. Women writers made their debut by disclosing their private selves. The most famous and controversial example is Françoise Sagan’s Bonjour Tristesse (1954). The expansion of communication and media throughout society and the proliferation of visual images have accelerated this process. Shirley Jordan has recently argued that: ‘In France as elsewhere in the western world, current cultural production both responds to and sustains an appetite for intimacy. Raw details, voyeurism, self-display and immediacy are determining features across genres and media as the intricacies of private lives are exposed’ (as cited in Jordan, 2006, p. 22). Written and visual images of women’s intimate sexual experiences are displayed in the works of Catherine Millet’s (La vie sexuelle de Catherine M., (2001)), Breillat’s Pornocratie (2001) and Virginie Despentes and Coralie Trinh Thi’s Baise-moi (2000). This phenomenon, mainly found in women’s writing has, since the 1990s, crossed over into the domain of filmmaking; for example in Breillat’s Anatomie de l’enfer. Late modern Western societies, which experienced the liberation movements of the 1960s, are driven by the personal, the individual and, according to Breillat’s cinema, the intimate. ­‘Intime’ – intimate – is a concept that Breillat often uses to describe her films. In various interviews she defines her films as ‘intimes’ or ‘dans une ultra intimité’ (Breillat, 2004, p. 163). She declared to Clouzot: ‘Mes films sont extrêmement intimes’ (Breillat, 2004, p. 148) and ‘j’explore l’intime de l’intime’ (Breillat, 2004, p. 155). The intimate/intimacy is commonly associated with sexuality, as described by Julie Seymour and Paul Bagguley (1999, p. 1): ‘In common parlance, it is utilised as a substitute phrase for a sexual relationship’. Studies2 devoted or related to the concept of intimacy show awareness of this association, such as Stephanie Dowrick’s (1991, p. 253): ‘I was aware that for many people, and especially for men, the idea of intimacy is virtually synonymous with sex’. Contemporary French films, such as Hervé Guibert’s La Pudeur et l’impudeur (1990), Domnique Moll’s Intimité (1994), Patrice Chéreau and Anne-Louise Trividic’s Intimité (Intimacy, 2000), and Patrice Leconte’s Confidences trop intimes (Intimate Strangers, 2004) seem to confirm this statement as they mainly deal with sexual relations. Breillat’s films seem to be no exception; Scènes intimes depicts a sexual relationship. However, her film-within-the-film highlights the 2 The studies consulted include (it should be noted that this list does not claim to be exhaustive): Mas’Ud Zavarzadeh (1991); Stéphanie Dowrick (1991); Zygmunt Bauman (1992); Anthony Giddens (1992); Keith Harvey and Celia Shalom (eds.) (1997); Critical Inquiry Journal (Winter 1998); Lynn Jamieson (1998); Julia Kristeva (2002); Luce Irigaray (2008).

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fact that sex as an intimate manifestation of the self is difficult to handle for a woman film director. Intimacy is related to private experiences. It concerns the self in its most intimate details, as outlined in Breillat’s films of which the most extreme examples are Une vraie jeune fille, Romance, and indisputably, Anatomie de l’enfer. Intimate relations/scenes are regulated, controlled and are confined to the private space defined by the family or the heterosexual couple. Relegated to the private sphere, intimacy becomes natural, asocial, ahistorical and thus universal; it is, in a word, normalised. Lauren Berlant’s (1998) study on the notion of intimacy specifically shows ‘how public institutions use issues of intimate life to normalize particular forms of knowledge and practice and to create compliant subjects’ (Berlant, 1998, p. 288). If intimacy is related to private experiences, these experiences also have a ‘public’ face, or, as referred to by Berlant (1998, p, 281) a ‘publicness’: ‘Yet the inwardness of the intimate is met by a corresponding publicness’. This ‘publicness’ creates in the actor in Sex is comedy a feeling of being dirty and obscene, as Jeanne, the director of the film-within-the-film, declares. Trespassing their assigned sphere, intimate relations are condemned and ascribed as perverse, or impure. The split between private and public is at the basis of the division between pure and impure women, as is stated by the female protagonist in Anatomie de l’enfer. Breillat shows in her films that from the start women have been taught how they should behave to be a ‘real young girl’, or a pure woman. Society expects young girls to remain virgins and to lose their virginity with the man they love as Anaïs declares in A ma soeur!. From the 1960s to nowadays, Breillat claims that a young girl’s intimacy, her virginity, is taken away from her. Une vraie jeune fille, 36 fillette and A ma soeur! are therefore a look at adolescent girls’ alienation from their sense of selves because of an outdated social discourses on virginity. Making visible what is supposed to remain invisible, that is to say young girls’/women’s intimate selves, Breillat’s films reveal, denounce and also challenge normative society. This form of protest, respective of the new world order, is what Julia Kristeva in Révolte intime (1997) refers to as the ‘intimate revolt’. Revolt, understood as ‘return/turning back/displacement/ change’ (Kristeva, 2002, p. 5) is intimate because it represents a ‘retrospective return’. It is ‘the possibility of questioning one’s own being, searching for oneself’ (Kristeva, 2002, p. 5). A young girl’s/woman’s quest of her own – sexual – self is effectively the main recurrent topic that informs Breillat’s work. All her main protagonists, mostly female – except for Brève Traversée and Anatomie de l’enfer – are involved in self-formation. In the two films mentioned, the protagonists are alone, or, more precisely, they are cut off from any social or cultural influences. To expose these intimate selves, Breillat claims, the social environment should recede. In Brève Traversée the film takes place on a cross

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Channel ferry, a place in-between two countries and cultures. For Anatomie de l’enfer, social or cultural references have been wiped out. Neither the man nor the woman has a name. The emphasis is put on the de-socialisation of the intimate self as the film aims to explore a woman’s sexual body outside the influence of conventional discourses. Solitude, like Alice in Une vraie jeune fille or Anaïs in A ma soeur! is a means to create her own sense of self. As Dowrick (1991, p. 180) states: ‘you are alone with your memory, your imagination, your self-created portraits of others, as well as with your anticipatory ideas and feelings about how you and others will act, react, feel’. In the countryside, the swimming pool or the sea, Breillat’s young heroines are by themselves away from social disapproval or ‘the interference of others’ preconceived ideas, judgements and needs’ (Dowrick, 1991, p. 179). The artistic sphere is also a place for women to express and shape their intimate sense of selves; all of Breillat’s female protagonists are involved in creative activities such as filming or writing. Women’s intimacy is expressed in the extreme personal act of sadomasochism, though. Through sadomasochism, Marie in Romance reaches grace or purity, what I refer to as her intimate self. Bondage is an act of self-fulfilment for Marie or ‘a process of personal renewal’ (Wilson, 2001, p. 155). In a particular bondage scene, Marie’s face, according to Emma Wilson (2001, p. 153), ‘is reminiscent of Bernini’s statue of St Theresa’. In all her films, purity or grace is what Breillat aims to achieve. Grace is understood in the sense of disclosing the woman’s body: ‘the body in Breillat’s film-making is humid, viscous, hairy’ (Wilson, 2001, p. 154), and hence is radically different from its dominant representation. In this pure or intimate instance, Breillat challenges conventional femininity. For Breillat the notion of purity or grace (as well as virginity), associated with the actor’s and actress’ ‘inner light’ – ‘une lumière qui vient de l’intérieur’, as shown by Jeanne in Sex is comedy – transcendences convention. In an interview with Clouzot (2004, p. 122), Breillat also refers to this inner light as ‘le corps amoureux’ suggested by the series of interviews with Claire Vassé (2006) published under that name (Corps amoureux). The normative society hides and makes invisible – represses – aspects of the individual’s affectivity and specifically ‘le corps amoureux’. For Breillat, ‘le corps amoureux’ is not ‘le corps social’, as it is not subjected to an authoritarian society. ‘Le corps amoureux’ is the person’s intimate self/scene that is totally disclosed in Anatomie de l’enfer – and in her other films too. The disclosure of this intimate self/scene opens up to a familiarity or proximity with another self. The personal space of the scene allows for sharing an experience of intimacy, ‘an experience of “being yourself” in the presence of someone else’ (Dowrick, 1991, p. 193). Social, cultural and sexual boundaries are challenged and gender is subverted in the act of

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‘­being yourself’, as exemplified in Anatomie de l’enfer. It will be highlighted that the notion of ‘being’ takes on another meaning than traditionally assigned in philosophical discourse. ‘Being’ is not fixed, but always in a process of becoming, here supported by the film’s aestheticisation: ‘filming in close-up makes it possible to evoke a body that is temporarily freed from its function as social, cultural and even gender signifier’ (Beugnet, 2006, p. 30). Freed from any social, cultural and gender signifiers, the intimate self/scene ‘flirt[s] with the abstract’ (Beugnet, 2006, p. 37) to evoke a process of metamorphosis, of a being in the making.

The Intimate: ‘X’ for Censorship

The intimate content of Breillat’s films did not pass unnoticed by the board of censors. Most of her films met with censorship in France and, until recently, abroad. At the age of seventeen Breillat became accustomed to issues of censorship, when her first novel, L’Homme facile (1968), was published and banned straight away to readers under eighteen. Other publications3 made her known as ‘une spécialiste de l’érotisme’ in the domain of literature. As literature and cinema are closely intertwined in Breillat’s work, this label stayed with her. Reactions to her films were similar to the response her novels had received: she became known as ‘celle par qui le scandale arrive’ (Odile Tremblay, 2004, online and Jean-François Kervéan, 2000, pp. 50–53). Romance, A ma soeur!, and Anatomie de l’enfer all faced international censorship. In Breillat’s struggle with censorship, Romance represents ‘un fer de lance’ – a ‘spearhead’ as it was her first film to be threatened by international censorship even though it eventually was licensed for distribution. Outside Muslim countries, the film could be seen uncut by an eighteen plus audience. It has since managed to push ‘the boundaries of cinema censorship’, according to Tanya Krzywinska (2006, p. 45). This battle with international censorship provoked heated debates before her films’ release to the public. Romance, A ma soeur!, and Anatomie de l’enfer have been intensively reviewed in film magazines, as well as on the Internet. Even before they were seen by the public, they were critiqued as being pornographic and indecent films by the press. Such a review can certainly attract, but also ‘prepare’ people and lead audiences to preconceive and prejudge ­Breillat’s work. The audience was certainly prepared because they expected to see ‘pornography’ as confirmed by Beugnet (2007, p. 47) who states that: ‘it is the a­ ppropriation of themes and techniques generally associated with 3 Publications such as, Le Silence, après… (1970), and Le Soupirail (1974).

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­ ornography that earned Romance its initial publicity’. Although critics were p divided, shock and disgust were the most prevalent reactions towards her films’ ‘graphic’ scenes. During various retrospectives devoted to her work in the 1990s in film festivals in Dunkerque, Bergamo and Rotterdam – to name a few – Breillat mentions critics’ (and audiences) reticent behaviour. In an interview with Chronic’art (Philippe Rousseau, 2000, On-line), Breillat specifies that Une vraie jeune fille was not, in general, very well received. People showed their discontent by leaving the auditorium – a behaviour that was repeated during exhibition of her later movies, especially Anatomie de l’enfer. The frontal nudity of a young adolescent girl proved to be uncomfortable for most viewers. These types of scenes attracted the audience’s attention but also their condemnation. Hence, even though her films were not banned, the censorship debate created a media frenzy that prompted the public to self-censorship: ‘the ­self-censorship that comes from preconceived ideas’ (Breillat as cited in Williams, 1999), to borrow a phrase from Breillat. Comparisons can be drawn between the censorship of Crash (David Cronenberg, 1996) in the United Kingdom reported in The Crash Controversy. Censorship Campaigns and Film Reception (Barker, Arthurs and Harindranath, 2001). Its authors led an innovative audience research project on Crash’s censorship issues. Their findings are extremely relevant when looking at the public reaction to Breillat’s films. It is interesting to note that Martin Barker, Jane Arthurs and Ramaswami Harindranath traced a direct link between the polemic tainting of Crash and people’s experiences of it: ‘the fact that Crash was defined in advance as “pornography” by the campaign against it had far-reaching consequences for the ways in which people experienced the film, and the criteria they used to evaluate it’ (Barker, Arthurs and Harindranath, 2001, p. 48). The polemic around Breillat’s films promoted by the media has had a comparable effect of influencing public perception. According to media coverage Breillat’s films were disturbing and obscene; thus allowing for preconceptions that anybody who did not conform to this opinion was ‘perverted’. The media coverage of Breillat’s censored films prohibited the public from freely creating their own opinion when watching her films. The public was conditioned to feelings of shame, they could not judge her films by themselves. In the online version of the Telegraph (John Whitely, 2003) a quote from Breillat highlights that, ‘We’re in a society that makes us ashamed to admit to our fears or our desires and I believe cinema should get rid of those fears’. Adrian Martin (2000) concurs with this statement: ‘Stern insisted that censorship is a complex process both psychically and politically. It is not merely a question of cutting out or excluding something from view but rendering something murky and fuzzy within representation and thought, somehow marking it as obscene’.

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The red letter ‘X’ affixed on the posters for two of her films, Sex is comedy and Romance, is linked to the notion of sex. The last letter of the word ‘sex’ in the film title is enlarged and in red. The French poster for Romance features the lower body of a woman with her hand between her legs. The large red roman letter ‘X’ across the picture in both films’ titles is extremely evocative. It forbids and thus attracts viewers, but because of censorship, or, most likely, self-censorship, they cannot see the film’s deeper meaning. The audience’s own pleasure cannot be admitted, while that of the woman on the poster cannot be shown. In order to emphasize the coherence of her work, Breillat groups her films together. From Une vraie jeune fille to Anatomie de l’enfer, she refers to this group of films as her ‘décalogue’. Occupying the emblematic tenth position, Anatomie de l’enfer represents the large letter ‘X’, as Jonathan Romney (2009, p. 35) broadly explains: ‘she proudly emblazoned the credits of her 2003 film Anatomie de l’enfer with the letter “X” – referring both to the film’s graphic sexual content and to the fact that it was her tenth feature’. In an interview on the French dvd release of Anatomie de l’enfer, Breillat (2003) provides more detail on the significance of the letter X: ‘C’est la fin d’un cycle, comme par hasard c’est le dixième, donc c’est un X, un inconnu, l’obscénité et la femme génétiquement, c’est comme ça, c’est la symbolique’. The film clearly defines her position as closely affiliated to her cinematic space with the red ‘X’. Anatomie de l’enfer’s objective is to reveal the invisible and unwatchable women’s sexual being flirts with censorship, but, most importantly, for Breillat, it suggests an intimate view as well as the creation of an innovative and intimate cinematic territory. In an online journal, Kinok.com, Laurent Devanne (2004) evokes the notion of ‘décalogue’, by saying: ‘Derrière ce terme ambitieux se cachent les obsessions secrètes de son cinéma: la recherche d’une cohérence, d’une correspondance entre ses films; le retour à une vision première, originelle des rapports humains; la volonté d’élever la représentation du sexe à un niveau spirituel et moral’. The red ‘X’ marks the place of the woman’s intimate self, ‘the spot’ – to borrow a term from Martin (2000) – which cannot be shown and watched in ­cinema. Hiding from sight, controlling or policing is the domain of p ­ ornography. In the book, French National Cinema, Susan Hayward (1993, pp. 244–245) ­argues for such a conception of pornography, when she says that pornography ‘is also about man’s profound mistrust, even fear of women’s sexuality. Pornography, therefore, is a means whereby men can control it, position women as they want them positioned. […] pornography is a form of policing desire, of making women conform to a specifically phallic conception of them’. For Breillat, pornography is an expression of the heterosexual male imagination that posits women as unknowable, unpredictable and uncontrollable. The male imagination defines and fixes women’s sexuality and desire in relation to his, which

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Introduction

results in women’s sexuality and desire being non-existent. Women are portrayed as submitting themselves to men’s forms of desire. The use of cinematic close-ups of women’s breasts and face works to conform women to the image of a sexual object. The close-up of the woman’s face is used to confirm the pleasure that women gain under the control of men. In other words, pornography serves to sustain patriarchal myths and fantasies about women’s sexuality. Breillat uses the technique of the close up of the woman’s body in her films too. Close up images of genitalia are frequent, particularly in Anatomie de l’enfer and Romance – as evidenced by the dvd front cover – but serve a different purpose to that in conventional cinema. Both films deal openly with masochism and with representations of sexual degradation and humiliation of women. In Anatomie de l’enfer, the woman lets herself be intimately scrutinised by the male gaze, while in Romance Marie takes part in bondage sessions and is shown being sexually assaulted by a stranger. The films’ techniques and images, and the casting of the real-life Italian porn star, Rocco Siffredi, in the main male roles were crucial issues prompting the controversy. Due to these features, the films were the cause of heated debates and were looked at as pornographic by most critics. Martin (2000) compiles a list of these ‘­variously nominated problem areas’, as ‘the blow job, the frank sexual language, the masturbation scene, the erect penises, the close-up childbirth, the bondage scenes’. These were the same elements on which the Board of censors based their decision to merit certification and pass the film uncut in France and the United Kingdom. The blurring of boundaries between ‘explicit depictions of sexual activity’ (Martin, 2000) or non-simulated, real sex scenes and art film, is precisely the terrain Breillat’s films touch upon and question. The fantasy scene resulting from a pregnant Marie being examined by a series of medical students in Romance lends itself to this exploration. While she lays on the medical table, she imagines a brothel where a partition would separate a women’s lower body parts from the rest of her body. She fantasises about women’s lower parts being incessantly penetrated by men. These images shot in a pornographic style containing non-simulated penetration are infused by Marie’s inner voice. Marie’s inner monologues were noticed by the censors and were taken as a justification for their positive decision. It is stated that ‘Romance is a serious work. With its overly philosophical commentary, it is a particularly French piece. It is also very French in the frank way it addresses sexual issues’ (Felperin, 1999). In pornographic films, the usually male viewer is invited to take an active stance towards what he sees. The visual pleasure promised by pornography is challenged by the film’s philosophical – sometimes referred to by critics as ­‘clinical’ – exploration of women’s sexual bodies. To a question addressed by

Introduction

11

Linda Ruth Williams (1999) for the film magazine, Sight and Sound (On-line), about Romance’s distinction from pornography, Breillat (as cited in Williams, 1999) replied that: ‘In Romance the images portray an idea and the characters experience emotion. The viewer intuits the emotion through the images he is watching. That is the difference between it and pornography’. From this statement, what distinguishes her films from mainstream pornography are their intertwining of distance with proximity, or of philosophical objectivity with female subjectivity. Beugnet (2006, p. 25) refers to this intertwinement as ‘the combination of the sensual with the conceptual’ suggesting, she carries on, ‘a different kind of cinematic experience’. Breillat’s female protagonists’ philosophical explorations deal with intimate sexual experiences. A reflection, a distance, is provoked by extremely personal, intimate matters, such as those presented in all Breillat’s films, but, most specifically, in Romance and Anatomie de l’enfer. The latter film’s concern with revealing what is invisible and unwatchable instills a distance by provoking a discomforting feeling among its audience. The emphasis is put on creating an uncomfortable position for the viewer as opposed to a traditional ­position of being aroused. However, Breillat’s intimate scenes serve a dual function for Beugnet: they support and at the same time challenge the distance effect. ­Jordan (2006, p. 17) talks of ‘a tension between intimate ­involvement and ­objective detachment’ established in the film. In this sense, the phrase ‘uncanny intimacies’ (Beugnet, 2006, p. 25) is extremely evocative. The films’ explorations of women’s intimacies, with at times in the use of close-ups reveal elements of the haptic, that is to say, the sense of touch. What cannot be seen and watched is presented by the female body’s materiality, or ‘the bodylandscape’ – to paraphrase Beugnet (2006, p. 30) – foregrounded by the closeup. The organic, material body emphasizes its texture, tactility and fluidity. Beugnet (2006, p. 37) devotes an article, Close-up Vision: Re-Mapping the Body in the Work of Contemporary French Women Filmmakers, to the significance of the haptic experience provoked by the female body’s tactility, or sensuality in Romance: ‘their close-up vision encourages multi-sensory perception, where close-up images and sounds evoke the other senses’. The ‘re-mapping’ – a term used by Beugnet (2006, p. 37) – of a woman’s body, as Breillat’s films suggest, is coextensive with ‘the re-mapping of the cinematic territory’. Breillat’s task of ‘seeing woman’s sexual body clearly’ (Jordan, 2006, p. 17) outside preconceptions or a phallic logic, coincides with a redefinition of the cinematic space. Breillat’s intimate filmic experience defies categorisation and takes its audience to limits of ‘the representable/thinkable/tenable’ (Kristeva, 2002, p. 7), which causes surprise and confusion among viewers. Like other contemporary women writers and filmmakers, Breillat’s intimate texts also

12

Introduction

generate unease. Judged too disturbing, Breillat’s, and others’ innovative and provocative acts, attract condemnation. Because to make people think ‘is of a kind that challenges assumptions, breaks boundaries, and explores the almostunspeakable’ (Barker, Arthurs and Harindranath, 2001, p. 89), that is to say the intimate.

The Manuscript’s Structure and Synopsis

Breillat’s corpus of work is recognisable by its idiosyncrasy, as indicated by the notion of ‘décalogue’ grouping her first ten films, up to Anatomie de l’enfer, together. These films’ uniqueness lies in their personal standpoint and intimate exploration of female sexual experiences – epitomised by the letter ‘X’ – and subjectivity. Scholars have been focusing on these particular latter aspects of Breillat’s cinema and I will, therefore, take a slightly different approach in this study. Identified as the pivotal issue of Breillat’s cinema, the notion of the intimate, as developed above, will underpin this study’s trajectory. As described, this notion encompasses ideas of self-reflexivity and intertextuality, and refers to personal themes such as young/adult female/male sexual beings/­ becomings that will be covered by each chapter. Thus, focusing on the concept of the intimate, the book is divided into five parts, each covering one of the aforementioned and crucial issues to appreciate Breillat’s work. In addition, I will explore her work within a wider cinematographic context. The first chapter is an exploration and overview of Breillat’s cinema. It provides the basis of the study. As a matter of fact, in an attempt to define Breillat’s cinema, I concentrate on her films that mainly deal with her filmmaking, such as Sex is comedy and, to a lesser extent, Tapage nocturne. Apart from the well-established and well-documented interest in female sexual experiences, I argue that Breillat’s corpus of work is characterised by her other occupations, that of a novelist and a screenwriter. Breillat’s cinema is strongly associated with writing, her own and that of others, mainly Barbey d’Aurevilly and Marguerite Duras, but also by more mainstream media forms, such as newspaper articles. Another form of writing, the screenplay or script, is most strongly connected to cinema. Indeed, the script occupies a strong position in Sex is comedy and elucidates the ambiguous position it usually holds in (French) cinema studies. Deemed a sensitive issue, the script and its relation to the film will be firmly addressed. More specifically, a study of the script will be useful to foreground Breillat’s personal artistry and define her creative style in relation to an auteur(e) cinema. Often disregarded because of its overly technical and

Introduction

13

financial functions, in Sex is comedy the script shares, nonetheless, formal characteristics with the novel and the play. As in literature, the script generates virtual images in the reader/scriptwriter/director’s mind, bringing to light the intertextual aspect of forms of writing/filming. With the notion of intertextuality, we can counterbalance conventional theories of film studies imbued with discourses of fidelity. Generally, the predominant notion dictates that a film is a faithful copy of its written treatment, mainly the script and adapted novel. It will become apparent that Breillat’s approach to adaptation differs considerably from this view. A significant and leading feature of her cinema and adaptations, in the form of the script, generate another text on the screen – a film world with its codes. Her adaptation of Barbey’s Une vieille maîtresse provides an example as it highlights Breillat’s own artistry. As such, this original adaptation does not represent a departure from, but a continuation of her film practices. As seen in her previous films, Une vieille maîtresse is a prism that reflects her artistry. References to paintings, her own texts, but also to mainstream genres or cinema’s genres of ‘excess’, such as pornography, are customary practices in Breillat’s work. Her cinema will, thus, be defined by the multiple dialogues that her films sustain with each other, but also with other written/filmic texts: it will be perceived as a hybrid cinema. The second chapter will show that this hybridity, characterised by its selfreflexivity and intertextuality, engenders a destabilisation of conventional patterns of perception and viewing founded upon the binary object/subject and passive/active, as exemplified by the film Tapage nocturne. Breillat’s spectators are challenged – disturbed – as they are put in the position of experiencing the direct materiality or corporeality of the medium. This close relation to the film provokes ‘a sensual apprehension’ (Beugnet, 2007, p. 5) in the audience foregrounding the sensual affect of film over its representational and narrative functions. In the domain of intertextuality/adaptation, the image of Lolita is predominant. One of the most filmed characters based in literature, Lolita with her diverse representations from texts to texts has become a fluid and a­ mbiguous character. Inspired by the Lolita image, Breillat devotes three films to the exploration of the real young girl’s sexual identity. The third chapter will deal with three ‘coming-of-age’ films, Une vraie jeune fille, 36 fillette, and, the most famous, A ma soeur!. Breillat’s focus on adolescence is certainly not unique in French cinema in the sense that, according to Carrie Tarr and Brigitte Rollet (2001, p. 25), ‘one of the most frequently recurring topics of films directed by women in France, from the 1970s through to the 1990s, is the representation of childhood and adolescence’. Tarr and Rollet (2001, p. 25) add that ‘by ­focusing on childhood and adolescence, women directors are drawing on m ­ aterial

14

Introduction

which has conventionally been considered appropriate for women’s filmmaking’. It will, however, be argued that choosing to draw on the image of the ­Lolita, as epitomised by Brigitte Bardot and outlined by Simone de Beauvoir Breillat offers an innovative portrayal of young adolescent girls. Bardot/Lolita, as proclaimed in A ma soeur!, incarnated a new generation’s spontaneous and authentic behaviour. Bardot as Lolita did not espouse the conventional model of young women, but promulgated a new image that was too challenging for that time (the 1960s). It was soon distorted and reappropriated by mainstream cinema. The 1970s and the following eras were thus fuelled with reassuring images of young girls/women, as confirmed by Françoise Audé, Carrie Tarr and Brigitte Rollet, and Susan Hayward. Despite the fact that they tackled the taboo subject of adolescent sexuality, most filmmakers from the 1970s onwards presented a conventional and reassuring representation of the adolescent girl, as exemplified by Audé’s expressions of ‘adolescence sage’, ‘image rassurante’ and ‘fraîcheur et objet de réconfort’. They foreground what Hayward (1993, p. 289) called, the ‘just barely dormant’ adolescent sexuality. The theme of the young girls’ latent sexuality awakened by an experienced man implies that young female sexuality is destined to titillate the male – voyeur – spectator in the audience. Audé (2002) mentions Diane Kurys’ Diabolo Menthe (1977), Claude Pinoteau’s La Gifle (1978), and notes Pinoteau’s replication of this image – ‘version rose de l’adolescente’ as he calls it – in the 1980s in La Boum 1 (1980) and La Boum 2 (1982). It can be said that Breillat is one of the main early women directors who have so vehemently attacked dominant mainstream representations. She deals with the delicate and taboo question of female virginity to reveal its cultural and social anchorage. Drawing on and revisiting the image of Lolita, she explores the notion of ambiguity that she embodies, to show the forbidden in cinema, that is to say, a young girl’s sexual journey. What distinguishes Breillat’s image from previous representations of teenage sexuality is her view of young girls’ hesitancies and contradictions, and thus her confrontation with the myth construction of young girls/women. The camera work accompanied with long takes emphasises their intimate body movements. The opposition between the body’s exteriority and interiority, as established by dominant societies, is challenged and, thus, what underpins the body’s solidity, stability and self-certainty, is also perturbed. Having reached ‘the other side’, where the inside intermingles with the outside, Breillat’s young female protagonists are able to assert their autonomy and individuality. This is an individuality that is defined by fluid, shifting desires; the young girl incarnates continuous fluxes, as epitomised by her seaside holiday environment. The real young girl can experience sexual relationships not as a loss of virginity, but as an expression of

Introduction

15

her becoming, her-self, as evidenced by the recurrent closing shot on the smiling face of the young girl in 36 fillette and A ma soeur!. Audé (2002) and Hayward (1993) notice that the early proliferation of sexualised, not to say pornographic, representations of young girls/women is a masculine reaction against women’s advancement. It can then be argued that the promulgation and confirmation of these positive self-affirming images of young girls/women in cinema, such as Breillat’s, that aim to perturb perceptions, arouses male anxiety and fears. Stephen Whitehead (2002, p. 51) ­recognises that in the Western world ‘the idea that men are facing some ­nihilistic future, degraded, threatened and marginalized by a combination of w ­ omen’s “successful” liberation and wider social and economic ­transformations has ­become a highly potent, almost common-sense’. This threat has t­ aken a different turn, which is echoed in the now customary discourse ­heralding a ­crisis in masculine attributes, as epitomised by Phil Powrie (1997) volume c­ oncerning French cinema, French Cinema in the 1980s. Nostalgia and the Crisis of Masculinity. In the light of these current social and cultural debates, it is not surprising to hear that critics have defined Breillat’s treatment of men as ‘vulnerable’, and, hence, ‘damaged’ or ‘challenged’, ‘distressed’ and ‘tormented’, to borrow terms from Keith Reader (2006, p. 11) in The Abject Object. Avatars of the Phallus in Contemporary French Theory, Literature and Film in relation to representations of men in French cultural texts. At the height of these debates, and following A ma soeur!, Breillat changed her focus on young girls’/women’s issues to turn to those of adolescent boys. In the film Brève Traversée, the young boy, Thomas, seems to attest to the popular position of the male figure in Western culture. Yet, his masculine prerogative of spatial control is questioned right from the opening sequences. Displaced and vulnerable, Thomas falls for a lucid and ­experienced English woman in her thirties called Alice. After exploring the popular theme of young girls’ sexual identity, Breillat has thus turned to that of the young boy’s to form the central subject ­matter of her fifth film. It is also the focus of the fourth chapter in this volume. Similar to her three coming-of-age films, she deals with a young boy’s virginity and debunks stereotypical conceptions of male behaviour. Taking place on a Channel ferry, the emphasis is clearly on ‘l’unité de temps, de lieu’ (Clouzot 2004, p. 108) addressing the impact of social and cultural discourses. A long and ­central scene featuring Alice’s cabin where Thomas has his first sexual ­experience, rests on and accentuates an adolescent boy’s intimate and, thus, contested bodily ­attitudes. Thomas’ confidence while undressing himself r­eveals signs of ­emotions with the camera focusing on his adolescent body. It can be argued that the film does not address male adolescence in terms of ‘damage’ or ‘torment’, that is to say in terms of usually implied symbolism. The male adolescent

16

Introduction

is considered in light of his bodily experience, as a sign of his literal ontological existence. Despite some differences, the young boy shares a similar existence to that of the young girl defined as ontological, but marked as confused and changing. Breillat’s exploration of young people’s attitudes finds confirmation in her examination of adult women’s and men’s experiences. Expanding on the idea of masculinity, the fifth and last chapter will begin by looking at Breillat’s exploration of film genres, especially those associated with French cinema such as the crime drama, also referred to as the ‘polar’. Two of Breillat’s films fall within this loose category, Sale comme un ange and Parfait Amour!, as they both deal with the notion of crime. While crime drama is directly concerned with images of masculinity, these two films also bring forward issues related to women’s shifting positions. Breillat’s typical polar Sale comme un ange closely resembles certain features of Maurice Pialat’s Police (1985). Like its close predecessor, it seems to offer a conventional misogynist portrayal of male detectives. The main male protagonist exhibits regular bursts of violence against women and other minority groups, such as the Arab community of Belleville, in Paris. Abuse of power as a result of their status and position is a current characteristic of the polar in its attempt to create a transparent portrayal of the police. However, the location of action in Belleville’s underworld undermines this type of behaviour. In Belleville, Deblache and his colleague investigate and infiltrate its ‘unruly’ bars and clubs. The middle-aged detective Deblache, like the young adolescent, Thomas in Brève Traversée, is exposed, revealing his complex and ambiguous character. Ambiguity pervades the notion of maleness, but also the genre’s conventions to the extent that Sale comme un ange and Parfait Amour! offer a revision of the crime drama ‘as a vehicle for illicit female desires’ (Tarr and Rollet, 2001, p. 197). Romance and Anatomie de l’enfer further develop this idea of ‘illicit ­female desires’, as exposed by Tarr and Rollet (2001, p. 197) to constitute the films’ leading issue. Romance, as its title indicates, belongs to a specific film genre, like the two previous films. The question of women’s sexual identity is ­encompassed within, but extends beyond the feminist conception of romance. Breillat’s Romance lies in between these divergent feminist views, in other words, ­between a vision divided by reality and fantasy. Romance/romance, for ­Breillat, is ­permeated by tensions between fiction and d­ ocumentary, subjective and ­objective points of view, and movements of descent and ascent leading to the main ­female protagonist’s transformation. This tension or movement ­constitutes the ideological demarcation between visibility and invisibility of Marie’s/women’s sexual being. Marie, similar to the woman in Anatomie de l’enfer, ­renders ­visible what is, in dominant societies, hidden from

Introduction

17

view/­themselves: her purity. Attainment of purity entails masochism relying on women’s enactment of immobilisation or postponement of their pleasures. The frozen position of both women in Romance, and especially in Anatomie de l’enfer, aligns them with works of art. The light and camera work focusing on the female being brings to mind paintings of women whose aim is not to idealise, but to demythologise dominant conception and ways of seeing women’s sexual bodies.

chapter 1

‘Le Cinéma de Catherine Breillat’

An Intertextual and Transgressive Cinema: Sex is Comedy and Une Vieille Maîtresse

Breillat’s cinema has often been coined with the following expressions: ‘extreme cinema’, ‘cinema of evil’ or ‘cinema of the abject’ – as observed by Martine Beugnet. While not ignoring these terms, I prefer to look at Breillat’s cinema by taking into consideration its strong connection to writing. Breillat began her career as a writer and novelist with the intention of swapping her pen for a camera. This desire to become a filmmaker is evident in her style of writing, according to some critics. For instance, Shirley Jordan claims that her style bears a cinematic signature: ‘it is hardly surprising that Breillat or Despentes, who are film directors as well as writers, think with cinematic impact’ (Jordan, 2006, p. 13). Breillat confirms this view when she was interviewed on a television show on the French channel Antenne 2 in December 2007 to promote her novel Bad Love; here, she declared: ‘Je ne l’ai pas écrit effectivemment comme un roman et pour être publié, ça c’est vrai’. Breillat’s introduction to filmmaking was linked to an offer to adapt one of her novels to the screen. Since then, the pen and the camera have, sometimes simultaneously, been her two means of expression. After adapting her novel, she carried on writing and wrote film scripts for directors such as Daniel Hamilton (Bilitis, 1976), Maurice Pialat (Police, 1985), Christine Pascal (Zanzibar, 1988) and Xavier Beauvois (Selon Mathieu, 2001). I therefore claim that the significance of writing – novels and scripts – and its connection to filming is a defining feature of Breillat’s cinema. As a result, to understand Breillat’s cinema, looking at her position as a ‘scénariste’ – scriptwriter – will be a starting point, which will subsequently serve to shed light on her position as a ‘réalisatrice’/auteure.

The Script of ‘Intimate Scenes’ in Sex is Comedy

As a ‘scénariste’, Breillat brings to the fore an overlooked area of film study. She not only writes film scripts for herself and others, but the script is also a topic of exploration in her work. Interviewed on her filmmaking process, it is not unusual for Breillat to mention the intricate position of the script in

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���7 | doi 10.1163/9789004343849_003

Le CinÉma de Catherine Breillat

19

relation to the film.1 More importantly, I believe that she has used the filmic space to explore the script. At a crucial moment in her career as a filmmaker, she released a film, which at first glance concentrates on filming. Sex is comedy appeared in 2002 following Brève Traversée, but more significantly following the international and controversial successes of Romance and A ma soeur!. The international screenings of these two films generated several retrospectives of her earlier work, which stirred extreme reactions from viewers. Seen in this context, devoting a film to the reflection of her filming style seems to come at an appropriate time. Sex is comedy specifically concentrates on the film director’s tense relationships with the main actor by showing the actor’s anxiety and discontent resulting from variations in the story’s development. Variations from script to revisions and from revisions to the finished film form part of the film’s focus. It appears that these variations result from an actor’s expectancy based on what is written in the script and the film’s new line of direction. If the film provides an insight into the filmmaking process, it is mainly due to highlighting the transition from script to film. In this light, Sex is comedy’s objective can be redefined as bringing attention to the relation between forms of writing and filming. The film highlights the complex relation the script nurtures with the film, or more specifically, the variations that the story, or script goes through before attaining their final form, the film. It can be argued that while the film stresses a battle of power between the male actor and the female director, another battle underpins it, one between the written and the filmed text. However, because of the critics’ neglect of noting the script, this remains an overlooked aspect of Breillat’s cinema. Critical interest in the script used to be limited to the publication of screenplays. The French film magazine, Les Cahiers du Cinéma, has released two of Breillat’s screenplays, Romance (1999) and Fat Girl!2 (2001), and has also devoted a dedicated study to scriptwriting. The author of Scénario, Anne Huet (2005), expresses the growing recognition of scriptwriting in cinema giving the examples of its presence in academic study and its nomination at film ­festivals, such as the Cannes Film Festival. In 2007, the year when Breillat ­entered the official competition at Cannes with Une vieille maîtresse, Fatih Akin’s The Edge of Heaven (2007) won the prize for the best screenplay. As a result, the p ­ ublishing 1 Mainly in Catherine Breillat (2006), but also in other interviews on the Internet and film magazines. 2 Catherine Breillat (1999a) Romance, précédé d’un texte ‘De la femme et la morale au cinéma. De l’exploitation de son aspect physique, de sa place dans le cinéma: comme auteur, comme actrice, comme sujet’; Catherine Breillat (2001) A ma soeur! précédé de Une âme à deux corps.

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chapter 1

film script has become increasingly popular. Moreover, since the 2000s, a growing number of books and studies about scriptwriting,3 in French and in English, offer advice to the budding scriptwriter. These studies describe scriptwriting as a process that can be grasped by following specific steps. In spite of their growing numbers, these publications have only a marginal impact on film studies. The script tends to be seen as a mere instrument that is too materialist and realistic in its application, especially since is has a strong connection to a film’s financial aspects. It determines the budget of a film, as pointed out by Jeanne, the director of the film-within-the-film in Sex is comedy. The script has set parameters and has to follow certain rules and conventions – ‘for people who make decisions after reading scripts’, as Jeanne tells her actor. These parameters attract and secure a producer and investments. It is also crucial for attracting and casting the right actors, talent and crew. Once production personnel, finances, actors and talent are secured, the script has already fulfilled a key function of its existence. As a scriptwriter and filmmaker Breillat shares this view and she regularly refers to the script as a tool, ‘un outil de travail’ as she likes to call it. She exhibits her view in Sex is comedy when the actor and actress read the script to get acquainted with their parts and go over their lines – as do the film director and her assistant. In a published interview with Claire Vassé, Breillat admits that, as a tool to filmmaking, the script’s life is ephemeral, for she says: ‘Le scénario n’est qu’ […] une source d’inspiration’ (Breillat as cited in Vassé, 2006, p. 257). Described as being too instrumental, the script has also been referred to as too literary due to its form and content. The script contains dialogues, plot details and descriptions of the mise-en-scène (regarding actors’ performance and the décor) as exemplified by the published scenarios of Romance and A ma soeur!. Such elements are significant as they often provide the basis for critics’ and audience’s appreciation of a film. Beugnet (2007, p. 5) claims: ‘we have become used to thinking of and enjoying feature films first and foremost in terms of plot and characters, identification and narrative logic’. Thus, in forming one’s view, prominence is given to the film’s literary features. Mainstream film and its strong reliance on a well-defined plot and characters based on a novelist’s imagination are the features the Nouvelle Vague directors contested. ‘Une certaine tendance du cinéma français’, published in 1954 in Cahiers du Cinéma, is the formal attack formulated by François ­Truffaut. Following the lead of Alexandre Astruc and his concept of ‘la caméra stylo’ in 1948, Truffaut envisions a cinema where directors write their own scripts. 3 In addition to the study by Huet, also see Tudor Gates (2002), Luc Delisse (2006) and, MarieFrance Briselance (2006).

Le CinÉma de Catherine Breillat

21

At that time, writing the script used to be the realm of novelists or ­professional scriptwriters and the director was seen as merely adding images to the words. Truffaut reserved the name of ‘scene-setters’ for this type of directors. The Nouvelle Vague directors set out to contest the script’s central position, and c­ onsequently François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Jacques Rivette, Claude Chabrol and Eric Rohmer began to write their own scripts. Following ­Alexandre Astruc idea (as cited in Marie, 1997, pp. 30–31) ‘dans un tel cinéma, cette distinction de l’auteur et du réalisateur n’a plus aucun sens’, writers and film directors were associated with the notion of ‘auteur’. The auteur was the film director and vice versa, which resulted in the elimination of the position of scriptwriter. Godard was the main auteur to adopt this position: ‘c’est Godard qui poussera le plus loin cette conception du réalisateur auteur de son propre matériau narratif, car, avec lui, la notion classique de scénario va perdre de plus en plus de son sens premier’ (Marie, 1997, p. 67). Godard illustrates his view in the film, Le ­Mépris (Contempt 1963), where Fritz Lang responds to the producer’s accusation of infidelity to the script by saying: ‘in the script it is written, and on the screen it’s pictures… Motion pictures it is called’. In this instance, the prominence of the film over the script is established as qualities inherent in film as a medium of moving images and sounds are emphasised. While this group of Nouvelle Vague directors condemned the script for its artificiality, and thus, its detachment from the auteurs’ personality or authenticity, another group took a different position. Perceived as part of the Nouvelle Vague by some critics, such as Michael Temple and Michael Witt and Naomi Greene, some of the older group known as the Left Bank filmmakers – Agnès Varda, Chris Marker and Alain Resnais – turned to men and women of letters to write scripts for them. Famous for his documentaries, Van Gogh (1948) and Nuit et Brouillard (1955), Resnais collaborated with the avant-garde writers and filmmakers, namely Marguerite Duras for Hiroshima mon amour (1959) and Alain Robbe-Grillet for L’année dernière à Marienbad (1961). Looking at his corpus of films, it can be said that Resnais’ work breaks down the barrier that separates documentary from fiction as his documentaries and fictions foreground aspects of his work that are present throughout. The self-reflexivity embodied in his films enhances his cinematographic style. Thus, Resnais’ films and varied filmmaking processes are expressions of a consistent personal vision and of his own sensibility following a desire ‘to bring cinema closer to ‘life’’ (Greene, 2007, p. 32). It is fair to say that Resnais and the Nouvelle Vague directors introduced an innovative approach towards filmmaking that took the script into consideration. Either criticised and admonished, like Godard, or endorsed like Resnais, both positions highlight the script’s impact on auteur filmmaking. Breillat indisputably adheres to

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both of the Nouvelle Vague’s approaches; she writes her own script but claims not to adhere faithfully to it in order to bring out the relation to the film’s ‘reality effect’ as shown in Sex is Comedy. While shooting Sex is Comedy, Breillat held on to her position of ignoring the script as Jeanne urges her actor not to recite his scenes and tells him: ‘We can see you’re only kissing her because the script says so! That mustn’t show in the movie’. For ‘si on voit le scénario, on ne voit pas le film’, Jeanne declares in the film-within-the-film. In an interview Breillat reiterates this point when she said to Vassé (2006, p. 256) that: ‘Il ne faut pas révérer son scénario, il faut le trahir quand on fait le film, il faut que quelque chose naisse sur le plateau qui fait qu’il était si important de le filmer’. What transpires from these statements is the script’s undeniable omnipresence, which fixes the relationship between the written and visual text during the shooting of Breillat’s films. Bruce Fleming’s (1988, p. 128) study is illuminating in its examination of the transition from the written to (visual) images. He examines the script generating (mental) visions and alleges that when reading it, the script produces images in the reader’s mind. This leads Fleming to refer to the script as a ‘printed record’ of the film’s form and content. For as well as containing the story and the dialogues of the film, the script also gives visual directions. By virtue of this particular configuration and style, the script refers to the film ‘of which it is a printed record’ (Fleming, 1988, p. 128) and to the content of the film. The script’s form and content makes it ‘visualizable and visualised’ (Fleming, 1988, p. 129). Fleming’s approach is innovative, extending the script’s familiar consideration and understanding by challenging the conventional approach to the script’s instrumental and limited function. Fleming claims that as a written version of a visual medium, the script engenders images in the reader’s mind. It is not the film that the reader visualises, but an imaginary (image) of the film’s (visual) image, or what Fleming (1988) names ‘pictures of pictures’. Elaine Cancalon and Antoine Spacagna (1988, p. 3), the authors of the introduction to the edited volume containing Fleming’s article, give an interpretation of Fleming’s ideas by saying that, ‘film scripts are a written version of a visual medium’. They point out that the script is ‘an intermediate medium between prose fiction and cinema’ (Cancalon and Spacagna, 1988, pp. 5–6). The pictures produced by the script relate to the film’s images. These pictures, Fleming argues, engender a ‘reality effect’ in the reader’s mind (1988, p. 128). The objective of Fleming’s article is to challenge the view that the ‘reality effect’ results from viewing the film. He shows that the script produces this sense of reality, and it is, therefore, by no means a quality inherent to the film alone. The script shares with the cinema a visualisation of events, as Tudor Gates (2002, p .76) confirms: ‘Writing is an exercise of imagination.

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You should be able to close your eyes and visualise the scene, recognise the people in it, hear every intonation of their voices’. The visualisation of the film and its content produces a ‘reality effect’, or, more precisely, a sensation of realism. The association of the script with the notion of ‘reality’ is interesting in relation to Breillat’s approach to filming, as shown in Sex is comedy. This film deals with ‘the real’, as exemplified by the scene showing an actor’s wearing a fake penis. The film contains more examples such as the introductory scene, which addresses the question of ‘the real’. Early in the morning, on the first day of shooting, Jeanne is on the film set – the seaside – with her assistant, Léo. Slightly off centre and at a distance, the camera stands behind them, while Jeanne and Léo face the sea. They are heard chatting about Jeanne’s visualisation of the film while the camera remains still at a distance behind them. The dialogue goes as follows: Jeanne: ‘La marée est basse, c’est pas pareil, c’est pas du tout ce que j’avais prévu’. Léo: ‘Merde j’ai été battu là, j’ai oublié la marée’. Jeanne: ‘Je m’en fiche de ce que j’avais prévu. De toute façon la mer c’est toujours beau. Seulement c’est autre chose, ce sera plus désert, il y aura moins de figurants’. Léo: ‘Merde les figurants’. Jeanne: ‘Mais non c’est mieux, si je l’avais vu comme ça, je l’aurais vu que c’était mieux. Juste sur deux plans. T’as vu le trajet, elle est loin la mer’. Léo: ‘Oui, tu vois c’est bien ce que je me disais, c’était bien trop beau pour que tout aille bien’. This dialogue establishes the difference between the visualisation in the script or, its effect of reality and another ‘reality’, namely that of the setting. The film as a visual piece of work in the mind of the reader – the film crew, including the film director/scriptwriter – does not stand for the film. Facing the sea with her film assistant, Jeanne realises that at low tide the sea is different and is not what she imagined when she wrote the script. This scene confirms the script’s strong material presence and highlights its well defined but limited role. However, this scene establishes, on the other hand, the script’s other strong link to the absent film. The script remains on a virtual and conceptual level. It creates ‘thoughts of the real’ whereas the film shows ‘a new reality’, to borrow an expression from David Frampton in Filmosophy (2006, p. 5). Frampton’s study supports Breillat’s view that the film rests on and exceeds ‘thoughts of the real’, produced by the script. Breillat (as cited in Vassé, 2006, p. 256) states, ‘quand on fait le film,

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il faut que quelque chose naisse sur le plateau’. Frampton describes the film’s development in terms of moulding and refiguring. It can be said that the film uses the ‘reality effect’ created by the script to mould it and refigure it. The creation of a new world or ‘the film world’ and its intention, as Frampton (2006, p. 7) calls it, is based on the ‘script’s directions for the mise-en-scène’. The notion of ‘intention’ that he refers to calls attention to actions outside the frame that can still be felt. The concept of intention can be used in reference to the relation between the script and the film. The intended film world is absent from the script, but can be felt or visualised. The creation of a film world and its intentions is acknowledged in the opening scene of Sex is comedy. Following Jeanne’s and Leo’s discussion, a long shot shows the arrival of the film crew on the set/beach, accompanied by elegiac music. This extra diegetic music announces the formation of another space, the intended world of the ­film-within-the-film. The end of the music corresponds to the beginning of the shooting of the film-within-the-film. Directions are heard from Jeanne and her assistant reinforcing the make believe world of the film. Léo requires every extra to pretend that the weather is fine: ‘The extra! Can I have another minute of your attention? I know it’s cold and hard work, but please remove your woollies! Don’t forget, you’re at the beach, it’s sunny, you’re lounging around, having fun, playing soccer, everything’s fine …’. Jeanne reinforces these directions and instructs her actor and actress ‘to be like a fakir. You walk on red hot coals, and you don’t burn!’. The film’s image shares its virtual aspect with the script’s set and cinematographic directions; they do not correspond to anything actually present. With regards to their virtual aspect, they are dematerialised, impalpable. Cinema is a make-belief – as shown in the scene with the fake penis. The film is the result of cinematic processes: movements, light, colours, textures, lines and shapes. Yet, as Steven Shaviro (1993, p. 26) highlights, the filming is intense: ‘film […] is inescapably literal. Images confront the viewer directly, without mediation. What we see is what we see’. Thus, moving images and sounds, like mental images, are impalpable, but they give the film authenticity. Sex is comedy’s emphasis is put on the film’s artificiality or authenticity in alternating scenes of acting and scenes of non-acting; but, from time to time, this distinction is no longer evident. The space between the inside – the ­film-within-the-film – and outside – the film – is blurred. A sequence of the film-within-the-film is shown without transition, creating confusion as to its status in ‘narrative development’. In this instance, the importance shifts to the image’s authenticity. As shown in the opening scene, comparing what Jeanne visualises and sees, the emphasis is here on the image. Subsequently on the film set, she concentrates on the female and male protagonists’ act of k­ issing. The camera is positioned as close as possible for a

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close-up of their kiss. The next shot is on the movements of their two bodies coming closer ­together. Jeanne’s film concentrates on the minute details and meaning of body’s ­gestures ­because, as Breillat (2008, p. 36) highlights in Sight and Sound, ‘no two gestures signify in the same way’. Body movements create a sense of ­authenticity, ­following Shaviro’s (1993, p. 131) view that ‘with the body, nothing is hidden, everything is materially and visibly enacted’. Displeased with what she wrote in the script, Jeanne decides to rehearse the girl’s body movements and enhance the view that ‘passion is imprinted directly in the flesh, prior to any movement of self-conscious reflection’ (Shaviro, 1993, p. 145). During this rehearsal she is heard describing meticulously her/the girl’s body movements: ‘she’s lying on the bed… She puts an arm on her forehead… You’re dreaming, open-eyed… He’s undressing, but you don’t want to know it. Her feet are together…’. She continues: ‘She sighs… And she twists around… which brings her here’. These physical movements convey, according to Jeanne, the expression of the conflict of the young girl’s desire for her male companion. The ­description of the most minute postures and gestures of the girl’s body reflects her intimate emotional state. The emphasis of the final scene of the filmwithin-the-film/film is placed on the intensity of the girl’s intimate emotional response. The camera’s focus on the visibility of emotional bodily expressions highlights the correspondence between the inner – emotion – and the outer – appearance/image, the sensation and the visible. The film thus seems to allege that the significant aspect of the medium’s authenticity relies on the performers’ acting. The role of the actor in the realisation of the film world is thus crucial, for Jeanne says: ‘Cinema is who plays it. Films change depending on the actor’. A view sustained by Robert Stam (2000, p. 55), when he declares: ‘The words of a novel’4 – or script, it could be added – ‘as countless commentators have pointed out, have a virtual, symbolic meaning’, but he continues with these words, ‘a film, by contrast, must choose a specific performer. Instead of a virtual, verbally constructed Madame Bovary open to our imaginative reconstruction, we are faced with a specific actress, encumbered with nationality and accent’ (Stam, 2000, p. 55). Thus, what demarcate virtual images of the film from those of the script is the presence of the actor/actress, and, more specifically, his/her embodied presence. As a result, during the shooting of the film-within-the-film in Sex is comedy, they are asked not to be faithful to the text but to concentrate on their corporeal expression, ‘to kiss interminably’, as Jeanne recommends to her actress. Moreover, none of the film-within-the-film’s scenes have any dialogue to reinforce the 4 In this quote, ‘novel’ can be understood in its written form, and as such can be interchangeable with the film script.

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physicality of the image. The focus is on the body beyond the limits of linguistic articulation and social and cinematic representation. Consequently, it bestows importance on Breillat’s choice of actors and actresses, as stressed in Sex is comedy. One member of the film crew stresses that Jeanne’s criteria for choosing her actors are purely based on how they look; she picks her male leads for their looks. Her choice of performers is extremely personal and not based on the conventional star system. Breillat’s performers are usually unknown to the public, or at least, to the mainstream public. She mostly chooses people who are new to the world of cinema. Shaviro (1993) explains that non-professional actors do not act in the conventional way but manifest and convey emotion. This perspective is obvious in her choice of actors, which has sometimes been the focus of harsh criticism, especially with Breillat’s choice of Rocco Siffredi in Romance and Anatomie de l’enfer. As documented, Siffredi is a famous actor in pornographic cinema and his role in Romance has been described as different to what he is used to. However, what this choice seems to bring to the fore is the similarity between acting in pornographic and non-pornographic cinema. This similarity can be read in the visibility or the proximity of the body, as Shaviro (1993, p. 237) argues: ‘just like pornography […]. They render everything visible, and they bring everything back to the visible evidence of the body’ and the physical reactions they incur in the audience. According to Shaviro (1993, p. 220), ‘“good” acting is dialectical: it expresses the inner through the outer, deploys absolute artifice in order to arrive at absolute reality, moves between the extremes of surface appearance and underlying truth’. The actor in pornographic cinema evokes a certain corporeal immediacy or proximity that Breillat takes to the limit in her films. Breillat intensifies and pushes this proximity or immediacy of the body/image to its extreme with Siffredi. She pushes the limits of what can be seen. As a result, in Sex is comedy, Jeanne is heard proclaiming that words lie but bodies are truth. The notion that the text lies but the body tells the truth is the crucial and pivotal moment of the film because it marks the transition between the written text and the visual – perceptual – image of the film. This utterance is reminiscent of the scene in A ma soeur!/Sex is comedy when Elena falls prey to the young Italian’s seducing and – lying – discourse or, what Beugnet (2007, p. 49) calls, ‘the stereotypical (social and cultural) trappings of romance’. Words are lies because of their cultural and social association. They tend to hide or efface (something from) individuals. They represent a universal masculine approach. This effacement can be understood as the violence of heterosexual discourse. Language reflects the dominant male heterosexual order and represents the ‘I’ through this light. Reflections by Benoîte Groult (2003, p. 69) illuminate this

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point as she claims: ‘Vocabulary is not neutral. It holds up a mirror to society and reflects its prejudices, taboos, and fantasies, perpetuating its structures and hierarchies’. In this sense, the organising aspects of language can be said to fix the body-movement and its ‘inner light’ – a phrase used by Jeanne. Its inherent tendency is to structure, define and fixate, and in this sense as Beugnet (2007, p. 180) argues: ‘language cannot adequately express “the sheer flux, instability and profundity of life’s ineluctable chaos”’. Breillat’s type of cinema corresponds to new articulations and limits of the body. This idea is made apparent in the main scene of Sex is comedy involving ‘nudity’ and ‘sex’ – as referred to by the press. As reminded by her assistant, this type of scene is difficult or tricky to manage because it is subjected to laws of morality. Thus, as shown in the film, it causes tension between the actor and actress and with the film director. The scenes in question are commonly referred to as ‘nude scenes’ or ‘sex scenes’ perceived as representations of naked female and/or male bodies. However, Jeanne prefers the term ‘intimate scenes’ to ‘nude scenes’, which is an expression she despises for the simple reason that it is a phrase determined or fixed by language signification and representation. Darlene Sadlier (2000, p. 203) explains that: ‘As John Berger and others have pointed out, “nudity” is a form of dress – a fetishized, artfully composed imagery of the human body that has a long history in European art’. ‘Nudity’ is not, how Jeanne/Breillat interprets her scene. Instead, for Jeanne/Breillat, nudity and sex signify an intimate scene; it relies on something more or deeper than what the image allows you to see. The representation of naked bodies in other types of film is usually perceived as pornographic – a type of film Breillat declares she does not make. In these types of film, the body is relegated to its pure physicality; it becomes an object. As a result, filming nude scenes, for Jeanne/ Breillat, is equivalent to filming ‘dead flesh. The corpse of a film’, which stands as an explanation of the fact that ‘naked bodies bore her’ (as Jeanne declares in the film-within-the-film). If nudity is taken in its visible or representational form, as indicated in the film script, both forms convey a sense of material presence, instead of opening up ‘possibilities of its becoming otherwise’ (Shaviro, 1993, p. 69). Jeanne/Breillat aims to grasp with her camera the intended film world and not as it would appear in its logical and coherent form conveyed by the word/ script. Consequently, going beyond the written text or, to follow Jeanne’s advice: ‘To hell with what I write!’, allows the film world to transpire – or, ‘to be born’, as expressed by Breillat. Jeanne’s advice to her actor is to let himself go, to be able to express his emotions and transgress the written text. Emotions coming from the individual are never obscene for Jeanne but rather express ‘purity’. It is through the body-subject that a person can grasp things as they

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are, that is, perceptions or emotions. The body-subject and its movements convey these emotions, which are the intimate or the truth for Jeanne. Making the film involves rendering the truth through the experience of the actor’s/actress’ body-subject. The corporeal – body-subject – movements are the expression of the intimate and the film’s un-representation of the script. Because of its ­technical aspects, the script is a constructed piece of work following certain conventions. As a result, when the actor/actress solely relies on the script, their performance becomes a reproduction, a representation. In Jeanne’s words, an actor looks like an actor, but he does not look real or, more specifically, intimate. In the film, when her actor tells her that an element of his role does not appear in the script when he reads it, Jeanne contests and confirms it does exist. It is there but it is not visible to the actor because he does not experience the script introspectively or subjectively, that is, lived through his bodysubject. Following the technicalities of the script leads the actor to perform his role in its objective modality as opposed to, what Jeanne is looking for, its subjective or intimate expression. Intimacy in this film, and Breillat’s films in general, is strongly linked to notions of embodied existence. When an actor experiences the scene intimately, in an embodied way, the film transcends the script and the film takes on an existence of its own. This act of going beyond the script makes the film or Breillat’s personal cinema, which the actor’s/actress’ lived-body or his/her ‘inner light’ brings to life. It is apparent that a study of Sex is comedy necessitates a p ­ henomenological and transgressive approach and interpretation of Breillat’s cinema. Sex is ­comedy centres on Breillat’s personal way of filming, especially its ­self-reflexivity. By taking into account the cinematic apparatus, Breillat affirms and expands the film’s ‘reality’ or world. In other words, it is the ‘reality’ of Breillat’s film, which emanates from ‘the reality effect’ that scenes create in the viewer’s mind. The form and content of scenes help the reader imagine the film world based on the reality that he/she knows. However, Breillat shows in Sex is comedy that the film does not reproduce reality (of thoughts) but rather is ‘the projection of thoughts of the real’ (Frampton, 2006, p. 5). Breillat ­challenges a conception of cinema that is founded on notions of plot and characters in order to bring to light the intended film world. She questions this restrictive view of what cinema is about in order to broaden it up. Breillat seems to agree with Frampton that the film is not a reproduction or representation but has its own ‘reality’, ‘its own world’. This ‘film world’, as defined by Breillat (as cited in Tylski (2003)) : Quand on est sur le plateau, quelque chose d’autre vous apparaît, c’est ce que je mets dans Sex is comedy, il y a un tel enjeu, c’est comme la métamorphose, quelque chose vous apparaît. Alors bien sûr, c’est écrit, sinon

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rien ne pourrait se dissoudre et apparaître, mais, moi, je ne le sais pas, je ne le sais que sur le plateau. Donc je ne réalise pas le film, je ne filme pas le scénario, le scénario se dissout, comme des creusets magiques. This remark echoes and certainly confirms the earlier observation made about the introductory scene of Sex is comedy. The transgression of the script as a source text initiating the appearance of the film world does raise questions related to the main field of film studies concerning writing – film adaptation. Breillat’s transgressive position towards conventional cinema challenges theories of film adaptation. After her tenth film, Anatomie de l’enfer, Breillat decided to turn to adapting novels and fairy tales, seen in her recent projects, Barbe Bleue (2009) and La Belle endormie (2010). She stresses in an interview that she could not have screened Une vieille maîtresse (2007) earlier. Her position makes sense in light of the innovative approach she suggests for her cinema, as developed in this section. If Breillat’s cinema is characterised by the film’s own world, which departs from notions of narration and characterisation, this detachment raises issues regarding the film’s source. The following section focuses on Une vieille maîtresse and addresses these issues to further explore Breillat’s subversive position in relation to cinema and its fundamental interaction with forms of writing.

Breillat’s Original Film Adaptation : Une Vieille Maitresse

‘[French] Cinema has always, of course, been “literary”’, Jefferson Kline (1992, p. 2) declares in a study devoted to French cinema. Such a statement requires careful consideration as has just been highlighted. From its inception, French cinema has nurtured a strong link to literary texts for reasons related to content and form. Cinema originated in the nineteenth-century, which established, according to André Bazin (2000, p. 22) ‘an idolatry of form’. More than any other era, the nineteenth century was firmly concerned with narrative composition, characters and situation. This is still true today; film is commonly judged by matters related to the narration that provide the basis for the film’s scenes – as seen previously. Cinema’s preoccupation with narrative composition took precedence and found a direct materialisation in cinema’s growing interest in adapting classic nineteenth century literature. This is a position, which was approved and encouraged over the years by festivals rewarding cinematographic adaptations. This prioritization still persists nowadays, seen in Breillat’s nomination as part of the official selection at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival for

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Une vieille maîtresse. This situation is quite ironic since French critics’ disparaging position towards her past work is well documented – as noted in the introduction. For Breillat, affirmed in interviews for her latest film, this is a real victory. This example shows critics’ persistence in acknowledging a film that has a literary source and encourages discourses centred on form. Here, characters and story are measured against their closeness to the original materials. This critics’ discourse has enhanced the well-established position of literature in comparison with the new and emerging cinema, which gives rise to a binary and hierarchical perception of the relationship between cinema and literature. In other words, cinema was seen as a copy of a literary text and the question of how faithful or unfaithful it was to the original text was important (a dominant view in relation to the script, as seen above). This view stood out during the classic period of French cinema between the 1930s and the 1950s, also known as ‘la tradition de la qualité’ (‘tradition of quality’). The early period of French cinema was driven by literary adaptations for the screen. Adaptations of classic literary texts are therefore undoubtedly part of what characterises French cinema. Literary adaptations resurged in the 1980s and became known as ‘heritage cinema’.5 The rise of heritage cinema was so pronounced that it became, according to Powrie (1999, p. 2), ‘the hegemonic French cinema of the 1990s’. For example, Claude Berri’s Germinal (1993) benefited from state support and became an educational tool for teaching French industrial history. President François Mitterand attended the film première in Lille. Subsequently, his minister of culture, Jack Lang, took the initiative to send a free copy to schools. Heritage cinema is a phenomenon that extended beyond the 1990s and remained popular during the early years of the twenty first century. From the above description, it is undeniable that Kline (1992) was right and found further reinforcement with Hayward and Vincendeau (2000) study in French Film: Texts and Contexts. However, their (Hayward and Vincendeau, 2000, p. 4) conception of French cinema as a ‘literary cinema’, that is ‘multi-faceted’, ‘draws equally on the classic literary canon and on popular artefacts’, was further advanced by the auteurs of the Nouvelle Vague. In the late 1950s, the French film scene witnessed the emergence of a young group of critics, the auteurs of the Nouvelle Vague, who denounced the type of cinema cherished by festivals, other critics and film audiences referred to as ‘cinéma de papa’ or ‘tradition de la qualité’. The auteurs’ objective was not to stop making film adaptations, but rather to ‘break with traditional movie criticism’ (Naremore, 2000, p. 6), which posits literature against and as superior to cinema. It does not mean that these directors repudiated books. On the contrary, 5 For more detail on this period of French cinema see Phil Powrie’s (1999).

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their penchant for books is well-known and documented. The Nouvelle Vague auteurs continued to adapt novels to the screen but their approach was different. What the French auteurs rejected in earlier ‘cinema de la tradition de qualité’ adaptations – as elaborated by Truffaut (1954) in ‘Une certaine tendance du cinéma français’ – was the close attention to the classic literary text, which took precedent over the filmed text. The French auteurs reversed this situation by giving more importance to the filmmaker as an auteur – rather than the literary author’s personal creation. Following their position on scriptwriting, the emphasis of the Nouvelle Vague’s politics is undeniably on the personal filmic creation: the adapted text is seen as an original piece of work by an individual director/auteur. Astruc (1948) stipulated that cinema, like literature, is a form of expression with its own language; the camera is to film directors what the pen is to authors (the definition of ‘la caméro stylo’). To further distance themselves from the literary or written material, the Nouvelle Vague directors adapted mainly low-brow or sometimes foreign literature materials as opposed to classic nineteenth century French novels (e.g. Stendhal, Balzac and Zola adapted for ‘cinéma de la tradition de qualité’). Their position was fuelled by the idea that by using literature that was not placed among the classic texts, it was unlikely that the film would be obscured by its literary source. Godard’s Le Mépris (1963) was based on the novel by Alberto Moravia (1954) and Truffaut’s films Tirez sur le pianiste (1960) and Jules et Jim (1962) were adaptations of novels by David Goodis (1956) and by Henri-Pierre Roché (1953) respectively. Astruc’s Le Rideau cramoisi (1953) is an adaptation of Barbey d’Aurevilly’s (1874) short story of the same title (a short story in Les Diaboliques, 1874). Barbey did not receive the same acclaim as his contemporaries; ‘his critical writings were long ignored as being too erratic, his novels as being too scandalous and immoral’ (Rogers, 1967, p. 1) – we can already see here a common denominator with Breillat’s work. The legacy of the Nouvelle Vague’s politics is undeniably the position ­attributed to the filmed text as an act of personal artistic creation, but this politics has not succeeded, according to film scholars, in bringing a ­groundbreaking and revitalising approach to adaptations. The binary system defining the ­relationship between literature and cinema has remained intact in the auteurs’ structure of thinking; for what they have managed to do is to overturn this imbalance. James Naremore (2000, p. 8) considers that the auteur approach does not detach itself from a discourse of textual fidelity ‘but’ he adds ‘it ­emphasises ­difference rather than similarity, individual styles rather than formal systems’. The auteur approach is one based on the specificities of the cinematic medium, what ­Naremore (2000, p. 8) called ‘a metaphor of p ­ erformance’. James ­Naremore and Mireia Aragay agree that the Nouvelle Vague auteurs ­focus on

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one of the binary variables – the filmed text – by invoking the differences between both media and overlooking other influences or sources, which could have had an effect on a piece of work. However, the Nouvelle Vague has undoubtedly initiated other considerations of the film’s relation to its larger range of sources. Dudley Andrew (2005) claims that more than half of all films find their inspiration in novels and should therefore be called film adaptations but they are not referred to as such. Andrew raises the issue of other influences, unknown to the public, but used for film. Like the Nouvelle Vague, Breillat’s films are not recognised or scrutizined as adaptations because, until recently, their sources were unknown. One can say that they have not been considered as significant contributions to her oeuvre, in comparison to her latest films, which have known influences (Une Vieille maîtresse, Barbe bleue and La Belle endormie). Breillat’s interest in adaptation is not new. She began her career by adapting her own novels, but recently moved towards a more common approach to film adaptation – adapting other people’s work for the screen. In this context, I will show that Breillat’s approach to film adaptation is complex and raises interesting issues. Her screen adaptations began with the publication of her third novel, Le Soupirail (1974). A few years after publishing this novel, she was approached by the film production company Les Films de la Boétie to have her novel adapted for the screen as Une vraie jeune fille. Une vraie jeune fille was not publicly released until the year 2000. In comparison, her second adaptation, Tapage nocturne, was released in 1979, the same year as the novel. The same happened with her third adaptation, 36 fillette, with the book and the film being released in the same year, 1987. This brings to light the strong affinity that exists between cinema and literature. Anatomie de l’enfer reveals Breillat’s elaborate approach to adaptation. For, it emanates from a wish to adapt one of Marguerite Duras’ plays, La Maladie de la mort (1982). Not being able to do so, she wrote her own novel, Pornocratie (2001a), and subsequently made the film. However, Breillat claims that there are other sources of inspiration for this film. ‘I wrote the novel knowing I was going to make a film of it, but I didn’t treat it as a blueprint’ (Breillat as cited in Macnab, 2004, Online). The film’s complexity lies in its blurring of an actual source because it is a film with a multitude of influences. It weaves together different sources such as a novel – her own – a play from Duras and other media like images from her previous films. In most of her interviews and critical studies about her work, a strong link between all her films is a recurring and prominent feature. All her films reflect each other with the aim for each film to develop a specific issue previously mentioned, which allows her to declare that Anatomie de l’enfer completes her ‘decalogue’. Like a prism reflects light, her films reflect each other – as well as incorporating other sources.

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The metaphor of the prism brings to mind recent studies in the field of adaptation, such as the work by Robert Stam (1985). Film critics resort to Julia Kristeva (1980) notion of intertextuality derived from Michael Bakhtin’s (1969) idea of ‘dialogics’. Anatomie de l’enfer can be seen as the exemplary film adaptation of Naremore’s (2000) notion of intertextuality and Stam’s (2000) dialogics in reference to the process of texts’ interaction. The Kristevan concept of intertextuality alludes to the intersection of texts and to the undermining of ‘the binary diachrony/synchrony with a synergy that flows both ways’ (Aragay and López, 2005, p. 202). In this context, intertextuality is a concept, which draws attention to the process of synergy, rather than the assumed hierarchy between the original text and its adaptation. No fixed hierarchy exists because of the dialogical interplay between various cultural texts. In a key contribution to this theory of adaptation, Stam (2000, p. 64) proposes the evocative terminology of ‘intertextual dialogism’ to emphasise ‘the infinite and open-ended possibilities generated by all the discursive practices of a culture, the entire matrix of communicative utterances within which the artistic text is situated’. Stam’s (2000) theory of adaptation lies in the process of cross-referentiality and the borrowing from a plethora of cultural texts. Questions of hierarchy and fidelity are undermined by general issues of dialogue, repetition, transformation and recycling. In this light, Une vieille maîtresse can come as a surprise, as noted by most critics. In the British film magazine, Sight and Sound, Jonathan Romney (2008, p. 35) writes: ‘her [Breillat] return to filmmaking […] may not be her most shocking, but it’s surely her most surprising’. The surprise comes from the fact that the title of the novel is given a specific reference in the film’s credits, representing a departure for Breillat. During the same year of Une vieille maîtresse debut, another eminent French woman director, Pascale Ferran, launched her 2007 adaptation of D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1928). What distinguishes the adaptations of the 2000s from previous decades, is women directors’ growing interest in this area of film, as well as a gender differences in their choice of novels and the way they are translated to the screen (moving away from questions of fidelity). Breillat and Ferran chose novels close to their cinematic interest that is films about physical desire. As well as being literary adaptations and costume dramas, both films also reinforce ‘cinema’s sensual, haptic and synaesthetic powers of evocation’ (Beugnet, 2007, p. 177) – as discussed in the previous section and to be further developed here through an analysis of Breillat’s adaptation of Une vieille maîtresse. With her adaptation of Une vieille maîtresse, critics acknowledged a change in Breillat’s filming style. This is her first costume drama – ‘film en costume’ – and in accordance to Barbey’s text. Breillat’s faithfulness to the narrative of its

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literary source is undeniable; some dialogue has been transposed to the screen unchanged and ‘the film follows Barbey’s nested narrative structure’ (Romney, 2008, p. 35). The narrative of both texts is rather simple and shares similarities with Breillat’s previous films. The story takes place in Paris and on the coast – Normandy, in Barbey’s novel – in 1835 and centres on Ryno de Marigny’s passion for one woman as well as his love for another one. He falls in love with a young, conventionally beautiful and aristocratic lady, Hermangarde de ­Polastron, who was brought up by her grand-mother, la Marquise de Flers. However, Ryno, a Parisian dandy and ‘libertin’ – also described by la Comtesse d’Artelles as ‘un simple gentil homme sans titre, un aventurier sans le sou, un libertin notoire’ – is still under the passionate spell of his Spanish mistress and courtisan, Vellini – who is, according to la Marquise de Flers, ‘une espèce de fille entretenue’. The film begins with Ryno ending his ten-year relationship with Vellini to marry Hermangarde. Vellini then follows the lovers to their retreat in Normandy; here, Ryno resumes his passionate attachment to Vellini. Apart from minor modifications such as the travel destination of Ryno de Marigny and his mistress Vellini, as well as the death of their little girl, Breillat faithfully adapts Barbey’s text. The modifications can be seen in light of making her adaptation more personal. Romney (2008, p. 36) states that she made, ‘her annexation of Barbey’s story to her own auteur universe’. I follow the view that Breillat remains faithful to her previous films, and suggest that this adaptation is a personal creation. Breillat’s cinema makes direct or indirect references to other visual or written materials. Previous texts intersect with other texts to create a dialogue, a synergy between each other. The repetition and recycling of features from previous films define Breillat’s cinema. Self-referencing themes are present throughout Breillat’s work, as is the use of the same actors and actresses. Geneviève Sellier (2005) notices this practice as early as the films of the Nouvelle Vague and considers it a defining feature of the ‘cinéma intimiste’. ­Wilson (1999) reflects on the choice of actors and actresses in films directed by women. She observes that women directors tend to use the same actors and actresses for most of their films and sometimes even borrow an actress/ actor from another colleague. She (1999, p. 28) states: ‘Actors bring with them certain meanings and qualities which may be sought by a particular director’. Breillat’s sharing of actresses and actors with other French women directors or auteur(e)s (e.g. mainly Christine Pascal and Claire Denis and more recently with Atom Egoyan) is part of the dialogue she seeks to establish with other film professionals and works. Une vieille maîtresse is an exception, but she uses the same actresses earlier on, like Roxanne Mesquida who played a part in A ma soeur!, and went on to star in her two subsequent films, Sex is comedy

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and Une vieille maîtresse. Breillat chooses her actors and actresses according to rigorous personal criteria. In all her films, actors and actresses share similar physical characteristics. They could almost be interchangeable; thus reinforcing the cross-referentiality of Breillat’s films. In Une vieille maîtresse the main actor and actresses’ physical characteristics are immediately recognizable as Breillat’s choice of cast. Usually, they are new to the profession, such as Fu’ad Aït Aattou who plays alongside renowned actors and actresses such as Asia Argento, Yolande Moreau and Michael Lonsdale. Even if Breillat uses well-known actors and actresses for her latest film, they do not belong to the French star system, as defined by Vincendeau (2000) and Austin (2003) in their respective study. Her actors and actresses share a history of having been in films directed by female avant-garde artists or auteurs: for example, Michael Lonsdale and Yolande Moreau. For Une vieille maîtresse several renowned actors and actresses joined Breillat’s performers such as Lio from Sale comme un ange, Isabelle Renaud from Parfait Amour!, Anne Parillaud from Sex is comedy, Caroline Ducey from Romance and Amira Casar from Anatomie de l’enfer/ They perform in short secondary roles. They all gather together and interact with each other as illustrated in a group shot of the dinner party (see fig. 1) This scene of a ‘family gathering’ makes a clear statement about the (­ literal) dialogue that all actors and actresses enter into in Breillat’s films. This selfreferentiality consolidates her filmic corpus and enables the blending of different film genres. Her consistent and careful choice of actors and actresses is

Figure 1

The dinner party in Une vieille maîtresse. © catherine breillat

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a means to support an ‘intertextual dialogism’ as mentioned by Stam (2000). Actors and actresses help to sustain a conception of adaptation that focuses on the ‘infinite and open-ended possibilities’ (Stam, 2000, p. 64) of cultural practices. They enable the film to relate to other texts, encouraging a dialogue between texts and time. The events depicted in Breillat’s film Une Vieille maîtresse, follow the novel and unfold early on in the year 1835 – or, as described in the novel some time in the early 1830s. The unspecified year in the novel is reflected in the temporal setting of the film, which reads as ‘Paris, fèvrier 1835, Au siècle de Choderlos de Laclos’. The notorious Choderlos de Laclos and his only novel, Les Liaisons dangereuses (1782) belong to a previous era, the eighteenth century. What comes as a surprise – or a ‘provocation’, according to Romney (2008) – is the fact that Laclos died at the beginning of the nineteenth century, in 1803, and therefore did not know Barbey’s time. This is not an addition by Breillat since in the novel Barbey has la Marquise de Flers claim: ‘Mais nous sommes du temps de Laclos, ma chère belle, et nous appartenons à une époque où ces choses-là se pardonnaient très bien!’ (Barbey d’Aurevilly, 2007, p.15) – a sentence spoken in the film. The novel/film opens with Laclos’ time; in the film la Comtesse d’Artelles invites her friend, le Comte de Prosny, for dinner to gain a favour from him: he is asked to visit Vellini and render an account on her reaction to the announcement of Ryno’s wedding with Hermangarde. La Comtesse d’Artelles is opposed to this wedding and thinks she can save the innocent Hermangarde from the libertin, Ryno. La Comtesse d’Artelles goes for tea to la Marquise de Flers in the following scene to reveal what she has heard from le Comte about Ryno’s long liaison with Vellini. The reference to Laclos in the introductory credits to the film and also in the film corresponds to a time frame, a way of thinking/behaving, that has to be associated with la Marquise de Flers, her close friend, la Comtesse d’Artelles and le Comte de Prosny – but in slightly different ways. Far from having bad intentions, like Laclos’ characters, the Comtesse attempts to influence the Marquise’s opinion on her grand daughter’s wedding. The attitude of the Marquise de Flers contrasts with that of the Comtesse d’Artelles and the Comte de ­Prosny. While the Marquise believes that infidelity can be forgiven, the ­Comtesse advocates the dominant beliefs in Parisian society. Most importantly, it is Ryno and Vellini who are representative of Laclos’ time; they are the libertine couple of Les Liaisons dangereuses. Like in Les Liaisons dangereuses, Une vieille ­maîtresse is suffused with ‘le vécu d’une liberté personnelle’ (Benrekassa, 1991, p. 15) describing the complex relationship between la Marquise de Merteuil/Vellini and le Vicomte de Valmont/Ryno. In this sense, Breillat’s film suggests ‘an admiration for libertinage as ideal gender relations’ (Vincendeau, 2008, p. 71), and

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as such alludes to the influence of Laclos’ time; in other words, an ongoing dialogue is suggested between these two eras. They, in fact, blend into each other as the introductory credit implies. The idea of a linear and diachronic text is further undermined by a process of repetition or recycling. It is unclear in which era and time frame the narrative unfolds as flashbacks disrupt a linear flow of story development. After the audience is indirectly introduced to Ryno through the Comtesse’s and the Marquise’s narrative, Ryno is shown visiting his mistress Vellini to say his farewells. Leaving his mistress in distress, Ryno goes to la Marquise de Flers who is expecting him. He spends most of the night with the Marquise telling her the truth about his ten-year relationship with Vellini, to the delight of the Marquise. When he starts talking about his liaison, images in the form of flashbacks frame and contextualize his confession. In this instance, following the definition of the flashback’s classic form proposed by Maureen Turim (1989, p. 1): ‘the image in the present dissolves to an image in the past, understood as a […] subjective memory’. The flashback generally represents a temporal shift, but Breillat’s film alters its basic function. In the film, previous images, recalled by the flashback, blend into the present flow of the film narrative. The absence of a voice-over recounting past events encourages such a reading. Voice over narration is often used to make a distinction between the present time and the past. In Breillat’s film, no ‘temporal markings of anteriority for the events [is] depicted’ (Turim, 1989, p. 15); no indication in the types of costumes worn or physical characteristics of the actors and the actresses point towards a different past. Vellini’s and Ryno’s clothes seem to be based on their own personal preferences than of a specific period. For example, when Ryno is invited to a fancy dress party, he turns up in his usual attire. For Ryno, his everyday way of dressing reflects his own personality, as the Comte de Mareuil’s statement confirms: ‘Tu es identique à toi-même’. As for Vellini, Breillat confirms that her hairstyle is inspired by Marlene Dietrich. Another factor counts for the impression of temporal flux, which is associated with ‘déjà vu’ used to portray Ryno’s liaison. The flashback accentuates the idea of repetition by virtue of its revelatory function of Ryno’s past relationship with Vellini and confirmation of his current love for Hermangarde. The flashback is supposed to present a gap between Ryno’s past and present situation, but it leaves the audience with an opposite feeling. This is a feeling instigated by Vellini’s composed expression when the Comte de Prosny announces Ryno’s imminent wedding. She selfassuredly declares that there is no ‘dénouement’ to their relationship: ‘C’est un amour et un mariage mais ce n’est pas un dénouement. De dénouement à la liaison qui existe entre Marigny et moi il n’y en a pas’. Her confidence, together with the reiteration of her prophesised ruin of Ryno’s marriage and

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his return to her, are at this stage of the film, disconcerting. The flashback sequence, following this prophesising, is marked by Hermangarde’s absence, which means that it is entirely devoted to Ryno and his mistress. Distanced from Ryno’s narrative, Hermangarde’s differences from Vellini are highlighted and overwhelmed by the powerful fascination Vellini exerts on Ryno. Hermangarde’s absence suggests her frail, weak and aristocratic position in the face of such a powerful and mysterious passion that seals Ryno’s and Vellini’s fate together. This fate is stylistically confirmed: an image of Vellini always precedes the camera’s frequent return to Ryno’s act of narrating. The flashback comes to an end when Ryno relates his separation with Vellini, which is followed by a passionate love scene involving both of them. The passionate love scene is shown as a flashback and bestows on their relationship an aura of continuation. This will likely be confirmed by the unfolding of narrative events. The film’s narrative ends as it started, with the resuming of Ryno’s and Vellini’s long life passionate affair. The blurring of past and present conveys an element of fatalism; the film presents history as cyclical. Events already seen are guaranteed to repeat themselves. On this note, the film opens and ends using a very similar narrative scenery: the Comtesse and the Comte in a carriage conversing about Ryno’s and Hermangarde’s wedding. Moreover, the flashback infuses the present with past events and this influence of the past over the present situation is accentuated by Ryno’s concern, which he expresses to la Marquise: ‘la force de l’habitude qui inexorablement me ramenait chez cette femme autrefois aimée et que à chaque fois je retombais sous ses brûlantes impressions du passé’. His account is highly tainted by expressions of recurrence, such as ‘la force de l’habitude’ and ‘à chaque fois’, reinforced by the use of the imperfect tense. Furthermore, Ryno confesses that his choice of moving away from Paris to retire to the French province with his wife is prompted by Vellini’s influence on him: ‘quoique tout soit fini entre Vellini et moi, le voisinage d’une telle femme n’est bon pour personne. Et moi plus qu’un autre, je dois le craindre et l’éviter’. There is a difference of tenses between the two quotations reinforcing the bridge between past and present and indicating his lack of control over the re-enactment of this previous situation. Human nature is weak because passion always triumphs. For ten years Ryno has not been able to break away from his attachment, which continues even in the present scene. The camera’s return to the time of narration focuses on Ryno covering his face, crying. Even after being separated from his mistress, his feelings are still real. His wedding to Hermangarde is a way of getting away from his passionate feelings and getting involved in a traditional and romantic love. However, passion trumps love as Ryno returns to Vellini at the end of the film.

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Ryno’s confession serves to protect him from bad judgement; being unable to fight against fatalism, he is also a victim. He cannot be blamed and held responsible for the suffering that could – and will – later strike Hermangarde. While listening, la Marquise de Flers does not occupy the position of an analyst; her role is not to try to understand and analyse Ryno’s psyche. What drives his confession is the Marquise’s yearning to know and share Ryno’s past. She gets ready to listen to his personal story as one would get ready to embark on reading a piece of fiction; she swaps her herbal tea – tisane – for a glass of port. As Ryno’s revelations unfold, la Marquise shows signs of comprehension and empathy for his passionate love affair with Vellini. She says: ‘Il ne faut pas avoir honte mon enfant. Je vous comprends’. Belonging to a time (Laclos) when there was supposedly a disregard for rigid codes and taboos, she never passes moral judgement but appreciates his sincerity. Ryno prefers openness and authenticity at a time that favours disguise and lies. As he declares to la Marquise: ‘Je vous dit hardiment les choses’. The sincerity of his account is reflected in his re-enactment and openness with his feelings. Images of his account are interspersed with the return to the present scene of Ryno telling his story. This serves to emphasise the pain he has endured, and still feels in this ­passionate attachment. These frequent returns to the present scene of narration are marked by the camera’s focus on Ryno’s face to highlight his honesty and to allow the audience to believe, like the Marquise, in his suffering. If a long section of the film narrative is devoted to Ryno’s confession, it is to help the Marquise, as well as the audience, recognise and stress his distress in opposition to his guilt. The emphasis on his distress shows a weakened man. By gaining the Marquise’s and the audience’s sympathy and respect, his confession does not weaken, but instead strengthens his position. Ending this revelation sequence, Ryno expresses his gratitude to the Marquise for her faith in the man he is. He finds confirmation of his self in la Marquise as he says: ‘Vous m’avez donné la confiance que je n’ai jamais eue. Vous avez cru en moi alors que personne ne croyait en Ryno de Marigny. Ma vraie famille ne comprenais rien à ce que j’étais, ni à ce que je pouvais devenir’. The first part of the film emphasizes Ryno’s personal world of passion. It does not follow any principles; romantic love would have its hero fall in love with a beautiful, young and inexperienced girl from a privileged background, like Hermangarde. Instead, Ryno’s love is for an unusual looking libertine without any titles – as revealed in his confession. Within the context of the puritanical nineteenth century society, his behaviour is incomprehensible and disapproved of by others, like the Comtesse and the Comte. In nineteenth century French society this attitude is condemned.

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In Idéologie et art romanesque chez Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly, Helmut Schwartz (1971, pp.  121–122) describes the nineteenth century in terms of: ‘puritaine’, ‘­hypocrite’, ‘vieillie’, ‘trop civilisée’, ‘corrompue’ and ‘ennuyeuse’. Ryno’s society is certainly boring. Boredom is a factor that serves to introduce his state of mind before meeting Vellini. His boredom, and that of Vellini later on, is associated with the type of relationships they are involved in. Shown in the opera with his mistress, Ryno expresses his boredom with a relationship which has become ‘trop civilisée’ – too civilised or conventional. The married woman who seems an – ­older – replica of Hermangarde stands as a precursor for Hermangarde’s doomed relationship with Ryno. Both women belong to the same social class and society, ‘vieillie’. Boredom is actually reflected in the coastal l­andscape – a usual feature for Breillat – where Ryno and his wife live. The ­castle in ­Normandy, where they retire, is isolated and surrounded by a bleak wintry countryside. It is an empty place in contrast to the bustle of Paris. The greyish colours of the Normandy setting contrast with the vivid and bright tones of Paris. If love in the nineteenth century is associated with this desolate Normandy milieu, its formalisation by marriage leads to boredom and kills spontaneity in a person like Ryno. It appears through the filmic images that passion is favoured over sentimental love. While love is associated with conventions, passion is an expression of individuality that defies time. The importance of the flashback to the narrative structure lies in their emphasis on ­Ryno’s subjectivity as well as the merging of past and present to defy time. Breillat uses the conventional narrative technique of the flashback to weave together the conceptual with the sensual. Maureen Turim (1989, p. 8) mentions the flashback’s cinematic as well as literary function to ‘manipulate narrative temporality’. As seen, the manipulation of temporality is not to highlight the source text’s ‘differential treatment of temporal modalities’ (Turim, 1989, p. 8), but to produce an interrelation between philosophy and film. The film does not simply articulate a story but creates a film world, here, of/about passion. Passion is presented as a lived emotion and is thus subjective, beyond social norms and marked by timelessness whereas love is a social and historical construction. Defying time and society, passion expresses an individual’s noble disposition. Ryno is opposed to the Parisian salons’ notorious gossip about Vellini. For him she represents nobility, which surpasses that which any social or historical legacy could convey. This noble disposition is rendered through the mise-en-scène, which associates Ryno’s and Vellini’s passion with a movement of going up or down the stairs. Climbing stairs is a recurring motif during the first part of the film set in Paris, linked to Ryno’s and Vellini’s mysterious passionate affair. Their liaison is associated with movement, physical and spiritual, but when he arrives in Normandy, movement is replaced by stillness. Images

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are dominated by flatness; everything is at the same level, horizontal or flat. Hermangarde is usually shown sitting down, lying down or dismounting her horse with the help of her husband Ryno. Pure love, which she represents, is static, invariable and attached to the monotony of the realities of social life. By contrast, Vellini does not have any attachment. She is mysterious and unpredictable and moves between social statuses. Romney stresses her ‘character’s refusal to observe class boundaries. Vellini scandalises Paris with her lawless capacity to move between social milieus: half-aristocratic, she has supposedly been a whore on the streets of Malaga and a courtesan entertaining Parisian noblemen’ (Romney, 2008, p. 37). In Normandy she sometimes accompanies the fishermen. Moreover, she is, like a Greek goddess, directly linked to her natural environment. While Hermangarde’s castle, clothes and social environment protect her from the outside, Vellini is in total harmony with her natural surroundings. Her humble cottage in Normandy is close to the sea. In contrast to Hermangarde, Vellini is mysterious and mystical. She defies the laws of rationality and, hence, stereotypical notions of femininity as mystery. Her ‘protean nature’ or androgyny is often reiterated, as pointed out by Romney (2008) and Vincendeau (2008) in their respective review in Sight and Sound. Joël Askénazi’s (1991, p. 17) description of passion could also fit Vellini’s personality as representative of passionate love, not necessarily tied to stereotypical gender representation: ‘Impulsive et irrésistible, balayant les obstacles et les résistances du réel social ou de la réalité du monde extérieur, la passion ne veut rien voir, elle en peut entendre raison’. It is the film itself that conveys such impressions on the spectator. Lighting, framing, sound and montage as qualities that define the cinematic experience are endowed in Une vieille maîtresse with an evocative power. This type of filmmaking gives precedence to the materiality or corporeality of the medium, and associates the film to other art forms such as painting. As depicted by Vincendeau (2008, p. 71), ‘Breillat indulges in the pleasures of painterly composition’. The camera frequently lingers on a landscape or a scene giving the impression of stasis or a tableau vivant. Reminiscent of famous paintings evoking reallife scenes, the sequence in the Algerian refuge and the long shot of Vellini’s cottage in Normandy, foreground the filmic material and its sensual connotation. These impressions are mostly associated with Vellini’s and Ryno’s passionate relationship. These tableaux vivants are contrasted with another type of painting, that of the conventional nineteenth century portrait. The portrait is a precursor of the photographic image that reproduced and fixed the reality of a specific social class. In this sense, Hermangarde’s portrait, which aims to reproduce and fix her in a specific social and historical environment, is in direct conflict with the tableau vivant associated with the couple’s obsession

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and f­ervour. The colours used in both cases reinforce this distinction in the approach and atmosphere created by the painterly image. While for the tableau vivant they are vivid, the portraits of Hermangarde, like those adorning the walls of her mansion, are insipid or are ‘quintessential image[s] of demure femininity’ (Vincendeau, 2008, p. 71). In ‘Filmic Tableau Vivant: Vermeer, Intermediality, and the Real’, Brigitte Peucker (2003, p. 294) refers to an interruption of all motions leading to an ‘out of time moment’. The tableau vivant, like the flashback, influences the conventional linearity of the filmic narrative. Both techniques imbue the film with a sense of stasis that is, furthermore, reinforced by the formal aspect of filmic tableau vivant defined as ‘the static embodiment of well-known paintings by human actors’ (Peucker, 2003, p. 294). The incongruity inherent in this definition – with opposite terms such as ‘static’ and ‘embodiment’/‘human’ – ­foreground the sensual affect of the filmic tableau vivant. The cinematic tableau vivant is a manifestation of ‘an embodiment of painting’ – also referred to as an ‘inanimate image’ – (Peucker, 2003, p. 295) and, as such, encourages a sensual engagement with the work. This apprehension of the work is expressed by Peucker (2003, p. 295) in terms of engaging with the reality of the image: ‘tableau vivant translates painting’s flatness, its two dimensionality, into the three dimensional. By this means, it figures the introduction of the authentic into the image – the living body into painting’. The features of reality do not pertain to a reproduction or representation of aspects of real life – the realm of portraits – but to ‘the affective-transgressive power of the cinema as cinema of sensation’ (Beugnet, 2007, p. 57). The ‘living beings’, as referred to by Breillat, or embodiment permeating the image/painting refers to, what Beugnet (2007) calls the medium’s affective or sensual potential – an aspect which has been introduced in relation to Breillat’s (self)-reflexive film(s) like Sex is comedy. The sensual facet of the film works to destabilise the conventional formal aspect of feature films and emphasises the film’s heterogeneity or its ‘intermediality’ – to borrow Peucket’s (2003) terminology. In other words, paraphrasing Peucket (2003), the filmic tableau vivant does not induce an interruption in the narrative flow but concentrates on the textual layering or the film’s heterogeneity; in other words, the film’s materiality or corporeality as conceived by Beugnet (2007). This phenomenological and innovative personal approach brings attention to the position of the spectator in Breillat’s cinema. Her type of cinema challenges theories of cinema: the film no longer relies on plot and character – as do feature films – but on a reality of the film world. The type of film viewing differs from standardised patterns of viewing based on notions of distance and appropriation. Instead, the film world encourages a conflicting/chiasmic

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­relation of intimacy and distance with the object of the gaze. Thus, the cinematic experience of the spectator is one that passes from optical to haptic perception. In the next chapter, I explore Breillat’s cinema as ‘a cinema of sensation’; that is a cinema, according to Beugnet (2007, p 32), that ‘gives precedence to the corporeal, material dimension of the medium’, will be particularly related to the filmgoers’ experience.

chapter 2

Viewing (Dis)pleasure

The ‘Cinematic Spectator’ in Tapage Nocturne

The relation between the film and its source text/script pervades filmmaking as well as film screening. Indeed, concerning spectatorship, the source text’s/ script’s effect is strong and impactful. The script and its content influence spectators’ attitude and reaction towards a film as well as their appreciation of it as reflected by Jeanne’s remark about her actor in Sex is comedy. References and remarks are commonly made after viewing a film. According to Huet (2005, p. 2) ‘à sa sortie, spectateurs et critiques parleront spontanèment de ce que le film raconte. Dans leurs arguments, ils invoqueront d’abord les personnages, les faiblesses ou au contraire les qualités d’un récit bien mené’. Plot and characters, identification and narrative logic are elements pertaining to the script/ source text. They form the basis for the enjoyment and appreciation of a film. Huet’s (2005) statement is reflected in an interview by the French television Channel TF1, in which an audience member commented on Breillat’s film screening Une vieille maîtresse at Cannes Film Festival in May 2007 as being purely grounded on aspects of the script. This person established her/his rejection of the film on the basis that the script seems, in her/his words, ‘plat’ – ‘poor’. This reaction can seem incongruous when one is reminded of Jeanne’s – but also Breillat’s – recommendation to her actor in Sex is comedy that the script should be invisible. It seems that spectators try to see something that is not there, which inevitably results in a feeling of dissatisfaction with the film. In other words, the spectator’s expectancy is disappointed, which means that the kind of film viewing that Breillat’s work implies, ‘depart[s] in fundamental ways from the models that dominate feature film production today’ (Beugnet, 2007, p. 5). Looking at Tapage nocturne for its self-reflexive aspect and thus its concern with the world of (Breillat’s) cinema, this chapter focuses on ­Breillat’s departure from mainstream film production means. In other words, it becomes apparent that Breillat’s cinema requires a new conception of the viewing experience, one that also departs from the classical position established in film studies. Until recently, the spectatorial experience – concerning films made by ­women – was dominated by studies of mainstream films. This dominant ­model was mainly based in Laura Mulvey’s from the 1970s, ‘Visual Pleasure and

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���7 | doi 10.1163/9789004343849_004

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­ arrative Cinema’. Its influence is undeniable, and is recognised by, amongst N others, Michele Aaron (2007, p. 24) in her statement: ‘The classical model of spectatorship that emerged in the 1970s set the terms for subsequent discussions of the subject, and, in fact, of film itself’. The terms in question deal mainly with the relationship between cinema and ideology – patriarchy. Within this framework, the practice of film viewing was associated with the notion of the gaze, specifically the male gaze. Mulvey (1988) looked at cinema as an ideological institution and argued that the act of viewing is determined by sexual difference. Following a psychoanalytical perspective, she showed how the classical Hollywood narrative cinema positioned women as passive objects of desire of the active male gaze in film as well as with the audience – through a process of identification. Two key aspects were, identified by Mulvey (1988) that defined classical narrative cinema: objectification and identification. These positions highlight the hierarchical binary division between men and women reinforced by dominant factions in society. Mulvey’s (1988) article was criticised and subsequently revised because of its strong reliance on Freudian terms, which resulted in limiting her contribution to a conception of a fixed masculine and feminine position in cinema. In this instance, the idea of a female spectator was deemed inconceivable; a reasoning, which resounds in her subsequent and revised article, ‘Afterthoughts on “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” inspired by King Vidor’s Duel in the Sun (1946)’. In spite of the acknowledgement and recognition of the female spectator agency, Mulvey’s (1989) revised approach still bears a strong psychoanalytical reading. It, therefore, could not suggest an appropriate position for the female spectator beyond the fixed sexual hierarchical binary division, that is to say ‘dominant representations of sexual difference’ (Campbell, 2005, p. 27). Following a psychoanalytical understanding, the position of the female spectator could only be tenable if, as suggested by Mary Ann Doane (1987), she identified with the male gaze – of the camera and within the film text – to look at her own screen image as an object of desire. This masochistic identification sustains and confirms the passive position of the female protagonist/spectator. As highlighted by Aaron (2007, p. 34), such approaches support and reinforce patriarchal ideology because ‘one, women cannot be subjects; they cannot own the gaze (read: there is no such thing as a female spectator). Two, men cannot be objects; they cannot be gazed at, they can look, and only at women (read: there is no such thing as a male spectacle)’. Breillat’s films, by contrast, centre on the fact that women own the gaze. In Tapage nocturne, the main female protagonist, Solange, is a filmmaker, and as such she is shown watching screen images of men. Solange looks at her actors; following the opening credits, she takes Bruel, her producer/husband to a bar

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to find her actor. As they enter the bar, she tells Bruel: ‘il est beau, non?’. In the club, this actor confirms Solange’s insistent look at him, as he enquires: ‘Pourquoi vous me regardez comme ça?’, to which Solange replies: ‘Pour compenser toutes les fois où je ne vous ai pas regardé du tout’. Women look at men because the gaze no longer seems to be a male privilege. Men’s nakedness – and ­spectacle – is also foregrounded in some of Breillat’s films, including Tapage nocturne. One can say that these examples of women looking at men challenge the subject/object and active/passive position. In Breillat’s cinema this position is not clearly delineated according to sexual differences. For example, in relation to Romance, Wilson (2001, p. 151) confirms Breillat’s disruption of this dominant interpretation of vision. She explains that ‘she [Breillat] shows a woman, Marie, actively looking: the subject of her own desire. Yet she also shows her making herself an object of desire, putting her body on display and allowing it to be put on display. This exhibitionist complicity itself works to trouble active and passive roles in viewing relations’. Breillat alludes to the ‘gender trouble’ that her films lead to in the viewing process. In several interviews, Breillat has reiterated her closeness to male characters and actors. She claims that she sees herself in Rocco Siffredi’s character in Anatomie de l’enfer – Rocco’s inner thoughts are recited by Breillat in the film. For Une Vieille maîtresse, she confesses that she sees herself as a dandy and identifies with Barbey d’Aurevilly. In an interview featured on the French dvd release of Une vieille maîtresse, she also declares that when reading Barbey’s novel: ‘Je me suis reconnue dans tous les personnages. Peut-être parce que […] si j’avais vécu au dix-neuvième siècle, Barbey d’Aurevilly ça aurait été moi’ (dvd, 2007). It becomes apparent that Breillat’s claims raise crucial issues and reveal a more complicated spectator experience than has so far been allowed for. The rest of this chapter will thus turn to and look at this innovative spectator position that Breillat’s cinema – taking Tapage nocturne as the representative example – seems to propose. Following Mulvey’s (1988, 1989) groundbreaking but limited approach, other feminist audience studies ensued which developed the notion of the female spectator from a sociological perspective. This position favoured empirical audience studies taking into account the spectator’s personal, social, and historical specificities in contrast to a deterministic and a-historical psychoanalytic film theory that denied the female audience access to subjectivity. Jackie Stacey (1994) embarked on an empirical study of female spectators that revealed that two types of female spectators have to be considered. The first process is related to ‘adoration’, which results from the imaginary projection of the female spectator onto the female star on the screen, and her subsequent temporary detachment from the real world as she enters the diegetic space of film. The

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female spectator’s imaginary identification could, as part of a second process, extend beyond the diegetic space to everyday life. Here, a woman’s physical and/or behavioural transformation corresponds to the image of the film star as an ideal image of herself. The association of memory with images underlies Stacey’s (1994) study of female spectatorship as she built her investigations on actual female spectators’ memories of their viewing practices. She (1994, p. 17) examined ‘how female spectators remember their relationship to their Hollywood ideals’. This empirical approach brought a new perspective to film viewing, for, as commented by Jan Campbell (2005, p.1) in Film and Cinema Spectatorship, it is a precursor to a new direction in film theory and spectatorship which is grounded in ‘incorporating the real of the spectator’. Stacey’s study invites a phenomenological notion of the spectator by suggesting an embodied experience of film viewing, through the association of the imaginary and ‘the real’. The connection between the imaginary and ‘the real’ in reference to the phenomenal or lived body can be explained by the fact that imagination is based on – embodied – experience. In other words, the spectator can project herself/himself onto the cinematic or imaginary world because the body is what connects ‘the real’ and the imaginary (the emphasis on the lived body – the actor/actress – as a link to the real and the imaginary has already been touched upon in the context of the script in the first section of this chapter). Annette Kuhn’s (2002) recent study supports this view. Kuhn’s (1985) previous studies are well-known for their attention to dominant images in relation to the notions of power, gender and pleasure of looking. In The Power of the Image (1985), Kuhn embarked on a feminist reading of dominant representations – including pornographic images – of women’s bodies in films and still photographs. In her recent study, she is still interested in issues around visual representations, in particular personal photographs. She analyses family photographs and the memories associated with these images, which she interprets in the following: ‘This is not because the remembered places and events of the viewer’s childhood necessarily resemble those in the film: if there is authenticity here, it is not that of naturalism, nor even of realism. It is more that the film contrives to convey the effect, the structure of feeling, that attaches to all childhood memory’ (Kuhn, 2002, p. 164). In other words, the body does not belong to the representational order of mainstream conventional cinema, but is a source of meaning. Within this paradigm, images evoke n ­ on-audiovisual, embodied experiences. Moving away from psychoanalysis to espouse a deleuzean perspective, Vivian Sobchack (1992), Steven Shaviro (1993), Laura Marks (2000) and Jan Campbell (2005) are the main theorists who endorse and promote this innovative phenomenological approach to film audience studies. They all encourage looking at films as generating affects. Cinema is understood

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as foregrounding visceral, or affective corporeal reactions in its audience in the sense that the visceral and tactile of cinematic experiences generates an intimate relationship between images on the screen and the spectator. Tapage nocturne is a film that deals with cinematographic aspects and, in particular, the filmic image. The occupation of its main female protagonist, Solange, as a film director confirms and reinforces the importance of the visual aspects of the film. Similarities between Breillat’s cinema and Solange’s films are obvious in Tapage nocturne, and are reiterated in critical reviews. For example, an article about Tapage nocturne in Le Figaro (1979, p. 30) appeared under the title of ‘Lamentations narcissiques’ (Michel Marmin). Most interestingly, similarities are directly apparent in the film, as described by the producer Bruel: ‘Vous savez qu’elle aussi, elle fait un film, et d’une perversion inouïe, avec du sexe, du foutre. Je ne l’ai pas vu, mais c’est complètement dégoûtant’. ‘Dégoûtant’ and disturbing are terms Solange and Breillat are used to hearing. When Tapage nocturne was first released in 1979 – a time of conservative attitudes following Giscard d’Estaing’s more liberal stance towards pornographic cinema – critics described the film as disturbing. References to cinema, such as film editing, are also shared by Solange and Breillat. The concern is more directed at the filmic image as highlighted in the first scene of the film: the film opens with a shot of Solange and her lover, Jim, in bed. As Solange tries to avoid Jim’s yearning for them to live together, the scene changes to a split-screen to show two different scenes. The split-screen shows the previous scene juxtaposed with a still picture of Solange sitting at a table in a bar and facing the camera. The juxtaposition of these two images is made possible by the first image being shown in a thought-bubble. The picture in the thought-bubble is then replaced by the opening credits of the film. The combination of two types of media – cinema and comic strip – draws attention to their common denominator, the image. In cinema, the image is a powerful tool of expression as well as a representation of what has/is really happened/happening. However, Breillat seems to use images to counter their reality effect, as in the example of comic strips as opposed to cinematic image. This reinforces the imaginative and creative aspects of images emanating from the creator’s mind. If the reality effect of representation – or the ideological ­reflection – is challenged, the identification process that ‘normally’ follows is also questioned. For the spectator, Tapage nocturne’s introductory scene is engaging with its emphasis on the use of two kinds of images. The shot of a full frontal image of Solange sitting at a café table, looking at the camera and declaring that she suffers from a headache because she lied, is undoubtedly designed to make the audience self-conscious of watching a film. Moreover, in this first shot

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what Solange visualises in her mind is materialised on the screen alternating with a scene where she directly looks at the camera. Thus, in the projection room and in the first scenes of Tapage nocturne, Solange shares the positions of ­filmmaker/spectator. Solange is the creator as well as the spectator of the filmic images. As the audience is in the know, the traditional contract between spectator and screen is broken. The audience is individually interpellated to look at the film differently. No distance is created between the spectator and the film, which forces her/him to share and experience the woman’s uncomfortable and ambiguous position reflected in her act of lying. Everything is revealed to the audience: the subsequent image shows once again Solange explaining her acts and thoughts. Standing up, she says to the camera ‘Maintenant je paye’. In Tapage nocturne the audience enters Solange’s mental space, her inner thoughts made possible by the use of thought-bubbles and split-screen, as well as later in the film the use of the voice over. Cinema makes visible the fundamental mechanisms of thinking. In other words, the film focuses on cinema as ‘thought’, understood as an embodied experience. From the start of the film, the use of the screen image is emblematic in reflecting Solange’s physical state, as is further confirmed when Bruel joins her in the bar. As he takes her to another place, she reveals that she was waiting in the bar to be late because she hates to be early. The opening image showing Solange sitting still in the bar, a scene, which lasts for some five minutes, is thus subsequently explained by her aversion for being early. Made aware of the presence of the image, the spectator experiences a closeness relation to what is shown. This is also reinforced by the quality of the image, which, similar to the first scene, is dark for the duration of the film. The colours, as well as the light, are low-lit, which makes it difficult to see exactly what is shown. The film often uses dim lighting, such as candlelight to discourage the viewer from discerning objects or people, which Marks (2000) identifies, as a ‘prohaptic’ property of films. She (2000, pp. 171–172) argues: ‘Many prohaptic properties are common to video and film, such as changes in focus, graininess (achieved differently in each medium), and effects of under and overexposure. All of these discourage the viewer from distinguishing objects and encourage a relationship to the screen as a whole’. This ‘relationship to the screen’, which Marks mentions, evokes an affective or visceral response in the spectator’s body. Hence, Tapage nocturne’s main focus is on the cinematographic image, not on its representational form, so it can generate affect. ­Breillat’s film seems to suggest a new way of viewing that is related to the image’s embodied experience. When Solange declares to the camera, ‘maintenant je paye’, an image shows her in the act of paying. It seems excessive since the visual and the audio­

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overlap and therefore annul each other. It can be said that in this sequence audio and visual representations are over-saturated. Hence, the film invites its audience to look at other registers such as the physical and the corporeal. Tapage nocturne’s focus on the filmic image is mainly directed towards depicting the female body. The film deals with Solange’s liberated sexual behaviour; she simultaneously has a relationship with her producer/husband, Bruel, her actor, Jim and a ‘metteur en scène’, Bruno Martin, and sometimes with other men. This is not an unusual storyline since the film was made in the 1970s when women were presented as more professionally and sexually active. However, despite the subject matter being in accordance with its time, Solange’s l­ iberated sexual behaviour disturbed audiences, and the film was criticised for its alleged explicit pornographic content. It can be argued that Tapage nocturne departs from the dominant cinematographic representations of liberated women to focus on the close-up or intimate physical/body movements of Solange. She is seen moving from one bed to the other; she says she has three appointments per night. One scene shows her putting on her clothes in two different places/ bedrooms. Arriving at work, she tells her assistant: ‘je me déverse directement de mon lit à la salle de montage’. Fluidity is a notion that describes Solange’s corporeal experiences, but also her psychological state. As she declares to her friend, Dorothée, Solange is in love with one of her actors, Jim, but she wants him to leave: ‘Je suis amoureuse de Jim mais j’ai envie qu’il parte’. She regularly makes statements only to contradict them soon afterwards. For example, when Bruno, the film director, and later her lover, asks her what she wants to do, she replies she does not know only to contradict this statement with: ‘mais si, je sais’. She moves from one statement and one situation to another. This ambivalence in her psychological state is revealed in her new relationship with Bruno, which is the focus of the second part of the film. When Solange meets – in her own words – a common looking film director (specifically a ‘metteur en scène’) named Bruno, she starts phoning and seeing him (because as she says, she needs to phone somebody and sleep/have sex with everybody), but most importantly she later declares her attraction for his ‘ugliness’. Ultimately, she finds him to be ‘mystical’ as their relationship turns masochistic, confirming her view that ‘j’ai horreur de ça parce que ça me plaît’. The screen images bring immediacy to Solange’s ambivalence. Referring earlier to the importance of images in the film, her physical reactions are shown by walking up and down a set of stairs. These images underline and reinforce the rhythm of Solange’s ambivalent and masochistic behaviour. When Solange – using her own terms – ‘falls in love with’ Bruno, she is seen descending the stairs of his bedroom, declaring in voice over: ‘Et voilà comment je suis tombée amoureuse de Bruno, mais alors folle amoureuse. Je le trouvais beau, ténébreux, mystique.

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J’aurais fait n’importe quoi pour lui’. By contrast, the following scene shows her climbing up some stairs. As described by David Vasse (2004), the stairs are significant here. In these scenes, descending the stairs emphasises the act of losing touch with consciousness and the ability to experience passion (‘Ca me passionne’, says Solange when talking about Bruno) imprinted on the flesh. This corporeal reaction associated with passion is defined as transcendental, as evidenced by the aforementioned scene showing Solange ascending the stairs (as also exemplified in Une vieille maîtresse). In this ambivalence, the conventional opposition between pleasure and disgust is undone (as evidenced by the physical up and down movements). The fixed boundaries are shattered – going up and down – by an excess of affect (passion). It is interesting to note that even though the film deals with masochism, no representations of sexual play is explicitly shown. On the contrary, the film emphasises the female protagonist’s reactions. Also, naked bodies are never explicitly shown, the – male and female – body is always dressed putting emphasis, once again, on female reactions. The ‘violence’ of masochism is not expressed through the actual acts but through the corporeal effects as evidenced by the bruise on Solange’s arm that Bruel discovers. The bruise may be evidence of the violence inflicted by Bruno but also provides physical evidence of her transcendent pleasure (‘c’est agréable’). For others, like Bruel, they are clear marks of violence inflicted upon her while for Solange they are signs of the ‘alterance’ or transcendence of her body. Bruel, standing for the symbolic and reflective aspects, since he is a husband – according to Solange – expresses his repulsion when seeing (the image of) Solange’s bruise and, hence, reflects the spectator’s feeling of repulsion. For the spectator, as for Bruel, this mark of violence is unbearable to see. It is unbearable for the spectator, as the bruise creates a public display of her most private experience, her desires. Breillat bestows a crucial role to bodily postures and gestures. She records the smallest details of Solange’s bodily movements when she describes how she feels about Bruno: ‘je me tortille, je me tortille, je pousse des grognements et je lève la main comme ça’. The recurring movements of her hand above her head, the lock of hair playing over her face, and her screams, are all embodied reactions displaying the intimacy of her body (as exemplified in Parfait Amour!). Solange clearly stipulates that these bodily gestures are an expression of her intimate self, her affect, when she says: ‘Je ne sais pas quand je crie, c’est comme si je m’évanouissais, que je cessais d’être consciente, qu’il n’y a que moi qui compte. Il y a quelque chose en moi qui m’échappe et que je sens que je vais saisir’, and also ‘Il me torture totalement, il m’intoxique et pourtant c’est moi que je cherche, ça j’en suis sûre. Quelque chose en moi qui est très très fort’. She exteriorises how she feels,

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which means that the social production of boundaries which separate and divide the outside from the inside are abolished. For these intimate states are understood as the ‘normally’ hidden insides of bodies. A crucial moment in the film appears when the camera rests on Solange’s expressive face and uses it to link three different scenes together. The camera often focuses on her face, not as a fetishistic object, but rather to emphasise the expression of her feelings and her pleasure. Two shots, in particular, that focus on Solange’s face screaming while experiencing sexual pleasure, link three scenes together. Masochism in the context of the cinematic image should be understood as bringing everything to a level of immediacy, or visibility expressed through the body (as forcefully exemplified by Solange’s bruise). It, therefore, brings the audience to a close or ‘excessive intimacy’ with the images on the screen. The effect on the spectator is like the bruise on Solange’s arm as the images violently affect the spectator or even assault her/him and create a disturbing feeling (as evoked previously). The spectator feels agitated because according to Shaviro (1993, p. 32) ‘I am violently, viscerally affected by this image’. This visceral embodied experience of the audience is what Shaviro (1993, p. 64) refers to as ‘an aesthetics of masochism’. Hence, the proximity or immediacy of the body forces the audience ‘to move beyond certain limits’ (Shaviro, 1993, p. 258). This is a public display of the most private experience, the intimacy of the body or its ‘impenetrable interiority’ – that which is ‘normally’ invisible. When displaying what is invisible, the viewer is ‘in direct contact with intensive and unrepresentable fluxes of corporeal sensation’ (Shaviro, 1993, p. 102). This assault on the spectator’s body is excessive as it forces him/her to experience the unwatchable. According to Shaviro (1993, p. 101), ‘my least socially acceptable desires’. In other words, these images affect the spectator’s body in such a way that boundaries between the self and the other are dissolved, bringing the audience directly into the intimate realm of the film. More particularly, Shaviro (1993) speaks of an excess of affect, which violently stimulates the body to provoke an intense and disturbing impact on the spectator, disrupting the fixed self or ‘ego boundaries’. The spectator’s participation is more forcefully and explicitly evoked in the last scene of Sex is ­comedy. The scene involves the crucial moment when the last and most difficult scene of the film-within-the-film needs to be shot. The difficulty of this scene lies in its representation of the young girl experiencing her loss of virginity. The centrality of this scene is exposed in Jeanne’s instructions to her actress, when she says: ‘When you cry it’s ok. But those are empty tears. She’s crying naked in a guy’s arms; she really wants to make love to him, but she can’t, she’s in her own prison!’ She subsequently adds: ‘Dazzle me on the monitor, so I feel like an intruder! I have no right to watch this scene! It’s very intimate! I must be

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breathless, watching you is indecent!’ Resuming her position behind the monitor, the camera alternates between shots of Jeanne watching and shots of the scene being filmed. A close relation is, thus, highlighted between Jeanne and the images on the screen. Standing behind the monitor, it is undeniable that Jeanne occupies the position of the spectator as she watches the shooting of the final scene of her film. A process of mimesis or contagion, as evoked by Shaviro, is in place, which shows how Jeanne is being affected by what she sees. Overwhelmed by sensations, she stands up and holds her sobbing actress in her arms to share in her tears. This act reflects the spectator’s embodied engagement with the intimate images on the screen. Interestingly, the spectator’s embodied response emphasises the interchangeability or complicity, rather than a process of identification, between the spectator and the actor/actress. The end of Sex is comedy evokes this sensory and intimate relationship between the film(maker) and the spectator. As illustrated by Jeanne’s reaction of joining her actress, it is more accurate to talk about an active participation in film viewing. This is a relationship, which is interactive and is established as an exchange between the viewer and the film: the phenomenological encounter is an exchange between an embodied selfin-becoming (the viewer) and its embodied intercessor (the cinema) (Marks, 2000, p. 151). When she finally watches the last scene, Jeanne, the spectator, feels that it is indecent but at the same time she is interpellated or fascinated by these images as her act of joining her actress confirms. Being unbearable or indecent, these images signify new possibilities of seeing and generating a new viewing space. This viewing space is what Shaviro (1993, p. 56) calls ‘a new approach to the dynamic of film viewing’ that is defined as ‘masochistic, mimetic, tactile, and corporeal’. The masochism and tactility (‘haptic visuality’) of cinematic experience does not establish a distance between the viewer and the viewed or the subject and the object of vision (as exposed by Mulvey’s study (1988)). On the contrary, fixed identities between the inside and the outside or the film(maker) and the spectator are challenged. Like Jeanne and Solange, the spectator experiences ambivalent feelings of disgust and pleasure. The film thus transports its audience to a new or masochistic realm of viewing where perceptual intensity and immediacy disturbs the fixed self. In this new, masochistic realm of viewing the spectator experiences a destabilisation of her/his identity because of the excess or intimacy of the images. Masochism is expressed in an excess of seeing, or what is unrepresentable, which makes it intolerable to watch because such an intimate focus on bodily reactions usually remains hidden from view. The intense emphasis on the materiality of the body in Breillat’s films generates a discomfort. It challenges ‘the way in which dominant cinema ­captures,

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polices and regulates desire, precisely by providing sanitized models of its fulfilment’ (Shaviro, 1993, p. 133). The violation of social taboo, according to Shaviro (1993, p. 102), is effected not through what is shown on the screen but rather through the way or ‘how they [films] go about doing it’. In other words, the strong or obsessive emphasis on the protagonist’s physical reactions ‘exacerbates and exasperates my least socially acceptable desires’ (Shaviro, 1993, p. 101). The spectator is faced with utter abjection, which undermines the integrity of the self (Kristeva, 1982). Emphasising the importance of the cinematic image, Breillat’s cinema puts her audience in direct contact with the film, which exceeds the act and processes of seeing. An intimate contact or exchange is generated between the screen image and the spectator and this intimacy is further fostered by Breillat’s interests: all her films deal with a woman or young girls (as discussed in the next chapter) trying to find her ‘true self’. Breillat’s cinema is directly concerned with the idea of excess. It deals with what cannot be represented as illustrated in Anatomie de l’enfer. That which cannot be seen remains invisible and hidden. But when made public that which is normally invisible exceeds the act of vision, and thus opens up a new space where the spectator feels at once disgust and pleasure, shame and fascination, confirmed in Solange’s statement that ‘j’ai horreur de ça parce que ça me plait’. The spectator’s experience is, therefore, no longer determined by the conventional gender division and subject/object division but relates to an affected body. Sensations and feelings are multiplied as shown in Tapage nocturne through the female protagonist’s ambivalent feelings, and as such exceed the fixed boundaries of the self. These films create a new form of subjectivity defined as what ‘is entirely embodied, that has no sense of privacy, and that can no longer be defined in terms of fantasy’ (Shaviro, 1993, p. 149). According to Shaviro (1993, p. 56), this loss of ego boundaries highlights masochism, which leads to a new approach to film viewing aligned with masochist pleasure. This new form of subjectivity is at the heart of the subsequent chapters (Chapter 3 concerning the young girl and Chapter 4 in relation to the young boy) and will be further developed in the last chapter, Chapter 5 with a focus on the aesthetics of masochism.

chapter 3

The Teen Years in Une vraie jeune fille, 36 fillette, and A ma soeur! I love teen years!

jeanne exclaims in Sex is comedy

∵ The chapter focusing on Sex is comedy can serve as an introduction to the theme of this present section. Sex is comedy centres on Jeanne’s/Breillat’s difficulty to interact with her actor because of his uncompromising attitude. ­Despite its apparent focus on its main actor, the film’s structure as a ­film-within-a-film tells another story. As a self-reflexive film, it displays strong links with A ma soeur! and as such its focal point is the young actress, present in both films, Roxanne Mesquida. Even if the actor’s temperamental attitude seems to occupy the film’s visual space, the camera, as Jeanne declares – and, hence, the film’s focus – is undeniably on the young actress, as the end of the film confirms. For the film’s underlying preoccupation concerns the shooting of A ma soeur!’s crucial and disturbing scene in the shared bedroom when Elena loses her virginity in front of her younger sister’s eyes. Because of its taboo subject matter, the rehearsal of this scene emphasises its uneasiness for the young girl. However, her calm and compliant behaviour contrasts with the actor’s nervous and inflexible attitude and seems to place her in a position of strength. This force is expressed in the girl’s behaviour incessantly shifting from passivity to resistance as is illustrated in a sequence of Sex is comedy where Jeanne declares her love for teen years. Looking at the television screen where she watches the scene being shot, she explains to her assistant that ‘girls let boys do things. Because it forces boys to do them’, and she adds, ‘that’s young girls for you!’ The ambiguity attached to adolescence as a period of transition for girls is what Breillat is attracted to and evokes in her three films devoted to ‘real’ young girls (as well as in her fairy tale films). The teen years are a very symbolic period for Breillat and as such bear strong significance in her work. The teen years mark the beginning of Breillat’s career as a writer and a filmmaker. She was only seventeen when she wrote and p ­ ublished her first novel. As a young girl Breillat experienced society’s ­contradiction with adolescence – she was forbidden to read her own novel. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���7 | doi 10.1163/9789004343849_005

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When released in 1968, L’Homme facile was banned for young people under the age of 18. Following Une vraie jeune fille, Breillat took the teenage girl as her main subject/-matter to two other films, 36 fillette (1987) and A ma soeur! (2000) (the fairy tale films could also be added to this list). As is common in Breillat’s cinema, similarities recur in all three films. They all take place during the summer holiday period, a particularly dull summer. The dullness of the place where they stay stands as a reflection of, and is reinforced by, the oppressiveness of the young girls’ parents; but it is also a place of exploration. During summer holidays, young people have no school and are allowed some ‘free’ time by their parents, as highlighted in the three films. Freed from the school’s authoritarian regulations and environment – as made explicit in Une vraie jeune fille – the young girls become the objects of their parents’ surveillance. Une vraie jeune fille starts with Alice, the young girl of the film’s title, on her way from school to her parent’s house in the Landes region. Between the school’s and their parents’ surveillance, Breillat’s young girls manage to find a space of their own. Outside their parents’ environment and gaze, in a desolated and deserted place, the young girls express their fantasy, intimacy and hence their selves. It is thus no surprise that for her first film, Breillat chose to evoke the transformation of a young girl during the evocative social and cultural environment of the 1960s.

The Repressive French Society

The setting of Une vraie jeune fille in the post-war period is an important trope. It is Breillat’s first and only film to take place during this specific and evocative time frame. Thus, some light needs to be cast on this period as it also sets the cultural and social foundations of the two other films about young girls. The post-war period is a crucial cultural and social time, the impact of which can still be felt in the present time.1 Breillat shows this in her three films representing different decades as well as in her fairy tale films. The 1960s are identified as a time of transition between the end of the Second World War and the beginning of another period of instability – the May 1968 protests or between repression and freedom, or old and new values. French society of the 1960s is 1 The importance of the 1960s is reflected in the celebration of May 1968’ 50th anniversary at the time of writing this manuscript (2008). Exhibitions in museums were organised and cinema magazines published special issue on the happenings during May 1968 and their influences on contemporary cinema (see for example, the April issue of Sight and Sound). French film directors, such as Breillat, were interviewed to share their experiences of May 68.

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synonymous with prosperity as well as power, epitomised by De Gaulle’s government. It was also a time of contrasts. On the one hand, France experienced economic and demographic growth; on the other hand, it was not prepared for rapid expansions. The unprecedented economic modernization and growth that France witnessed – referred to by the name of ‘les trente glorieuses’2 (the thirty glorious years) contrasts with the hierarchical and authoritarian state. A television programme with De Gaulle and his Prime Minister Pompidou during that time is used by Breillat to emphasise this aspect. The camera focuses on the television screen and for a brief time both images are amalgamated. An incidence related by a journalist seems to refer to new censorship rules passed by the Assembly. This was indeed a time of censorship and repression represented by the older generation and de Gaulle, targeting the spontaneity of the younger generation. The scene of the dormitory in Alice’s boarding school reinforces the perception of the 1960s as an outdated, authoritarian and repressive time. Society’s contrasting ideas culminated in the events of May 1968, which represented the growing importance of young people, their ideas and culture clashing with society’s blindness to their spontaneity. The post-war generation protested against collective constraints and the old and repressive ‘regime of cultural and social conservatism’ (Seidman, 2004, p. 7). Showing publicly their discontentment with the oppressive disciplinary institutions, young people condemned ‘the pleasure-denying restraints of bourgeois society’ (Seidman, 2004, p. 17), and, thus ‘call[ed] into question the fundamentals of sexual morality and control’ (Seidman, 2004, p. 73). A similar frustration is held by Breillat with regards to female youth. Her particular focus on young girls in this uneasy atmosphere can be seen in recent quotations – in Sight and Sound – about May ‘68 as a ‘a micro-event’. Breillat’s derogatory appellation underlines women’s participation being overlooked by following official ‘accounts of the events’. She claims: ‘So if nothing else, May ‘68 made it clear to women that in this revolution, as in the first, they had been cheated’ (Breillat, 2008, p. 30). However, May ‘68 can also be seen as representing the culmination of early – woman’s – denunciations against French society’s repressiveness and oppressiveness, as exposed by Simone de Beauvoir in Le Deuxième sexe. To sustain her main feminist thesis summarized in the dictum: ‘One is not born, but rather becomes a woman’ (Beauvoir, 1953, p. 295), de Beauvoir devoted a whole section to women’s formative years. It is in this central section, lying at the heart of her 2 Les trente glorieuses is a term invented by Jean Forestié (1979) in Les Trente Glorieuses, ou la révolution invisible. Paris: Seuil, and covers the years between 1945 and the oil crisis in the mid 1970s.

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philosophical feminist theory, that she discloses the compelling social forces involved in shaping young girls’ feminine behaviours, which ‘dooms her to be a second class person’ (Hatcher, 1984, p. 4). Like de Beauvoir, Breillat gives attention to the social relations and structures of domination and subordination that foreclose the individuality of the young girl. She, thus, primarily focuses on two main disciplinary institutions of French society, which were also the main elements picked up by the May ’68 events: education and family. Although her young female protagonists are on holiday, hints of the oppressive educational system are obvious. When she does not spend the endof-term holidays with her parents, Alice, the young girl of Une vraie jeune fille, spends the academic year away at school. Alice reveals that the supervisors in the dormitory ‘could always catch us unawares’. Thus, they control the young girls’ movements. The regulations of the ‘internat’3 – boarding school – where Alice stays, reflect the repressive social regime. Personal space is limited to its minimum; beds are close to each other – but not too close to prevent contact. The large open space of the ‘internat’ is constructed around the idea of visibility to prevent illicit behaviour. The special set-up of the dormitory made it difficult for any expressions of intimacy. Individual freedom and expression were undermined. Schools were a place of individual discouragement. Similarly, Lili in 36 fillette is dissuaded from writing by her teachers. The family is another domain, which sustains and perpetuates the repressive and controlling bourgeois society because it is the prevalent agent involved in the process of socialisation of young people. The family as agents of socialisation has been documented by various disciplines. Feminist writings, such as de Beauvoir’s, give prominence to parents as the main force in instilling feminine traits in young girls. Away from school, the family is the site of constraint and control for the young girl. As a result, Breillat’s young girls are always closely framed within their family environment. Out of schools for their summer holidays, the young girls’ parents replace the supervisors in the dormitory. The internat’s spatial restrictions are reflected in the spatial arrangement of the domestic sphere. Feminists have emphasised the distinctive roles of each family member and the sphere they occupy. The fathers’ role ­includes being active in the public domain, as shown in Breillat’s films; fathers are defined by their absence from the private sphere of the home. Although they are on holiday, Elena and Anaïs’ father in A ma soeur! and Lili’s father in 36 fillette, seem to occupy 3 The ‘internat’ is an interesting space that is often associated with young adolescent girls. It is also reminiscent of the events of May ‘68 and the idea of revolt. For some scholars the events of May ‘68 started in students’ ‘internats’ because it was here where they worked together and got organised.

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a different space from the rest of the family. Elena and Anaïs’ father is mainly portrayed holding a phone in his hand. Thus, he shares the same physical environment with them but occupies a different mental space. In the end, his mental and physical spaces are reconciled when he abruptly ends his holidays to go back to work leaving the girls with their mother. Similarly, Lili’s father in 36 fillette is glued to his radio set listening to football. As far as Alice’s father is concerned in Une vraie jeune fille, he is also spatially detached from the rest of his family. His workshop, where he pretends to work, and his office for his business are separated from the rest of the house. Although the basement and his office are both attached to the house, they are pictured separately to emphasise their detachment from his wife’s and daughter’s space. These spatial arrangements accentuate the relationship between father and daughters characterised by distance. Alice’s relationship with her father is physically awkward. When Alice arrives at home for the summer holidays, the father speaks to himself and to the camera, while pretending to work in his workshop. He mentions Alice’s embrace as ‘something new happened today’. The upbringing of children is traditionally the role of the mother in a patriarchal society, which means that fathers can disassociate themselves from such responsibility as well as from the domestic space. As Lili says about her father’s lack of concern about her and her brother, ‘he’s a football nut. Wherever a ball gets kicked, he’s there watching. He’s not interested in us’. In contrast to her father, Lili’s mother in 36 fillette is concerned by Lili’s rebellious behaviour, shown for example by, ‘throwing up her hands’ – ­emphasising her despair. Devoted housewives, the mothers in Breillat’s films are mostly depicted in the confined space of their house. The space to which a woman is restricted is enclosed and limited as epitomised by the henhouse – where Alice’s mother regularly goes to feed the chickens – as well as the house the mother hardly leaves – except for going grocery shopping to feed the family (!). Although made during different decades, the three films emphasise and reiterate the mother’s role in a very similar way. Alice’s, Lili’s and Elena and Anaïs’ mothers are all depicted in the confined space of the home. Hardly seen beyond the limits of their home environment, the outside world appears hostile to/for them. In A ma soeur! the mother is anxious about driving and when she has no other solution than to take the car, she is endangering herself. Feminist theorists highlight the prominent position of the mother and her nurturing role in the mother-daughter relationship. For, Marianne Hirsh (1989, p. 130) notes that the ‘relationship quickly becomes a central aspect of “the new psychic geography” of feminist consciousness’. In Une vraie jeune fille, Breillat depicts this strong nurturing role of the mother in the symbolic introductory scene when Alice arrives at home: the family sits down to eat the after-

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noon ‘goûter’, or maybe breakfast – consisting of tea and slices of bread with jam – the mother has prepared. The duration of this trivial domestic scene is ­remarkably long and emphasises the silence as the camera goes around the table accentuating moments of eating. The camera lingers on the mother and focuses in intense detail on the movements of her mouth while she is pouring her milk and drinking her tea. This precise physical detail emphasises the important relationship between the mother and food. It could be argued that the camera links moments of silence to the mother to create an association between the two in relation to her daughter. This moment of eating then represents the mother-daughter relationship and the silencing of her daughter imposed by the mother’s feeding. The daughter is encouraged to follow her mother – as Alice says. Despite herself, Alice follows her mother in her daily routine such as feeding the chickens, plucking them or washing clothes. A woman’s daily tasks are portrayed as repetitive and boring. These repetitive tasks stifle the spontaneity of the body and render it machine-like; hence, the camera’s frequent focus on the mother’s gestures. The mother tries to integrate her daughter into the dominant society. By doing so, she feels her daughter needs to learn how to become ‘a true woman’ – to borrow an expression from de Beauvoir. Mothers are responsible for initiating their daughters to womanhood, and are therefore perceived as given birth to their daughters twice. Lorna Sage (1998, p. 109) remarks: ‘The first, physical birth is relatively innocent. It is the second birth that traumatises both mother and daughter: that is to say, the shaping of the daughter into a woman’. The mother is made to believe that she can only become a true woman if she indoctrinates her daughter with the dominant values of femininity. She therefore teaches her to be the kind of woman who takes care of and is devoted to her husband and children. The mother becomes a role-model for her daughters and transfers this stultifying existence to her daughters. She imposes limits on her daughters’ movements. The young girl’s formation to become a woman is therefore confined physically. During the day, Elena in A ma soeur! can go out but has to take her younger sister along. She says ‘they like me to drag you along; they feel reassured’. If during the day the young girls’ movements are restricted, at night they are forbidden to go out. Lili in 36 fillette is also too young, according to her parents, and can only go out with her older brother – who, by contrast, is free to come and go – with the permission of her mother. In Le Deuxième sexe, de Beauvoir (1953, p. 304) raises the issue of limitations young girls experience under their family’s control: ‘The girl is required to stay at home, her comings and goings are watched: she is not encouraged to take charge of her own amusements and pleasures’. De Beauvoir’s examination of the young girl’s physical restrictions is illustrated by Alice’s confinement to

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a specific geographical area so that her movements can be tightly supervised. When her parents learn that she has transgressed her allocated spatial boundary, she is banned from going out during the day. A young girl’s movements are carefully monitored and controlled by her parents so she can become ‘a real young girl’. If she does not behave like ‘a real young girl’, she becomes the topic of gossiping in the town. This is exemplified in the shopkeeper’s derogatory look at Alice’s mother and her remark: ‘She’s a big girl now. We often see her cycling by. Your girl’s grown, Mrs Bonnard. You’ll have to keep an eye on her. She’s not a little girl anymore’. After that remarks Alice’s father forbids her from cycling outside. Alice’s ‘excessive’ bodily movements are further restrained. The control and restrictions on adolescent girls limit their physical movements. They are not as free to go out and experience the world like their male counterparts. Usually confined to the home, young girls are kept away from the outside world – and more specifically from men. Similar parental behaviour can be seen in 36 fillette: when passing their neighbours in the campsite on their way to take the bus to town, they hear their neighbours say: ‘Isn’t she too young for a disco? […] I wouldn’t let my daughter go’. When they come back in the early morning hours, a row with her parents ensues as a consequence. A young girl’s behaviour is carefully regulated by her peers with the aim to restrain ‘her own sexual impulse and maintain a virginal purity’ (Jobs, 2007, p. 193). Adolescence is a time when young girls’ desires are controlled and suppressed in a society that does not recognise young girls’ sexual desires and practices. In the last scene of A ma soeur!, when the mother becomes aware of her daughter’s sexual relation, she decides to return home to bring her back to the father. In the car they are surrounded by mirrors, which the mother uses to overtake trucks in a dangerous fashion. However, this scene gives hardly any view of the outside. Instead it is filmed in the car to give the impression of being trapped. Hence, confined by the ‘patriarchal sphere’ of the car, the girls are restricted within this particular culture. The car takes them back to their father who insists that Elena be examined by a doctor. Similarly, on the train when looked at by the other passengers, Alice shares her feeling of oppression with the audience with the camera focusing on the passengers staring at her. Their behaviour stands therefore for society’s normalising stance and processes. A depiction of a certain kind of understanding and closeness marks, nevertheless, the mother/daughter relationship in Breillat’s films. On their shopping trip the mother shares with her daughters her concerns about their father’s departure for work in A ma soeur! Moments of closeness exist also between Alice and her mother. During breakfast Alice and her mother talk about her mother’s first meeting with her father; Alice comments: ‘sometimes, mother and I get on well’. They also work together to feed the chickens or pluck them.

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On another occasion, she helps Alice to get the old bike down from the barn allowing Alice a bit of physical freedom. However, this kind of freedom can also cause tension between them. Moments of intimacy between mother and daughter are rare and are counterbalanced by instances of hostility between them. Alice’s mother disapproves of Alice’s swimming costume and expresses her disagreement and denial of her sexuality by calling it ‘a whore’s costume’ – ‘un maillot de bain de putain’. When Lili comes back home late, in 36 fillette, her mother guesses that she was with ‘that old guy’ and calls her ‘little slut!’. And in A ma soeur! the blissful shopping trip is contrasted with the following fatal scene that closes the film: the mother puts an abrupt end to their holidays and dangerously drives back to have Elena examined by a doctor, representative of the patriarchal hierarchies. The mother-daughter relationship is complex because it fluctuates between moments of love and hate. Women writers and feminist theorists, as early as de Beauvoir in Le Deuxième sexe, have focused their attention on the mother-daughter relationship and its complexity. De Beauvoir describes contradictions in their relationship as constantly moving between identification and alienation: ‘the daughter is for the mother at once her double and another person, the mother is at once overwhelmingly affectionate and hostile towards her daughter’ (de Beauvoir, 1953, p. 309). Both being female, the mother feels close to but at the same time distant from her daughter since the latter rejects the role her mother tries to inflict upon her. The young girl is indoctrinated to experience her body as passive, so she is ‘doomed to docility, to resignation’ (de Beauvoir, 1953, p. 355) like her mother. However, the daughter wishes to separate herself from the mother, and this desire is what creates tension between mother and daughter. Mothers deny their daughters individuality, de Beauvoir (1953, p. 358) says: ‘the mother is secretly hostile to her daughter’s liberation’. The mother’s behaviour aims to prevent their daughters from becoming individuals. She prevents her daughter’s spontaneity or her own individual expression, resulting in ‘tension and ennui’ in the daughter: ‘the self-control that is imposed on women and becomes second nature on ‘the well-bred young girl’ kills spontaneity; her lively exuberance is beaten down’. Any excess in the young girls’ behaviour has to be kept under control and clothes tend to represent acts of compliance or revolt. Lili and Alice mainly wear age-appropriate clothes, which are large enough to hide any human – feminine – physical shape. On girls learning to hate their body as reflected in a mirror, Elizabeth Grosz (1989, p. 107) comments, ‘women can be represented only by means of violence that contains them, and their differences, within masculine sameness’. As a result, Alice can only undress hideously as she declares when taking off all the garments, which hide her body – the pants are

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swapped for other ones for the night. Clothes not only conceal, but also oppress her body such as the apparent mark of her bra, which is too small for her well-developed breasts. When they do not obey the dress code and reveal their abundant female body, young girls are criticized. When Lili dresses in a bustier to go out, her brother criticizes her ‘lousy’ outfit. In a similar fashion, Alice’s bikini is described as ‘un maillot de bain de putain’ by her mother. Showing too much skin is not acceptable when you are a young girl because this is the ‘age of restraint’. Excess or abundance as well as lack of restraint, is epitomised by Anaïs’ body. She personifies indulgence and lack of control because the corpulent or ‘fat’ body is interpreted, according to Kathleen LeBesco and Jana Evans Braziel (2001, p. 3), as equal to ‘reckless excess, prodigality, lack of restraint, violation of order and space, transgression of boundary’. Anaïs is frequently shown eating large amounts of food, which makes her body seem uncontrollable (and repulsive). The mother explains her behaviour as a result of ‘an eating disorder’ while the eldest, Elena, expresses disgust towards Anaïs’ attitude with food. For both of them, Anaïs’ body signifies abnormality and is reprimanded. Excess is, thus, condemned because young girls need to adopt a ‘normal’ body – like Elena, a body that conforms to the ideal feminine body of ‘real young girls’. The appropriation and domination of the girl’s body are illustrated in an early scene of Une vraie jeune fille when Alice looks at herself in the mirror while she gets undressed. Puberty and the preoccupation with ‘looks’ are ­crucial moments in the identity formation of the subject. Alice’s identity is based on negative terms: she ‘undresses hideously’ and she only likes seeing herself in ‘small bits’. These are terms, which highlight Alice’s fragmentation of her body since from a male perspective the female body only exists as fragmented parts. Preoccupation with ‘looks’ during puberty – a time when checking one’s image in the mirror takes on special importance – can lead to a separation between subject and object. In other words, it creates a division between the ‘I’ that watches and the ‘I’ that is being watched. The mirror scene in the film positions Alice as the one who is looked at. She occupies the position that is reserved for a woman because it tends to be men who direct their gaze. For Luce Irigaray (Ce sexe qui n’en est pas un, 1977), the mirror phase is the moment when a man projects his world onto those around him in an attempt to model ­others – men and women – according to his own image. To borrow Irigaray’s (Ce sexe qui n’en est pas un, 1977), terminology, it is ‘a phallic economy’ which is ‘an economy based on sameness’. The idea of ‘samenes’ or ‘oneness’ calls to mind a ‘homosexual culture’, which is defined – by Grosz (1989, p. 107) – as ‘a culture based on the primacy of the male, the “homme”, who can function only with others modelled on himself, others who are his mirror reflections’. In this type of

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s­ ymbolic order, everything is centred on the man and others are constructed in his image – they are his mirror reflections. Within this patriarchal system, women (and young girls) are assimilated according to the masculine model of subjectivity, and as such they are defined in m ­ asculine terms. This assimilation process is illustrated in the patronym that, women (and young girls) are asked to bear, and which is used when Alice introduces herself at the beginning of the film. The male name is the norm to which women have to comply and this norm defines women as the other. Alice introduces herself with her first name and repeats it followed by her surname, which, as she says, is ‘like my father and mother’. She, hence, emphasises her link to an oppressive social system based on the idea of sameness. The norms of patriarchal society (or Law of the Father) are oppressive for both the mother and the daughter. In Sexual Subversions, Grosz develops Irigaray’s view on patriarchy constraining mother and daughter and exposes that this Law ‘implies the severe limitations on her possibilities of self-definition and autonomy […] her renunciation of an identity as a woman and a sexual being’ (Grosz, 1989, p. 121). She carries on saying that for the daughter ‘it also implies an “exile” […], for she is cut off from access to the woman-mother, and thus from her own potential as a woman. She has no woman with whom to identify’ (Grosz, 1989, pp. 122–123). Her initiation into the symbolic order entails that the young girl’s ‘becoming is no longer her own but subordinated to the becoming of another’ (Lorraine, 1999, p. 88) and this other in contemporary Western culture is the masculine subject. She can, hence, become a ‘real’ young girl to be integrated into the dominant social order and be the mirror image of man. These are the conditions required from a young girl to mark her entrance into the symbolic Law of the Father, which means for her to become a ‘real’ young girl. The structure of ‘specularisation’, which defines Western culture and is understood as the male projection ‘of his own ego on to the world, which then becomes a mirror which enables him to see his own reflection wherever he looks’ (Whitford, 1991, p. 34), is developed by Irigaray and explored by Breillat in relation to the theme of female virginity. Indeed her three films on female adolescence centre on young girls who experience their virginity as a curse, in the sense that it corresponds with a conception emanating from the male imaginary and, thus, represses her own sexual identity. For Lili, virginity is lived as a ‘malédiction’ (a curse) because it is the moment when young girls are deprived of their independence. Mind and body are shaped and controlled; their bodies are appropriated and they are made to internalise this oppression. Feeling like a stranger in her own body, the young girl feels oppressed by society. Modelled after the image of another, the young girl experiences her self as alienated as she becomes a stranger to herself – to paraphrase Irigaray – and

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experiences a conflict. In Maurice’s hotel room, Maurice tells Lili that in her mind she does not want to but inside she is full of desire. If their bodies signify desire, youthful exuberance, their social status as ‘fillette’ suppresses this natural exuberance as it signifies sexual inhibition or repression. Lili’s, Alice’s and Anaïs’ changing bodies and budding sexuality seek to express desire but internalised taboos require them to repress these feelings. Lili’s body might be ripe with desire but shame and guilt make her indecisive and she finally refuses to give herself to Maurice. Trapped by patriarchal society and social mores, the young girl has to wait for the right person to lose her virginity. The young girl is meant to feel as though she would loose a sacred part of herself that she will never be able to retrieve. It is a moment she has to wait for, according to Judeo-Christian discourse and traditions. Losing one’s virginity is posited as an emotionally important act and is defined as a complicated issue for which girls need to choose the right time for, in addition to the right circumstances and person – a man. As stated by Fernando to Elena in A ma soeur!, the girl is expected to lose her virginity for somebody she loves. She is thus usually represented in the image of the sleeping beauty waiting for her prince charming to awake her. Sleeping beauty had to wait one hundred years and for the young girl the waiting process also seems to last one hundred years, or at least a very long time. Its length is reflected in the long summer holidays during which all the films take place. Breillat depicts this long period of virginity imposed on the young girl as a time of ‘ennui’. This ‘ennui’ is expressed by Anaïs’ song: ‘I get so bored, from six to ten. From ten to six, from six to six. All my life, both day and night I get so bored’. Similarly, Lili is first shown in the caravan in Biarritz where she spends her summer holidays with her parents. To kill time in this small-town environment – where she is ‘choking’ – she occupies herself in various ways she can, such as fighting with her older ‘conformist’ brother. In Une vraie jeune fille, Alice confides – in voice-over and shown on the train on her way to spend the summer holidays with her parents: ‘summer holidays were the worst. They were endless’. They are endless because it is a time spent under the scrutiny and restrictions imposed by the parents. Several elements in the films are used to highlight the young girls’ boredom due to social constrictions. Feelings of isolation and boredom are mirrored by and intensified by the lights or colours, the season and settings Breillat chooses for her three films. As Alice enters her bedroom, its mise-en-scène signifies her oppression (see fig. 2). The colour blue is the main colour in the film. It is the colour of her parents’ house, her school uniform and the bright blue sky hanging over her oppressive holidays. This is the colour she is surrounded by as everything is blue: her bedroom’s walls, her pyjamas, her shirts, her mother’s

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The oppressive colour blue in Une vraie jeune fille. © catherine breillat

necklace and teapots, the car which takes her back home and the piercing light of her bedroom. It hence stands for the boundaries of her domestic sphere. Breillat’s three coming-of-age films bear resemblances in their settings and mise-en-scène. The weather is not that usually associated with summer. On the contrary, it is unusually cold, rainy and windy for the season – it’s raining at the end of August in 36 fillette and in A ma soeur! The mother talks about recent tornadoes; remnants of the storm can be seen at the entrance of their residence. Broken tree branches and uprooted trees are strewn across the path the two sisters walk on when they cross the wood to get to town. During a cold summer holiday, the family is reunited in a dull and isolated place with an obvious lack of cultural events and without new people in sight. The young girls’ summer holidays all take place in forlorn places, ‘dumps’ – even if 36 fillette is set in Biarritz, the film shows mostly the town’s dull outskirts. Also, the only companions Alice finds while wandering on the beach are dogs’ skeletons. These sterile, arid places stand for the imposed a-sexualisation of the virgin girl in patriarchal society. Virginity is marked as a period of (sexual) inhibition and hence control during which the young girl learns to be passive and submissive. She has to internalise values, which will make her a woman. In order to become a woman, the young girl is turned into a passive prey of men. In other words, virginity is a period during which young girls’ sexual identity is shaped in accordance with the ideological definition of women. In contemporary Western societies, virginity is defined as a passage to womanhood, which is a period of disciplining young girls and moulding them into women. The young girl’s identity is thus doubly appropriated and made invisible, firstly during the phase of being a virgin and

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then during adulthood and being a woman. As a young girl and a woman, she is positioned by her differences from men and made a mirror reflection of man. As a virgin or a woman, she is defined by her gender and specific parts of her body. It is because of their well-developed breasts emphasised by the clothes they wear – bikini and bustier – that Alice and Lili are perceived by their lover and father as looking like (real) women. The young girl feels violated; being defined as built and looking like women, they feel a loss of control over their bodies; their bodies no longer belong to them but are appropriated. Being defined by her sex, virginity and womanhood are both social discourses, which suppress a person’s individuality. Breillat gives a very personal vision of the rite of passage of teenage girls towards adult femininity by de-romanticising the notion of virginity as well as the notion of loosing one’s virginity as stipulated by the dominant – ­patriarchal – society. Virginity for these young female protagonists is more ‘a burden and an embarrassment’ (Hayward, 1993, p. 258) rather than a sacred rite of passage to becoming an adult woman. They feel they need to get away from the scrutiny of masculine culture and ‘en finir avec’ (Clouzot, 2004, p. 49). Breillat’s coming-of-age narratives centre on the rebellious behaviour of her young female characters in order to challenge patriarchal society and its definition of virginity, in terms of discourses and representations.

Revisiting the Lolita Syndrome

From the late 1950s, the media, including film, have offered contrasting images of youth and young girls representing traditional and changing values. For instance cinema took a new direction in the 1950s towards the image of the ‘erotic hoyden’ (de Beauvoir, 1962, p. 10) based on a male vision found in literature, such as in Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita (1955). The sexually precocious young girl is also depicted in Elia Kazan’s Baby Doll (1956). In 1962, S­ tanley ­Kubrick brought Nabokov’s Lolita to the cinema screen. The teenage girl during this time became the main focus of filmmakers or more precisely, ‘the dream-merchants’ as de Beauvoir calls them in her pamphlet, Brigitte Bardot and the Lolita Syndrome (1962). De Beauvoir (1962, p. 10) explains this cinematographic trend of ‘the erotic hoyden’ as an age ‘when woman drives a car and speculates on the stock exchange’ and ‘an age when she unceremoniously displays her nudity on public beaches’. De Beauvoir (1962, p. 14) pushed her observation further and explained the growing presence of women in the public sphere in terms of equality between women and men: ‘the adult woman now inhabits the same world as

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the man’. Among examples of the increasing presence of women in public domains, Susan Hayward (1993, p. 244) mentions the cinema. She recognises a ‘greatly increased number of women making feature films’ especially during the second half of the 1970s. Hayward also considers the e­ scalation of the erotic representation of the young girl in cinema as a response to w ­ omen’s advances in society. In this context Hayward (1993) mentions the strong ­influence of the women’s movement. At a time when the mlf (Mouvement de Libération des Femmes) had a significant influence on women’s social situation and position, the (sexually) ‘rebellious’ young girl became the most sought-after figure in mainstream cinema. For, Hayward (1993, pp. 244–245) argues that the proliferation of eroticism/pornography and its reliance on the child-woman figure is a ‘phallocratic response to the possible loss of […] the female object of desire’. Because of her young age, ‘the child-woman moves in a universe which [men] cannot enter. The age difference that seems necessary to desire’ (de Beauvoir, 1962, p. 14). The popularity of Lolita’s character is t­ herefore due to the fact that she re-establishes a functioning dominant patriarchal binary ideology, and, hence, undermines the threat that women’s new social situation poses. As a result of perpetuating the dominant representation of women as sexual objects for the male gaze, the sexually active young girl has become a familiar figure of mainstream cinema and her exploitation persists up to the present time. In the 1950s when Lolita arrived on the literary scene, the cinema found its perfect materialisation of the child-woman in Brigitte Bardot. The Bardot phenomenon was such that de Beauvoir devoted a study to Bardot as the e­ pitome of the Lolita syndrome. Looking at Roger Vadim’s film, Et Dieu … créa la femme (1956), as well as some other films, de Beauvoir (1962, p. 20) stresses that Bardot’s image ‘does not depart from the traditional myth of femininity. […] She appears as a force of nature, dangerous so long as she remains untamed, but it is up to the male to domesticate her’. Bardot is, in other words, ‘a ­modern version of “the eternal female”’. (de Beauvoir, 1962, p. 8). Bardot is a ­Lolita playing ‘a grown-up nymphet acting out the Humbertian fantasy through her looks and her behaviour rather than by virtue of her chronological age’ (Sinclair, 1988, pp. 96–97). Bardot as ‘Lolita’ perpetuates the myth construction of women in cinema, which reduces them to ‘classic object[s] of male desire’ (Vincendeau, 2000 p. 92). Such a representation favours young women’s alienation of their sexual body. The cinematographic presence of young women is, hence, directed to the male gaze as suggested by Mulvey, noted above. Seducing a middle-aged man and achieving sexual maturity makes her into a sexual object of men’s desire and the male gaze. It is through the invasion of ‘Lolita’s private kingdom’ that ‘Humbert usurps her rightful claim to an independent existence’. Just like Humbert, Maurice in

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36 fillette and Fernando in A ma soeur! are blind to the young girls’ individuality. It is through Humbert’s/men’s imagination that the young girl is ­transformed into a Lolita. Through this process he ‘violates’ her personal growth and ­individuality. The child-woman’s own sexual identity is repressed and as such she is not granted a personal reality and individuality. Within this context she will become a ‘real woman’ as defined by patriarchal society. The young woman is thus marginalised twice in mainstream cinema: by the fact that for a long time she rarely was the central subject matter of a film and once she appears she is objectified. The child-woman therefore reasserts a ­patriarchal ­representation of women. This is the position that Breillat has identified in the screen image and the representation of the young girl. Her three films devoted to the young girl’s sexual identity denounce the character of Lolita as adopted by cinema. Her female protagonists are fourteen years old – with the exception of twelve years old Anaïs – and, following Nabokov’s definition of a nymphet, they are having or seeking to have a relationship with an older man. Breillat most prominently illustrates her interest in Lolita in the character of Elena in A ma soeur!. For, she exposes conventional codes in the character of Elena. Indeed, Elena plays the ideal Lolita by becoming the sexual object of Fernando’s desire. Like Lolita, Elena stunts her subjectivity to submit to Fernando’s idea of how a ‘real’ young girl should be, as expressed when she complies to what he tells her that: ‘All the girls take it the back way. That way it doesn’t count’. While some critics refer to Breillat’s adolescent female protagonists as Lolitas (see Tarr and Rollet (2001)) and Clouzot (2004), this connection is more explicitly made by ­Breillat herself in A ma soeur!. Clouzot (2004) reveals that Breillat got her inspiration from the main female character of one of her favourite films, Kazan’s Baby Doll (1956), frequently cited in the studies devoted to the Lolita character. This reference to Lolita is prominently reiterated in A ma soeur! when Elena’s Italian lover, Fernando, says to her: ‘You’re a little girl who looks like a woman’. If Elena is Lolita, the audience is right to compare Fernando’s role with that of Humbert in Nabokov’s novel. It can thus be stated that it is the imagination of ‘the Humbertian Fernando’, which transforms Elena as Lolita. One can also detect a similarity in the sound of both girls’ names. Fernando’s character shares some similarities with Humbert in that both are older than the girl, but most importantly in their cultural background. Humbert represents high culture in contrast to low, mainstream culture represented by Lolita. Fernando is a law student and his ambition is to become an international lawyer to follow in his father’s footsteps. In contrast, Elena is too young to have a clear idea of what she wants to do. In a certain way, the same opposition is valid between Maurice and his jet-set life style and the young Lili in 36 fillette. Lili spends her holidays

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camping while Maurice stays in a luxury hotel in Biarritz and likes to listen to jazz music. The differences between the young girl and the mature man are clearly shown from the beginning. This is further confirmed when Elena falls prey to Fernando’s charm and his romantic gestures. Totally oblivious to his flirtatious talk reminiscent of talk found in mainstream movies and magazines, she becomes the ideal – naïve – target for his seduction. This position is further reinforced by her physical appearance, representative of the mainstream image of ideal femininity in the mass media from advertising to women’s magazines to cinema. LeBesco and Braziel (2001, p. 6) point out that ‘the “thin body” manifests the quintessential commodity’ in contemporary Western cultures. Elena’s slim body, contrasted by her younger sister’s plump figure, is made to convey the conventional idea of a woman seen through the lens of hegemonic mainstream culture. Her normalised physique predisposes her to believe in Fernando’s empty promises because the cultivation of thinness can stand as a reminder of her obedient body. Cecilia Hartley (2001, p. 67) confirms this position when she suggests that ‘the emaciated female body stands as a symbol of woman’s sexual subordination’. Indeed, Elena eventually submits to his manipulative romantic talk because she has already adopted the norms of patriarchy. However, this is not a surprise for the audience because earlier signs of her eventual compliance were given. After their first night together, the scene where Elena walks Fernando to the gate and attempts to perform oral sex on him, her subjection to Fernando’s desire is made clear. Yet, her desire is totally alienated as this scene reveals. Fernando no longer needs to insist and tell her this is ‘a real demonstration of love’; she has already internalised his desire. The most revealing moment happens when Elena confides to her sister that ‘I’m going to give myself to him tonight’; to which her sister responds: ‘You use some really weird expressions’. They are ‘weird’ in the sense that they express Elena’s internalisation of a patriarchal culture, that is to say, Fernando’s thinking. As their conversation carries on, and Elena asks her sister what she thinks, Anaïs answers: ‘In any case, between what you’ve already done and that, there’s no moral difference in my opinion’. Not surprisingly, Elena disagrees and asserts that, ‘there’s a world of difference’. Indeed, there is a huge difference for Elena because according to Fernando, to ‘take it from the back way […] it doesn’t count’. Fernando initiates her to the norms of the dominant patriarchal society regarding woman’s sexuality and Elena’s resistance only consists of reiterated weak utterances, such as ‘c’est degueulasse’ (‘That’s sick’). The insistent repetition of this colloquialism reminds the audience of another young female character, Patricia, from Godard’s film A Bout de Souffle (1960). Apart from being another allusion to auteur cinema, it mainly reinforces Patricia’s conventional

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behaviour when she reports her lover (Michel/Jean-Paul Belmondo) to the police. Her act does indeed make her conform to the ‘degueulasse’/dominant society. In A ma soeur! the same expression alludes to Elena having completely internalised Fernando’s dominant discourse on romantic love and of becoming blind to her own alienation. Such an initiation highlights the exclusion of Elena’s point of view – she refuses several times Fernando’s sexual advances but her refusal is not heard – in favour of Fernando’s position associated with a hegemonic romantic discourse. In a similar fashion to Humbert’s portrayal, Fernando has succeeded in inhibiting Elena’s individual sexual freedom and made her sexual identity conform to that of the traditional myth of femininity as ‘the eternal female’. Elena/Lolita is a child-woman in the sense that ‘fillette’ and ‘woman’ are both creations of the masculine imagination and are objects of male fantasy. As ‘fillette’, young girls are defined as virgins and as such, they are not yet women. As an indefinite being, the young girl’s existence is negated and as a result is defined as a desirable woman. The young girl’s virginal space has no value of its own in dominant Western cultures, which determines that men can impose their own gaze/desire upon her. Breillat shows a young girl’s alienation of her desire, but this is a position, which she clearly refutes. Lolita is a child-woman, and as such she is a ‘fillette’ as well as a ‘woman’. It is the idea that, according to society, her age defines her as a child, a ‘fillette’, but her body shape and behaviour is that of a woman, which Breillat is interested in exploring. The fact that a writer, such as de Beauvoir, who is famous for supporting women’s cause, wrote a pamphlet on Bardot in relation to the Lolita figure can come as a surprise. Almost unnoticed by critics, de Beauvoir’s booklet is useful in analysing Breillat’s approach to the subject matter. Beauvoir invites its reader to look at the association of Bardot with Lolita in a new and challenging light – a position supported by Breillat. De Beauvoir launches an audacious claim in considering images of Bardot beyond the conventional representation of woman/young girl associated with ‘the eternal female’. To start with, the fact that Bardot’s novelty was used to announce the Nouvelle Vague’s modern portrayal of young women needs to be stressed to find that de Beauvoir’s attention to Bardot is not totally unfounded and unexpected. Moreover, this association has been recognised by subsequent critics’ reiterations of seeing a strong relation with Bardot and the emerging new generation with its spontaneous desire and pleasure in the 1960s, ‘limited neither by morality nor social taboos’ (Jobs 2007, p. 201) – which Alice in Une vraie jeune fille also epitomises. Both of them support the image of a liberated young girl/woman whose behaviour stands against the repressive French society of that time – a description which, as will be demonstrated, also fits all of Breillat’s representation of young girls, Lili and Anaïs particularly.

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It is de Beauvoir’s pamphlet, published as early as 1959 and entitled, ‘Brigitte Bardot and the Lolita Syndrome’, that introduced notions of ‘modernity’ and ‘spontaneity’ in relation to the Bardot phenomenon. Faithful to her previous feminist standpoint, de Beauvoir’s attention and arguments rest on Bardot’s personal behaviours and expressions. Hence, the type of modernity that Bardot represented, according to de Beauvoir, was to be found in her way of dressing, her gait, posture and facial expression. In these ways, Bardot announced and incarnated the ‘liberated’ woman of her time. This led de Beauvoir (1962, p. 14) to define Bardot as an ‘ambiguous nymph’; ‘femininity triumphs in her delightful bottom’. Yet her slender body is ‘almost androgynous’ (1962, p. 14). Bardot incarnates ambivalence, at once feminine and androgynous like a young girl; her body is that of a woman-child commonly known as Lolita. Like a woman, Bardot’s body is flesh and defies passivity at the same time, for it is constantly shown in motion. She is seen riding a bicycle and dancing. Her body is suggestive of a consummated sexuality in Et Dieu … créa la femme (1956): ‘that body rarely settles into a state of immobility. She walks, she dances, she moves about’. (de Beauvoir, 1962, p. 30). Moreover, her body is portrayed as it is, ‘neither more nor less’ (de Beauvoir, 1962, p. 30), without too much adornment. ‘To spurn jewels and cosmetics and high heels and girdles is to refuse to transform oneself into a remote idol’ (de Beauvoir, 1962, 30). As a result, de Beauvoir frequently turns to terms, such as ‘genuineness’, ‘frankness’ and ‘reality’ to describe Bardot. The notion of women’s ‘naturalness’ could sound out-dated, above all coming from a radical anti-naturalist or existentialist like de Beauvoir. Bardot’s ‘naturalness’, though, is to be equated with her ‘sincerity’ and ‘spontaneity’. ‘She has a kind of spontaneous dignity, something of the gravity of childhood’ (de Beauvoir 1962, p. 32). In this sense, de Beauvoir challenges common opinion about Bardot’s amorality. In her eyes, Bardot cannot be immoral, perverse or rebellious since ‘she follows her inclinations’ (de Beauvoir, 1962, p. 24). De Beauvoir’s position towards Bardot was quite atypical but not totally so, since, after the screening of Vadim’s film, François Truffaut declared that: ‘il a vu à l’écran non pas un scandale mais un corps de femme de son temps, qu’il a lu, pour la première fois, le journal intime des gestes et des désirs d’une Française de 1956. […]’, which he further calls, ‘l’intimité vraie’ (as cited in de Baecque, 1998, pp. 38–39). Thus, following de Beauvoir and Truffaut, it can be argued that Vadim offers a depiction of 1950s French women’s desires, which are in contrast with expected or ‘moral’ behaviours of that time. In other words, Bardot’s body distinguishes her from the idea of hegemonic feminine behaviour expected from women of the previous generation and, hence, incarnates ‘une rupture dans l’histoire du corps féminin’ (de Baecque 1998, p. 21).

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De Beauvoir followed Vadim’s view that this ‘new species of liberated young girl […] has abandoned the restraint usually imposed on her sex’ (as cited in Vincendeau, 2000, pp. 83–84). Bardot’s ‘naturalness’ and genuiness in her way of dressing and moving her body convey the idea of ‘un corps doté d’une liberté et d’attitudes radicalement nouvelles’. (de Baecque 1998, p. 20). Bardot’s sexual autonomy is, thus, expressed through her ‘natural’, or spontaneous behaviour, which highlights the construction and the constraints of femininity. She posed a threat to the established order, to the older generation and to the family. In other words, her incarnation of a liberated young woman using her own body as she wishes disclosed as well as attacked social and cultural constraints. The Bardot phenomenon led to other research, which supported de Beauvoir’s position. Vincendeau (2000, p. 97), for example, agreed that she attacks the social order and its construction of sexuality, particularly women’s sexuality. According to de Beauvoir (1962, p. 34) she ‘showed up the hypocrisy of social conventions’ as ‘she corners [men] and forces them to be honest with themselves. They are obliged to recognize the crudity of their desire, the object of which is very precise – that body, those thighs, that bottom, those breasts’. Bardot revealed women’s sexual confinement and oppression in French society. Bardot’s attack of certain taboos regarding sexual autonomy for women anticipated the emergent sexual liberation of the late 1960s. As such, the Lolita, epitomised by Bardot in the late 1950s and early 1960s, can be considered as a way forward for young girls/women in French society. Accordingly one can interpret Breillat’s image of young girls in her three films in this light. Bardot’s impact on women’s sexual autonomy can still be felt – Breillat mentions her in A ma soeur!. Elena and Anaïs watch a black and white television programme about an interview with the radical Italian singer and actress Laura Betti in the 1960 – playing Fernando’s mother in the film – and the sexual explicitness of her shows. She praises de Beauvoir’s essay on Bardot and the Lolita syndrome. As an artist Betti identifies with the similar issues raised by Bardot, questions about definitions and representations of female s­ exuality. Following Beauvoir, Betti’s/Breillat’s position reveals the image of Bardot/­ Lolita in Vadim’s film as a new and ‘genuine’ femininity, which c­ hallenges ‘taboos accepted by the preceding age’ (de Beauvoir 1962, p. 58). As a result, this television programme is a way for Breillat to further explore in her own films the image of Bardot’s/Lolita’s ‘natural’ and ‘free’ sexual behaviour. She encourages her audience to concentrate on her young girls’ ‘spontaneity’ and ‘naturalness’, and sees these incarnated characteristics as a sexual and, hence, political issue, but not as a mere representation of sex (as will be highlighted here). A sexual issue, as emphasised by de Beauvoir (1962), involves Bardot’s natural body as an expression of selfhood as opposed to the objectification of woman’s

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body in representations of sex. De Beauvoir (1962, 30) wrote about Bardot: ‘She is as much a hunter as she is a prey. The male is an object to her, just as she is to him’. The same point is reiterated and emphasised in Vincendeau’s (as cited in Mulvey, 1975, p.11) study on Bardot: ‘Bardot here, too, is an ambivalent figure’, for her “to-be-looked-at-nes” is predominantly meant for the male spectator’s pleasure, which is conveyed in the films by male ­onlookers. On the other hand, ‘her own desire and pleasure are not in doubt either’. (Vincendeau 2000, p. 96). In other words, Bardot incarnates the ambiguity of young girls. I will now turn to show how Breillat’s young girls as Lolitas can be read as an expression of individuality rather than merely sexual objects for and of the male gaze.

Real ‘Becomings’/Young Girls

While Bardot is a woman playing a child in a woman’s body, Breillat has atypically chosen real young girls4 to tackle the idea of ambivalence that young girls incarnate. They do not share Bardot’s age but they certainly share Bardot’s ‘naturalness’ or ‘frankness’ and physical appearance. Lili in 36 fillette is an adolescent of fourteen who speaks her mind; she is mouthy and swears a lot. She calls her older brother ‘un conformiste’ – ‘an ass-licker’. In turn he describes her to Maurice as follows: ‘she’s got fire up her ass, but watch out, because she’s got a computer in her head’. She is not scared to call Maurice a forty-year old macho, ‘un vieil amant’ – ‘an old Romeo’. Anne Gillain (2003, p. 207) goes as far as describing her as ‘a rebellious little pest of fourteen who drives any man who approaches her crazy’. Like Lili, Anaïs in A ma soeur! is a young girl, but does not sound her age. While spending time on her own, she sings dark nursery rhymes stemming from her own imagination. Critics have noticed and remarked on Anaïs’ almost adult talk on the subject of sexual relationship. She is a virgin – like all of Breillat’s young girls – but she has already very lucid and clear-cut ideas of sexual experiences – a precursor to the end of the film. Being well-informed, she is the one who sees through her sister’s Italian lover and warns her against him, as depicted in the scene with a stolen engagement ring. She attempts to open her sister’s eyes to the real origin of this ring: ‘He can’t have given you that, you’re out of your mind. There must be a catch’, and further on, Anaïs adds: ‘It’s fishy. I don’t think you should have accepted. It’s not right. It’s too valuable’.

4 This is an aspect of Breillat’s coming-of-age films, which critics or reviewers have drawn ­attention to.

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Signs of Bardot’s androgyneity can be found in Breillat’s young female ambiguous bodies. Their ambivalence is more prominent in the discrepancy between their age and their body’s physical development. From a dominant point of view, their young age is in opposition to their physical appearance. This antagonism is directly conveyed, for example, in the film’s title, 36 fillette. ‘Fillette’ refers to the age of the young girl, but ‘36’ is the size of a woman’s bra, probably too generous for a ‘fillette’. Lili is fourteen years old but her body is well-developed, making her look older. Her age marks her as a young girl yet her body is that of a woman – and so identified by dominant society and confirmed by Maurice. In the film her age remains vague because she can easily pass for an eighteen year-old girl, but from time to time she reminds Maurice of her real age and the risk he incurs by flirting with her. Lili’s and Alice’s mature bodies in comparison to their real age result in male attention and the male gaze. When her father hires his new and young employee, Jim, Alice enters his office dressed in a revealing bikini. Framed by the doorway, she is clearly portrayed as the object of Jim’s gaze. The predominance of the ‘male gaze’ in our culture is undeniably a crucial question, which concerns Breillat as revealed in an interview with Roberto Rosselleni (cited in Breillat. Corps amoureux, 2006, p. 25). In response to his question about what she would add to the view of adolescence/women in cinema, she answered: ‘The gaze’ (2006, p. 25). As is well-documented by feminist studies, the ‘gaze’ works to create fixed gender identities and to maintain a division between the sexes. It is a means of confining and controlling the female body. The gaze is, thus, a dominant strategy of imposing a distance and as, Irigarary points out (as cited in Cavallero 2003, p. 61), ‘the moment the look dominates, the body loses its materiality’. Breillat thus shares with – French – feminists their concern with the male gaze and their approach to it. She takes a radical position with regards to ­adolescent girls having ‘the potential to challenge hegemonic adult modes of seeing and displace the fetishistic male gaze of dominant cinema’ (Tarr with Rollet 2001, p. 25). Framed in the doorway, Alice returns and lets Jim’s gaze linger. In this sequence, the camera never sexualises her by highlighting parts of her body. Jim’s gaze is, furthermore, contested by the presence of Alice’s father, which reveals Jim’s gaze illicitness. Alice constantly maintains her position as the one who is gazed upon. In later scenes she pays Jim regular visits at the sawmill, just to look at him. Lili is also in control of the gaze through her appearance and contrasting looks. On an outing with her brother, her ‘36’ sized breasts literally burst out of her outfit. Yet, most of the time she is seen wearing dungarees that hide her body shape. With her party clothes though, Lili wants to ‘shock, as she declares; and she succeeds as she attracts Maurice’s attention who is a middle-aged single man. The young girl who most embodies the idea

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of transgressive abundance, is Anaïs’. Anaïs’ body in comparison with that of her sister, Elena, is big; she is the ‘fat girl’ as noted in the English version of the film. Her corpulent body refuses the socially prescribed image of woman as passive. It defies social norms because it does not ‘adhere to society’s confining standards’ (LeBesco and Braziel 2001, p. 3). The young girls’ bodies in Breillat’s films are abundant for their age; they are copious. However, while Lili’s and Alice’s large bodies resist patriarchal definition and boundaries, they still embrace social mores. Their youth is contrasted by their well-developed bodies – women’s bodies. In 36 fillette Maurice tries to make her yield to sexual intercourse with him by telling her – and himself – that she is built like a real woman. The same applies to Alice, who is told by her father that she is built like a woman and passing (oral) exams should not be too difficult. Her assets should be useful for integration with dominant society. Anaïs’ corpulent body, by contrast, does not lend itself to the normalised or ‘specular’ culture. She does not embody its norm. Anaïs does not, in other words, fit into the reflective other for men: ‘the “fat body” is the taboo, the verboten site’ (LeBesco and Braziel 2001, p. 6). Anaïs’ soft, loose and excessive physique does not abide to social regulations of the female body and is, therefore, resistant to the formation of the social body. If Elena’s thin body represents an embodiment of restrictive dominant social values, Anaïs’ corpulent body seems to escape the normalizing stare/gaze that fixes the feminine body. Her/ The ‘fat body’, according to Angela Stukator (2001, p. 199), ‘functions as a metaphor for uncontrolled hunger, unbridled impulses, and uninhibited desire’. In other words, the ‘fat body’ is made to bear, borrowing Joyce Huff’s (2001, p. 52) expression, ‘the uncertainties, flux […] of human existence’. In these instances, Breillat’s young girls’ abundant bodies do not signify passivity, or the classic passive sexual object of the male gaze, but resistance. The displacement of the male gaze to ‘allow desire to be represented differently’ (Hayward 1993, p. 258) underpins Breillat’s films, but most importantly it is through Anaïs that such distance and displacement is possible. In an article for Sight and Sound, Vincendeau (2001, online) corroborates Anaïs’ approval of Betti’s claim that Bardot is ‘a sexual issue’ and has nothing to do with sex; as described, this is how Breillat draws attention to her sex scenes. Her narrative provides clues to her audience so the long key scene in A ma soeur!, also a disturbing one, can be read appropriately. In reference to the film, Vincendeau (2001, online) states that Breillat’s filmmaking distances itself from the notion of sex. In conventional cinema, the male gaze is assured by the position of the man who is in control of the narrative and of the woman whose sexuality/femininity is on display for him – as described in an earlier scene with regards to Bardot/Lolita naked under the sheet when she is introduced

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to the audience via Carradine’s gaze. Whenever female sexuality is addressed, Vincendeau highlights that Breillat’s position departs from such classical conventions. Among her three ‘coming-of-age films’, A ma soeur! is the only one which depicts sex scenes. Looking closely at the camera movement and the mise-en-scène of these two prominent scenes, it is possible to argue, like Vincendeau (2001, online), that Breillat’s films forestall the male gaze. The film relates the love and hate story of two sisters on holiday with their parents. Because she is older, Elena has to drag her younger sister along all the time. Anaïs is, hence, forced to witness her sister’s flirtatious behaviour with her Italian lover, Fernando, whom she meets in a café. The film contains two main scenes, which involve sexual intercourse between Elena and Fernando. They both take place in the bedroom she shares with her younger sister at her parents’ holiday home. After their first encounter, Fernando comes to visit Elena at night in this shared bedroom and tries to persuade her to lose her virginity with him. When at first she refused to yield, he manages to convince her to have sex from behind. After this unsuccessful attempt for him, Fernando gives her an engagement ring – which he stole from his mother – as a condition of his love. Having won Elena’s ‘mind’ with his ring, during their second encounter, once again in Elena and Anaïs’ bedroom, she accepts to have ‘normal’ vaginal penetration. For these two sex scenes in A ma soeur!, Vincendeau (2001, online) draws attention to signs which are meant to refute eroticism – to paraphrase Vincendeau. She notices their unusual length, 25 minutes for the first one and 5 minutes for the second scene, together with their ‘dispassionate style and brutal precision’. There is, moreover, the avoidance of the fragmentation of Elena’s bodies to isolate parts, which are conventionally associated with woman and signify sexual difference and pleasure for the male gaze. In this instance, Elena’s body rather signifies refusal to surrender to ‘shame’, as she confides. These scenes create a sense of uneasiness and refute the spectator’s scopophilic position or pleasurable looking. Furthermore, the camera moves away from the intimate moments of penetration, and, instead, focuses on Anaïs. This is undoubtedly a way to remind the audience of her presence and, hence, accentuates its uneasiness as witness. This moment is, for Vincendeau, the most significant aspect and she sees two main reasons for that. Firstly, she mentions the fact that the audience is ‘intruding on an intimate scene’ (Vincendeau, 2001). Secondly, she refers to Anaïs’ age and the fact that she is too young to be experiencing such sexual acts. She is not only too young but she also cries and half hides her eyes with her hands. Sharing this point of view of a young girl is disturbing for the audience because it works to subvert the conventional masculine subject position. Breillat emphasises Anaïs’ position, which invalidates the idea of privacy essential for the conventional masculine position. This is

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not a private activity to solicit the male gaze but is, on the contrary, mediated through the position of a young girl. The audience’s subversion is also accentuated by Anaïs’ act of hiding her eyes to obscure the vision, which reinforces the sense of intrusion upon what is happening and forces the audience to be aware of the act. It can thus be argued that Breillat provides her young female protagonists with a subjective point of view and privileges a young female subject position. Furthermore, the young girls’ direct look at the camera is a recurrent means of affirming their resistance to male dominance by disrupting the subject/object dichotomy of the gaze, which positions woman as object and man as subject of the gaze. Anaïs’ individuation is confirmed in a key scene in A ma soeur! where differences with her sister are asserted. Several scenes end or begin with a freeze frame of Anaïs facing the camera; a move, which Vincendeau (2001, online) calls, ‘Anaïs’ accusing stare at the camera’. This is a shot reminiscent of Truffaut’s film, Les 400 Coups (1959), which ended on a freeze frame of JeanPierre Léaud facing the camera. It places Breillat among the ‘militantly individualistic auteurs in the face of mainstream cinema’ (Vincendeau, 2001) – as pointed out in the previous chapter. It also points towards Anaïs’ defiant position: young female subjectivity and position is asserted. The same comment applies to 36 fillette because it also ends on a freeze frame of the young female protagonist (see fig.3).

Figure 3

Lili’s defiant smile facing the camera in 36 fillette. © catherine breillat

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Lili is a 14-year old girl who is camping with her family in Biarritz. Lili is bored sitting in the caravan and manages to convince her older brother, JeanPierre – or JP – to take her out with him. Lili’s only aim is to lose her virginity. She sees in her first meeting with Maurice, a middle-aged man, a way to achieve this objective. Maurice first resists but then shows signs of attraction to her, despite her age. Their ambiguous relationship is never consummated; however, Lili looses her virginity with a ‘hideous’ – as she describes him – young man of her own age for whom she does not have any feelings (reminiscent of Anaïs’ position). The whole film works to ‘de-eroticise desire […] keeping men out as beholder of the gaze’ (Hayward, 1993, p. 258). While the film does not privilege a particular point of view or subjective position, the ending highlights Lili’s subjectivity. This is enhanced by a single shot of Lili: she is seen getting out of the young man’s tent and faces the camera with a grin of defiance. The big smile on her face, after accomplishing her act, reveals that she has successfully fulfilled her desire. She smiles at the fact that she has lost her virginity but not her sanity. This smile directed at the camera is self-conscious and aims to eradicate the notion of distance that defines the gaze. Although A ma soeur! ends in a shocking and disturbing way, it suggests that Anaïs, like Lili, gets what she wanted. After killing her mother and sister, the lorry driver takes Anaïs to the woods, where she is found by police the following day. She claims that she has not been raped and adds defiantly: ‘Don’t believe me if you don’t want to’. She turns her back on the police and faces the camera. Both Anaïs and Lili loose their virginity with somebody they do not love and, as a result, counteract hegemonic discourse on the significance of a girl loosing her virginity. They manage to realise their desire and to show that the first time does not count for them. In this way, they challenge expected male behaviour, which consists of, as Anaïs says ‘boasting that he had her first’. Modes of perception are a significant component in the construction of point of view. Language is one of the main systems that forges and sustains the creation of the universal dominant position but like the structure of perception, it has also become a domain of preoccupation and resistance for women as shown by French feminists – ‘écriture féminine’ – erupting in the 1970s. Modes of expression also play a key part in Breillat’s films: they take the forms of lyrical and personal or autobiographical work. These become outlet for self-expression as emphasised in the scenes with Jean-Pierre Léaud in 36 fillette. Léaud plays the role of a famous pianist who identifies with the world of creativity and women – as illustrated by his mainly female admirers. He is an emblematic figure in French cinema because he is associated with the creative period of Nouvelle Vague directors, mainly with Truffaut. In Les 400 Coups, Léaud is a young boy who was devoted a cinematographic space. In 36 filette

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he is introduced giving autographs to his adulated audience. This act of signing one’s name evokes the recognition of a person’s identity; an identity that Lili as a young girl is denied by patriarchal institutions. When she confesses to him, her parents and her teachers do not believe in her, this scene seems to suspend the normal flow of narrative progression. However it plays a crucial role in showing Lili in another light – similar to the young Léaud. Lili comes to talk to him and – like the young Léaud – confesses her frustration and desire. One of her desires is to be a famous writer. She reveals that her close entourage disapproves of her and thinks ‘she is hopeless’ – similar to young Léaud’s fate again. Yet, she resists these obstacles and has already started writing a novel. In one scene, she gives Léaud one of her poems to read. Personal creativity through the act of writing is also the focus in Une vraie jeune fille but of a different sort. Here, Alice writes her diary, a much more personal and common form of expression for an adolescent girl. The diary has been remarked upon for its ‘open-ended structure’ (Schiminovich, 1991, p. 107). It provides a sense of process due to the recording of daily events. Instead of sleeping at night, Alice resorts to writing in her diary. Refusing the passivity imposed on young girls, Alice asserts her independence in the act of reflecting or writing her diary. In Ce sexe qui n’en est pas un (1977), Irigaray argues that writing their own stories is a way for women to liberate themselves. Moreover, the personal in writing is accentuated by the colour of the ink Alice chooses for writing in her own diary. It is significant because her choice of colour symbolises the repressed female body, that is, the colour red is reference to menstruation and associated taboos. Taboos associated with menstruation denies women’s sexual identity and bodily experience: ‘The horror of menstrual blood, the living matter which helps to produce and sustain life, is a refusal of the expelled link between the mother and the foetus, a border, as it were, between one existence and another that is not the same as nor yet separate from it’ (Grosz, 1989, p. 76). She uses the same red for colouring her body while standing in front of her mirror. In her own words she wants to see how it would be like to be a whore; a scene shown in A ma soeur! where Anaïs lifts up her nightgown in front of the mirror and murmurs ‘putain’ – ‘bitch’. The relationship between the body and writing is, therefore, emphasised as a way of self-expression. Alice exposes oppressive practices and presents alternatives in her act of writing. The act of writing symbolises her refusal to accept the suffocating ‘love’ of her mother and, hence, compliance with the feminine values of the dominant society – perpetrated by her mother – has inflicted on her. Alice challenges the passive nurturing role of her mother and, more specifically, her mother’s preoccupation with food and feeding her family. Her rejection of the maternal is reinforced in the scene when Alice purges

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the food her mother fed her earlier on. This also marks the moment when she decides to write her diary. Writing a diary, like writing an autobiography, is in Ginnthórum Gudmundsdóttir’s (2003, p. 122) words: ‘to give birth to yourself, your story. It renders the mother’s role obsolete and therefore symbolically kills her off’. In Une vraie jeune fille vomiting and writing express Alice’s refusal of the way society constructs the world for ‘real’ young girls – hence, the irony in the film’s title. The act of purging also occurs in A ma soeur! when Anaïs feels sick in the car, which is bringing them back to their home town and, most importantly, their father’s control. Vomiting expresses the female protagonists revulsion of the patriarchal society, which restricts young girls to be a reflection of the patriarchal gaze and discourse. The emphasis on writing as a mode of revealing what would otherwise remain secret is for Breillat’s young female protagonists a way to cut themselves off from the symbolic order and to challenge male discourse and domination. Writing in these films is related to resistance and to female adolescents’ intimate or emotional experiences. It is this intimate self, their individuality or the autonomy of young girls they attempt to foreground through writing and, one could add, silence. It could seem surprising to talk of silence as a way for women to express themselves, since women ‘have been silenced by a masculine economy of subjectivity’ (Lorraine, 1999, 21). Oscillating between intimate revelation and muteness, silence is also opposed to the masculine association with openly expressed concepts and reason. Breillat’s young girls assert their position by refusing to adopt man-made language and its mode of expression. They refuse to communicate with people as shown, for example, by Alice on the train and in scenes with the young girls’ parents. In the lengthy scene of the ‘goûter’/breakfast, Alice has just come back home after months of absence but has nothing to tell her parents. When her parents’ employee comes to collect Alice at the station, he asks her in the car if she is glad to be back. Instead of answering him, Alice prefers to turn on the radio and tells him to listen to the song being played. Indeed, mimicking the mother’s silence, the young girl is able to create her own imaginary space – as further evidenced by the diary. Lili in 36 fillette does not communicate with her parents either and resorts to her own use of speech, which is coarse and direct ‘to shock’ as she says. To be able to express themselves, young girls need to distance themselves from patriarchal norms and those who perpetuate them like the traditional mother. In other words, the feeling of hatred towards the mother can be attributed to the young girl’s aversion to dominant society, which represses or oppresses them. This is exactly what Alice declares on the train back home, reflected in Luisa Muraro’s (1994, p. 330) argument: ‘negative feelings originally directed against the mother

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are turned towards patriarchy and against man’. When the mother prepares ‘goûter’/breakfast silence predominates between Alice and her parents despite her mother’s request to talk to each other. While an oppressive silence descends on the whole kitchen, Alice plays with a teaspoon under the table. Silence enables her to find a place – under the table – which is not marked by phallocentric thinking. The treatment of silence in Une vraie jeune fille is further emphasized by the use of voice-over associated with singing, another way for Alice to express herself throughout the film. Popular music predominates and underscores every scene with Alice. Breillat creates a strong association between her young girls and singing. One particular song marks the arrival of Alice as well as her revelation. As she listens to the song being played on the car radio, a ray of sunlight illuminates Alice’s face. The up-ward pan of the camera transports Alice into a transcendental space. The same song is played again in the house as well as outside when Alice is in the garden sunbathing. Thus, this same song coming from the blue portable radio accompanies or acts as a catalyst for Alice’s imaginary world. She dreams of being on the beach with her friend and her conventionally handsome and athletic boyfriend – as advertised in popular magazines – ­embraces her rolling around in the sand. Popular music is associated here with the imagination of the young Alice and is linked to her personal feelings and desires. ­Jordan (2004, p. 116) claims that: ‘music anaesthetises, confirms personal feelings or magnifies and authenticates experiences by providing them with a sound track’. In A ma soeur! music is also connected to the young girl’s inventiveness, but here it is a different type of music because it emanates from her own imagination. Anaïs sings nursery rhymes during the opening credits of the film. The nursery rhymes highlight her young age as well as her vivid and mature imagination and her own creativity and personal space. Nursery rhymes are strongly associated with fluid environments such as a swimming pool and the sea. The fluidity of this type of language is, for Irigaray (1977), closely associated with women/girls. Lyrical writing does not emphasise sameness but is the expression of another view, that of the repressed, censured or suppressed young girl/woman. Unlike the objectivity of common writing, this type of writing is personal and subjective. The fluidity of language is opposed to the rigid logic and coherence of the dominant discourse, as shown in A ma soeur!. However, in contrast to the lack of communicative and emotional closeness with their parents, Elena and Anaïs have moments when they talk and confess to each other, such as the long scene in their bedroom when Elena shows her sister the engagement ring Fernando has offered her as a ‘pact’ of love – and as a way to persuade her ‘to give herself to him’. The most poignant moment of her confession is related to the

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The mirror scene in A ma soeur! © flach film

preceding mirror scene in the bathroom (see fig.4). This scene, which has also been used to publicise the film, is set in the bathroom where the young girls look at each other in the mirror. The mirror, as highlighted by feminist scholars, underpins dominant society and evokes the specular relation between the self and the reflected other of man, woman. The mirror phase represents the moment when the subject takes up a place in the symbolic order, which is dominated by men. According to Dani Cavallero (2003, p. 29): ‘the subject c­ onstructs an image of itself that is based in alienation, on the subject’s identification with something other than itself: that is to say, with its reflection in a mirror’. A difference or separation is imposed on men and women and between women/ young girls. The film emphasises the sisters’ rivalry and Anaïs’ jealousy of her older sister. Elena says competition between the sisters is ingrained in the way their parents have brought them up because they think it is good for the two girls, it stimulates them. Margaret Whitford (1991, 181–182) confirmed this position when she stresses that: ‘women are forced by the patriarchal contract into becoming rivals’. Through the act of looking at each other in the mirror the two sisters challenge the distance their upbringing has inflicted upon them. The scene is enlightening because it exposes the ambiguous rather than the antagonistic relationship between two sisters. Moments of rivalry are interspaced with numerous moments of confession and intimacy. Following the mirror scene the girls are shown in the bedroom lying on the same bed; here, they giggle, exchange childhood memories and Elena shows Fernando’s engagement ring.

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Other scenes reinforce this type of exchange or intimacy, including the concluding shots in the car. However, they don’t convey the same strength as when the two girls look at each other in the mirror, cheek against cheek. The camera first shows their reflection in the mirror, then pans sideways to concentrate on the looking glass; the frame of the looking glass converges with that of the camera. As the two girls look straight into the mirror, the audience is able to confirm Elena’s assertion of their difference – expressed through their obvious physical non-resemblance – as stressed earlier. Elena says: ‘we really have nothing in common’. However, in spite of their differences they share a mutual feeling of belonging to each other. Elena tells her sister: ‘But when I look deep into your eyes … it makes me feel like I belong … as if they were my eyes’. This ambiguous feeling can be found in the expression of ‘different difference’, which is, according to Rosi Braidotti (1994, p. 112) in her study on Irigaray, ‘a pure difference, released from the hegemonic framework of oppositional, binary thinking within which Western philosophy had confined it’. Both sisters are separate, autonomous beings who cannot be substituted for one another. For instance, they express their frustration when people cannot keep them apart and get their names mixed up: ‘Besides many people don’t bother to remember which one’s which since we have the same surname. I mean, we’re not alike’. These intimate scenes suggest positions of interchangeability, and recognition or acknowledgement of differences. Sisterhood is here characterised by its interchangeability and as such challenges the dichotomy and opposition between the self and the other. According to Elena and Anaïs, the ‘you’ is part of myself and vice versa. The relationship between them can be described as being based on reciprocity rather than the appropriation of the other – reduced to an object – by either One. They affirm their interchangeability based on the recognition and affirmation of their difference. In other words, as stipulated by Lorraine Tamsin (1999, p.88), it could be said that: ‘the two shape each other without clear distinction between the two, and yet without losing the trace of their difference’. Anaïs and Elena assert their individual differences not as a hierarchical opposition of self against the other, but rather as equals underpinned by reciprocity of self and other: ‘When I hate you, I look at you and then I can’t. It’s like hating part of myself’. They are together yet separate. The significance of the concept of sisterhood is reflected in the French title of the film, which evokes a dedication to one sister, A ma Soeur!. The film emphasises the valorisation of sisterhood as an expression of another order standing against patriarchal division and oppression. Carrie Tarr mentions (1999, p. 127), in her work on the French filmmaker Diane Kurys, that: ‘representations of sisters have often been used to project patriarchal fantasies of “good” and “bad” femininity. Such representations normally

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work to condemn and punish “the mad woman in the attic”, and encourage the spectator to endorse a patriarchal definition of the good, submissive, feminine woman’. However, Breillat follows the tradition of other women directors who have overturned such polarity. Thus, the mirror scene in A ma soeur! contrasts with the previous male dominated mirror scenes and offers an alternative to the male-defined images of young girls. As shown, the two girls proclaim their ‘different differences’ and their close bond founded on reciprocity. The movement of the camera, from looking in to through the mirror, confirms a rejection of the girls’ passive reflexivity. Drawing on Irigaray’s ideas from the introductory section of Ce sexe qui n’en est pas un, it can be said that Breillat’s young girls speak from an imagined other side of the looking glass. Irigaray turns to Lewis Carroll’s character, Alice in Through the Looking Glass, interpreted by Grosz (1989, pp. 130–131) as a metaphor for the woman/girl who ‘steps beyond her role as the reflective other for man’. Drawing on Grosz’s ideas (1989, pp. 130–131), it can be said that this is their way of traversing or going ‘through the looking glass, through, that is, the dichotomous structures of knowledge, the binary polarisations in which only man’s primacy is reflected’. It is, hence, on this other side that Anaïs and Elena challenge their rivalry and can talk of difference in terms of reciprocity. Opposition to a patriarchal logic is reinforced by an I-other reciprocity underscored by their mutual feeling: ‘I feel the same thing. That’s why we’re sisters’. In front of the mirror Elena says to her sister: ‘It’s true, we don’t take after anyone. It’s like we’re born of ourselves’. Through their conflicting feelings of mutual – physical – differences and similarities, they contest patriarchal society and its hold on property and assert their individuality and selfhood. Alice in Une vraie jeune fille expresses the same feeling: when she helps her mother to feed the chickens, she takes an egg from the nest and squashes it between her fingers. Her act can be interpreted as a revolt against her position in a patrilineal system, which forces her to bear her father’s name and, hence, become a property, as stated in the introductory scene of the film. In this new, imagined system, however, Alice and Anaïs distance themselves from the notion of property, and can delight in their individuality. For Breillat, the other side is a space, which reveals and challenges the boundaries that dominant society erects for young girls, that is to say spatial, but most importantly psychological and physical boundaries. Breillat’s young protagonists express their desire to go to the other side of the mirror, echoing Hirsh’s (1989, p. 137) comments that the young girl ‘pleads for liberation from the icy mirror of similarity’ with her mother. Like Alice, they want to explore hidden depths below the surface as when Alice plays with her teaspoon under the table. Breillat’s films represent a psychic journey through the looking

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glass to ‘the other side’, that is to say a realm beyond patriarchal law. ‘On the other side is a land of wonder, a land that can be mapped, not by the mirror, but by the curved speculum’ (Grosz, 1989, p 131) – as exemplified by the spoon. The ‘curved speculum’ is a metaphor for female desire. On the other side, the girls are not ‘a mirror of masculine resemblance’, to borrow an expression from Philippa Berry (1994), but are rather real young girls. All the young girls in Breillat’s films break the boundaries of domesticity inflicted upon them by the patriarchal family and break free. Alice explores the deserted beaches where animal corpses are scattered amidst the dunes. It is not ‘the mysterious uncharted area of female sexuality’ (Austin, 2003, p. 13). The wild nature of the outdoors is a metaphor for Alice’s unexplored (sexual) territory. The dominant image of ‘dead space’ detaches her from an oppressive surrounding or social environment. Also detached from a social context is Anaïs, who is often seen on her own in the swimming pool or in the sea. The sea is a very evocative image in these films – and in all Breillat’s films. Even though it is not as extensively dealt with in 36 fillette, it is still present in the background; it is where the family camps and where the father books a holiday for his family to get away from the routine of ‘the big Paris’ – as Lili states when she talks about where she lives. The image of the sea associated with young people is a common trope and without any doubt it brings to mind once again Truffaut’s film, Les 400 Coups. The film finishes on a freeze frame of the face of Jean-Pierre Léaud, after his escape from the centre for delinquents brings him to the limits of – or the liminal border of – the sea. The sea often metaphorically presents freedom for young people and/or a place for flirting as in the popular film, L’Hôtel de la Plage (1978) by Michel Lang. Furthermore Bardot’s free sexual behaviour and playfulness in the sea portrayed in her films and in private photos of her life also comes to mind. In Breillat’s films the sea is also a place of freedom; the freedom of the holidays at the sea where young people feel slightly less restricted. Lili can go out with her brother in the evening. Alice in Une vraie jeune fille imagines meeting her boyfriend while sunbathing on the beach with her friend. The sea is linked to the young girl’s imagination. In Et Dieu … créa la femme, there is a reference to a similar space where Bardot and her lover spend time together. Hence, the sea is a place where fantasy and reality blur. Vasse (2004, p. 162) notes the importance of the sea as a space where young people loose their sense of reality and create their own space. Vasse (2004, p. 162) states: ‘Deux films au moins imposent à l’identique ce type de plan; Une vraie jeune fille et A ma soeur!, en montrant chacun combien le contact vivifiant de l’eau peut entraîner la jeune fille très loin dans son imaginaire et la retrancher provisoirement du monde ordinaire’.

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The sea becomes a place for Breillat’s young girls where they can create an imaginary space for themselves. Sitting down or lying down on the sand and enjoying the motion of the waves, Alice and Anaïs can daydream and escape reality. Here, Alice makes up stories and declares that she likes herself the way she is. Other stories involve sadomasochist scenarios as prefigured in the first of such sequences, which could be inspired from the Marquis de Sade. Indeed, following this sequence, Alice imagines that Jim ties her down and tries to insert an earthworm into her vagina. These imagined sadomasochistic scenarios present Alice in a position of sexual submission and degradation. In the dunes, she reproduces male sexual fantasies of women’s subordination, but the audience knows that it is just a game for her. She had previously revealed that her hate for Jim meant that she ‘could stay to the end’. Anaïs is also often involved in her own imaginative games, which are depicted while she is in the water like the swimming pool or the sea. These are places where she imagines stories that involve her lover: she reveals to him that women need other sexual experiences. She reiterates her attraction for someone who disgusts her; the film’s beginning also announcing the end, Anaïs declares that her first time should be with nobody. It can thus be said that the sea is related to their boundless inventiveness and originality. While walking on the beach, Lili brings Maurice to a cave called ‘the Boudoir’. The sea is, here, associated with danger. Lili explains that this cave is where a long time ago two lovers made such wild love that they didn’t notice the tide coming in and were consequently drowned. The cave scene is very significant in the film because it represents a turning point: Maurice reveals that he lets himself be swept away by her. This is the first time that Maurice’s vulnerability is shown. At the beginning of the film, Maurice shows his misogynist attitude by claiming that: ‘you soon get tired of it [her], you want to get rid of it [her] at any price. You discover the flaws too late’. Later he states that if you ‘dip your dick three times in the same chick, forget it! It’s better to screw a goat’. Yet, he feels vulnerable in front of Lili. In the cave, he reveals his vulnerable side with statements that he now feels ‘broken’ and ‘lousy’. The idea of openness or something linked to the sea is also intensified in its close association with the notion of abjection. Grosz (1989, p. 70) defines the concept of abjection as ‘the subject’s reaction to the failure of the subject/ object opposition’. In the cave, the boundaries that Maurice erects between himself as subject and women as objects, collapse. As a result, he feels exposed when he reveals his attraction for Lili. His act challenges any definition of what is supposed to be a ‘clean and proper’ behaviour. The association between the sea and the notion of abjection is made more explicit in Une vraie jeune fille and A ma soeur!. In Une vraie jeune fille, the beach where Alice likes to go is filled with litter and corpses of dogs. She lays her underwear on the corpse

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where flies gather and throws her socks amongst the litter, her clothes now part of scenery. The notion of abjection in relation to corpses is also apparent in A ma soeur!. When Anaïs lies on the sea, she sings gruesome nursery rhymes about crows coming to peck away at her heart, comparing it to a piece of raw meat which has been thrown out to rot away.5 Elena and Fernando find her sitting naked, shivering and soaked through near a rock enacting the lines of the nursery rhyme. Breillat refers to the Kristevan notion of abjection to disclose the intolerance of the unified and fixed individual that society defines. Coming out of the sea, Anaïs’ state defies conventional categories of perception and conception, as exemplified by Elena’s and Fernando’s unsympathetic looks at her. Clear borders between subject and object, proper and improper or between adolescence and adulthood are impossible as Breillat’s young girls excessive, boundless bodies come to testify. The body is in excess of the dominant society’s opposition to the ‘clean and proper’. Similar to Irigaray’s Alice who reaches the other side and challenges sexual pleasure evoked by the law of the phallus, Breillat’s young girls also manage to reach the other side of the mirror as a reflection of the same and experience their sexual desire beyond the patriarchal expectations. This is a – ­physical and mental – space where boundaries are challenged and where young girls can reclaim their own sexual identity that dominant culture attempts to eradicate and repress. The three films show the young girls taking up a space, which enables them to map their own discourses and desires. In this light the scene in 36 fillette with Léaud is very evocative because he does advise Lili ‘to land in a different place’. He tells her: ‘You should always tell yourself there’s always someplace where you can go. The world is a huge place. It’s a giant box spring mattress. Bounce on it and you land somewhere else’. This is a space that allows ‘for the creation of subjectivity (or for subjectivities) capable of expressing a sexuality or sexualities on its/their own terms’ (Schwab, 1994, pp. 359–360), that is to say without having ‘to give themselves to a man’. In this space the dominant and normative discourse about young girls’ virginity is questioned. The films evoke the young girls’ affirmation of their own sexual .

5 The song goes as follows: I’ve set my heart to rot away, On the window sill. I trust in a future day, The crows may come I hope they will. With their beaks so fleet, They will peck away, At this lump of raw meat, O’ver which you thought you held sway. I’ve set my heart to rot away, On the window sill. For, the joyless joy of the day, My worries fall still. If you see the flock, Of crows fighting o’ver it, Throw them not a rock, For I am worth not a bit. I’ve set my heart to rot away, On the window sill. I trust in a future day, When the crows come, if they will. With their beaks so fleet, They will peck away, At this lump of raw meat, O’ver which you thought you held sway.

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identity and pleasure, which is de-romanticised and without distinct boundaries. It is through this process that they can become real young girls; they can experience their adolescence in its ‘authentic reality’ (Lorraine, 1999, p. 70). The emphasis is put on the notion of becoming, as introduced by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari (1980) in A Thousand Plateaux. They give importance to the process of becoming, invoking the idea that woman’s assertion of her position as subject must not be grasped in relation to man but, ‘must affirm itself as an event in the process of becoming’ (Buchan and Colebrook, 2000, pp. 1–2). If the maturing woman invokes a process, and is no longer defined in relation to man, the young girl becoming a woman accentuates the instability of identity. This instability is echoed in the idea that the young girl is linked to the Deleuzean notion of becoming a woman. Because of their bodies Breillat’s young girls differ from the recognisable normative model for young girls. This is highlighted in de Beauvoir’s study of Bardot. As a feminist, de Beauvoir defines Bardot as a sexual being and issue by focusing on her ambiguity and girl/woman like postures and gestures. The young girl and the woman are both affirmed at once in Bardot; her body signifies feminine abundance that challenges any notion of passivity. Following in Bardot’s footsteps, Breillat’s young girls are also characterised by ambiguity; their excessively feminine body is at once contrasted and playfully reflected in their young age. Their instability of identity, as well as the notions of excess and ‘differentiation’ underscores their process of becoming women; they incessantly move from one state to the other but without being defined by any of them. In this context of becoming, the two terms that describe the ­Lolita figure – ‘child-woman’ – do not correspond to an assimilation but to an ­encounter – as exemplified in the scene with the mirror in A ma soeur!. The two terms are not reduced to define an identity, but point towards transgression, ‘as a line of flight, moving towards excess, other, exteriority’ (Flieger, 2000, p. 47). Boundaries between individuals, girls and women are, thus, more fluid. This idea is reinforced in the spatial environments the young girls inhabit in the films: deserted spaces, the countryside and the sea and its liminal borders. The young girl moves from the parental environment to the outside, natural world – detached from social conventions. Spatial and bodily movements as well as camera angles highlight the process of becoming in opposition to that of – ­parental or social – fixity. The three films on female adolescence introduce a new conception of real young girls’ sexual identity conceived in terms of movements, multiplicity and fluidity. As real young girls they displace dominant identities of young girls as women and free themselves from social constraints and norms. Their real identity is not one based on binary opposition but on personal experience of

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one’s body underpinning the notion of becoming. Real young girls’ bodies are defined by excess, and, thus, transgress the codes that constitute the subject based on the idea of sameness. This transgression is characterised by notions of ‘naturalness’ or authenticity as reflected in different critics’ comments and their use of terms such as ‘frank’, ‘lucid’ and ‘honest’ to describe Breillat’s depictions of adolescent female sexuality. These are not essentialist terms, which tie the girl’s body to her natural destiny or the myth of woman, but rather focus on the performance, the cultural aspect or the becoming of the girl’s self – a real young girl who is detached from representations of young girls. Breillat’s depiction of a transition from the one to the other is also confirmed in her focus on the adolescent boy. Notions of environment and material bodily behaviours with regards to the young boy are being discussed in the following chapter since following A ma soeur! Breillat turned to the male adolescent in Brève Traversée.

chapter 4

A Male Adolescent Sexual Journey

‘The Male Crisis’? in Brève traversée

Breillat’s predilection of exploring adolescent sexual behaviour is further ­developed in Brève Traversée, which centres on a young boy. To film a boy’s first sexual experience, Breillat turns to the relationship between a French adolescent male and an English woman in her thirties. She reverses the roles; in contrast to her three female adolescent films, the teenager is male and the object of his sexual desire is an adult woman. This role reversal brings to attention further critical social issues. On the one hand, it is not a totally new terrain for Breillat, and it is not a new domain in French cinema either; but on the other hand, her perspective is atypical. In Parfait Amour! (1996), Breillat touches upon the same topic: a young man having a relationship with a mature or ‘ripe’ woman as its main male protagonist, Christophe, describes her. Even if Christophe shares with the adolescent boy, Thomas, some of his physical and behavioural attributes (an adolescent physique and coke as their favourite drink) the age difference between the woman and the young man does not raise the same controversial ethical issues as in Brève Traversée. Indeed, relationships involving an adult and an adolescent are taboo and condemned both socially and legally. This stigmatisation and condemnation by society is hinted at in Varda’s film Kung Fu Master (1987), which deals with a middle-aged divorcee played by the English-born singer and then, companion of Serge Gainsbourg,1 Jane Birkin, and an adolescent boy (played by Varda’s son). The film focuses on the woman’s attraction to and her relationship with one of her daughter’s friends, a 14-year old boy. Varda looks at their idyllic relationship to contrast it with various realistic and social aspects. When the boy’s parents and school principal learn of the affair, the woman is kept apart from him and also from her children. Hence, while in Varda’s film the woman, Mary-Jane, is ostracised by society for having a sexual relationship with her young daughter’s friend, Breillat’s Brève Traversée (2001) avoids such a social environment and discourse. Breillat’s film 1 Serge Gainsbourg is not totally unknown to Breillat’s films since he created the music for her film, Tapage nocturne (1979). He is famous for his treatment of taboo subjects exemplified by the controversial song Lemon Incest (1984) sung with his young daughter, Charlotte ­Gainsbourg. Playing on words, the song evokes love between father and daughter.

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is detached from a social background, which is confirmed by the narrative’s development on a ferry crossing from Le Havre to Portsmouth, where a young French boy, Thomas, has his first sexual experience with a married English woman, Alice. In contrast to the three films discussed in the previous chapter, this film deals with the loss of virginity of a teenage boy. Breillat’s previous films looked at the cultural notion of loss attached to the personal issue of a girl’s virginity. Following A ma soeur!, the film also takes into account conventional discourses, but this time, surrounding a boy’s first sexual experience. According to prevailing discourses, a boy’s first time is regarded as a much simpler affair; it is less complex. The young boy is assumed to abide to values and attitudes that drive him to prove his social belonging to the male group. The young boy of Brève Traversée confirms his position to this group when the next ­morning, waking up in Alice’s bedroom, he defiantly tells her that he is a man too. Such behaviour is explained by Stephen Whitehead’s (2002, p. 166) statement that it ‘arises […] from a desire not to be excluded from male groups; not to be cast out and declared “not a male/man, like us” (Seidler, 1997)’. This masculine bravado reinforced by his social environment and, more specifically, as Thomas says, his ‘mates’ or ‘the male groups’, is put forward as a performance, following Judith Butler’s (1990) suggestion, as cited in Robert Shail (2004, p. 66), that ‘all gender definitions are culturally conditioned contructs’. The social discourses that define masculine and feminine ways of being are politically invested and privilege the former over the latter, but are restrictive for both. For both genders are expected to follow a certain way of being. This is what Breillat emphasises in the film’s ambiguous position reflected in its connection to social discourses on gender construction as well as its distance from a clear social environment. Released immediately after A ma soeur!, Brève Traversée (2001) shares with its predecessor(s) its interest in and treatment of adolescent sexuality. In contrast to A ma soeur!, however, it did not receive the same media attention in spite of its potential importance on current debates about the construction of masculinity. The film’s tension or ambiguous position expressed by its attachment to, as well as its detachment or distantiation from, social effects is reflected in Claire Clouzot’s (2004) attempt to contextualise the film by linking its subject matter to debates that affected the French society in the late twentieth century and the early twenty-first century. Issues regarding the feminization of professional names, the ‘parité’ in politics and the case of PaCS2 were part of the French political agenda then. Clouzot (2004) explains that to make a screen 2 The PaCS (le Pacte Civil de Solidarity, formerly known as le Contrat d’Union Social – cus – or le Contrat d’Union Civil – cuc).

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interpretation of these debates, the French-German tv channel, Arte, commissioned five men and five women film directors3 for the movie collection ‘Masculin, féminin’, which concentrated on the feminine and masculine characters. She further highlights (2004, p. 108) that the title ‘Masculin, féminin’ does not only reflect political and social preoccupations, but is a deliberate cultural reference to Godard’s film Masculin Féminin (1966). Godard’s film looked at gender relations in a changing French society and is, according to Keith Reader (2006), a landmark production. Keith Reader (2006, p. 165) advocates that ‘any serious overview of the treatment of gender relations in contemporary French culture has to take some account of Jean-Luc Godard’. It is interesting to note that as an influential cultural landmark, Godard’s impact amplifies and negotiates in his auteurist position the tension of attachment to and detachment from the social environment that marks Breillat’s film. Offering a personal and innovative exploration of a young man’s literal and shifting identity marks Breillat adherence to an auteurist tradition. Although Breillat’s film is driven by social and cultural debates, the film does not take a political position, but a personal one, and, thus, lies somewhere in-between. Breillat’s choice for the central male protagonist reflects ‘a change’ that was not totally insensitive to the fundamental and heated debates in the French society. The first repercussion was deemed to affect masculinity as reflected in Benoîte Groult’s (2003) title: ‘The Feminization of Professional Names. An Outrage against Masculinity’. It was a period when studies focused on the representation of men in films, as it ‘has assumed increasing importance since the 1990s’ (Powrie, Babington and Davies, 2004, p. 1). These studies often ‘exemplify a shift of scholarly interest’ (Powrie, Babington and Daviesm, 2004, p. 5) by exploring the ‘dispossessed’, ‘damaged’ male. In 1997, Powrie reflected on this trend in 1980s French cinema in a volume entitled French Cinema in the 1980s. Nostalgia and the Crisis of Masculinity. Since then additional critical analyses with similar titles have been published, pointing towards an intensifying crisis.4 These concur that the male is in crisis because ‘the screen male would appear even more fragile, more “damaged”, more ruined than a decade ago’ (Powrie, Babington and Davies, 2004, p. 5). Carr and Rollet (2001, p. 209) have a similar position with regards to Breillat’s films when they claim that: ‘Breillat constructs men as weak, inadequate and vulnerable, whether immature youths or spineless ex-husbands’. Thus, these social and cultural debates about masculinity, coinciding with the film’s release, are considered in the ­following in relation 3 Catherine Breillat, Laurence Ferreira Barbosa, Nadia Farès, Ursula Maier, Virginie Wagon, Bruno Bontzolakis, Mathieu Almaric, Jean-Michel Carré, Nabil Ayouch, and Bernard Stora. 4 See for example, Keith Reader (2006), Anthony Clare (2001) and Phil Powrie (1997).

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to Breillat’s notion of tension or ambiguity, which runs through the film and more particularly, the portrayal of the adolescent male in Brève Traversée. The opening scenes of Brève Traversée emphasize the young boy’s vulnerability and reflect Tarr and Rollet’s view. The film opens with a long shot of the young boy, Thomas (Seignier), running to catch his ferry to England (Portsmouth). Arriving at the passport control, out of breath and agitated, he spends some time looking for his identity card in his bag, all the while scrutinized by the custom guard. He finally produces a torn and expired card, which results in him almost being refused to board the ferry. The masculine controlling space is here undermined. Adding to his anxious behaviour is the fact that the custom guard is a woman. Feeling defenceless, Thomas resorts to mumbling and unconfident remarks in response to her questions. When he finally is on board he spends some time to find free space for his luggage. Later, he cannot benefit from the duty free shop because he is too young to legally buy alcohol. Then Thomas goes to the canteen and helps himself to some food. Once again, he looks lost when he cannot find a free seat until an English woman in her thirties, Alice, invites him to share her table. Differences between Thomas and ­Alice are straight away highlited to reinforce Thomas’ young age. When Thomas passes her a tray, he hands her a children’s tray. While queuing for food, Alice complains about being served fries when she asked for some roast beef on its own. Thomas kindly accepts her fries. His eating habits (fries, crème brûlée) and relationship to food clearly signal his young age. He eats fries and only drinks coke as he later tells Alice when she asks for his advice on French wines. While he is devouring his crème brûlée, Alice stares at him. His concentration on food strongly represents his attachment to his mother – highlited in the previous chapter. This is the first of Breillat’s films where references to the mother are positive. Thomas describes his mother as being nice and ‘cool’ because she permits him to do a lot of things such as smoking. Alice stares at him while he is eating but he does not seem to notice her until later. Even though she provokes him by continuously and intensely staring at him, he does not return her look to acknowledge her, which seems to frustrate her. When he finally looks at her, she responds with provocative statements about inequality in gender relations. It becomes evident that the age difference discloses a gap in experience. When dining together, they first use English to communicate, but Alice suggests reverting to French as her command of the French language is far better than his of English, already highlighted in preceding scenes. His pronunciation is corrected when he tries to borrow ‘a chair’ from a middle-aged English man; the latter tries to have the helpless Thomas join him to share his table – and maybe more. Thus, his lack of command of the language will result in Thomas falling for Alice’s lies.

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Sensing his innocence and inexperience, she uses him to shop for her in the duty free shop. More specifically, she lies to him about her personal situation. Alice introduces herself as a recently seperated woman, which the end of the film contradicts. Both the journey at sea and the film end with Alice meeting her family, which comprises her husband and son. She demonstrates her skill in using subtleties of language to her own ends in opposition to Thomas’ recurrent silences. Her provocation culminates in a scene showing Alice and Thomas in the bar. An unusual event on the ferry is the scene of the ‘boring magic act’ – as described by Thomas. This is definitely a curious sequence in relation to the place of the action of the film, the ferry. However, the objective of this sequence can be read in its authentification of Alice’s perspective on gender relations, which aims to further undermine Thomas’ position. Despite its magical and unreal aspect this performance by a magician is, for Alice, ‘a true parable’. According to Alice, there is ‘nothing truer than parables’. The magic show stands here for the actual condition of women getting ‘mutilated by life’ with regards to love. During the magic show a woman climbs into a box and her body is being seemingly fragmented by the magician’s swords. Alice comments: That’s exactly it, men put you in a box and you just go into it like a goose because you think that there is nothing more beautiful than love. You haven’t satisfied the guy. So to prove you don’t exist and are invasive, he makes you disappear. He sticks swords through your body. It’s a true parable. Nothing is truer than parables. He bows, is applauded, and struts like a peacock. He’s proud as a peacock. They’re definitely stronger than us. He doesn’t care if she’s crammed into a box, almost chocking or if she does all the dirty work. The man is untouched. He’s superb! Women get mutilated by life because they’re more generous than men. The magic show associated with social misogyny is reminiscent of ‘early cinema’s “catalogue of magical misogyny”’ (Adamovicz, 2001, pp. 21–22) such as the dada/surrealist films and Luis Buñuel’s Un Chien Andalou (1929). The memorable and well-acknowledged prologue of this film shows Buñuel as a conjuror performing magical acts on a woman and, hence, ‘objectifying the female protagonist as passive spectacle’ (Adamovicz, 2001, p. 21). The magician controls and transforms reality to myth. This magician’s act is, therefore, a parable for gender roles ascribed by society to women and men, as Alice’s ironic comments on the act confirm. In ‘Bodies Cut and Dissolved: Dada and Surrealist Films’, Elza Adamovicz (2001, p. 24) explores the magic intertext in Buñuel’s film, and declares that: ‘He

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allows unconscious desires to express themselves, disrupting the stable symbolic order in a liberating movement and transgresses the constraints of bourgeois repression’. She relates magic acts enacted on the female body to a carnivalesque space and argues that they convey the pre-conscious rather than the symbolic order. In this way, the perverse transformation of the female body in magic acts, according to Adamovicz, transgresses the social order and challenges bourgeois repression. Magic acts invite two interpretations, for as well as being ‘a sign of dehumanising misogynistic attitude’ (Adamovicz, 2001, p. 24), they also articulate ‘an act of liberation of the psyche from repression and constraints’ (Adamovicz, 2001, p. 24). The blurring of boundaries between the unconscious and the conscious expresses a disruption of the unity of the ego imposed by the dominant social order. Adamovicz’s view concerns the dada/surrealist cinema, but critics refer to the artistic discourse of the mid 1920s as ‘magical realism’. This term refers to the art’s attachment to strange, inexplicable events such as ‘the fusion of the realms which we know to be separated, the abolition of the laws of statics, the loss of identity, the distortion of natural size and shape, the suspension of the category of objects, the destruction of personality, and the fragmentation of historical order’ (Nigro as cited in Mazierska and Rascaroli, 2006, p. 26). Ewa Mazierska and Laura Rascaroli (2006, p. 27) agree with many authors who draw a parallel between magical realism and a recent concept, postmodernity, to highlight their shared ‘rejection of or distrust towards any kind of hegemony’. The magic act emphasises the fragmentation as well as the reconstruction of the female body. The tension between the fragemented and reconstructed body subverts representation and brings forward the process of transformation. Thomas experiences a jolt to his self-esteem because of Alice’s hostile and resentful views on men, and, possibly on a more metaphorical level, the challenge to hegemony and to patricrachal order that the magic act stands for. Thomas reacts by revealing his feelings: ‘you’re a tough woman. I thought you were gentle. That was my first impression. I wanted to meet you, to take you in my arms’. He carries on, ‘You’re tough. You make fun of me because I love you’. Exposing his affection as well as his young and frail male physique in the subsequent scene in the cabin, Thomas seems to be presented as ‘damaged’. He stands in opposition to the controlling male exemplified in the magician and shows his sensitivity. According to Anthony Clare (2001, p. 56), ‘from early on, he [the average male] is encouraged to deny, certainly downplay a whole aspect of his self which embodies feelings of helplessness, frailty, impotence, a sense of uncertainty and ambiguity, sensitivity and empathy’. Following this view, Thomas’ character confirms and reinforces the critical discourses that posit the screen male as ‘damaged’, ‘fragile’ and ‘ruined’, as argued by P ­ owrie,

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Bruce Babington and Ann Davies (2004) in The Trouble with Men. Masculinities in ­European and Hollywood Cinema. Moreover, as well as appearing ‘damaged’ because of Alice’s toughness, he is also shown as the object of her look. In her cabin, Thomas starts undressing while Alice, lying on the bed, looks at him. The camera focuses on Thomas as he undresses to reveal a slim and untoned body, which does not correspond to the stereotypical notion of maleness as virile, strong and powerful. Within the context of popular media representations of the male body, Thomas is feminised. Alice describes him as ‘still having some poetry like girls’. The image of his naked body keeps her attention and she looks at him. It hardly corresponds to that of a ‘brawny furniture mover’, as Alice likes them but is rather a delicate, hairless and soft body – an observation Alice makes while caressing his body. His feminised features are thus conveyed through his nakedness. Breillat is one of the first women directors to show male nudity in mainstream films. Full male nudity is still a taboo in cinema5 and, moreover, as ­Anthony Clare (2001, p. 127) notes, ‘there is taboo on public exhibition of the penis’. What Clare and other scholars, such as Peter Lehman (2001, p. 28), consider as absent from cultural discourses, Breillat makes visible: the penis. Thus, Breillat overcomes ‘the last great taboo in our culture’ (Lehman, 2001, p. 28) since most of her films involve male nudity, or ‘the full monty’. The most notorious example is Siffredi in Romance, whose full frontal nudity created a stir amongst journalists. Siffredi’s nudity and what he represents, hard-core cinema, scandalised some journalists. The notorious scene where he is shown putting a condom on his erect penis provoked a real controversy. As opposed to Paul’s sexual inadequacy exemplified by the image of his limp penis, Siffredi represents sexual power – he has sex with Marie several times. On the other hand, despite his sexual prowess, he is also missing something. In the film, Siffredi reveals that his body shows signs of being ‘damaged’. Siffredi’s ‘damaged’ body is visually depicted in the used condom containing his dead semen and his revulsion at the sight of it. Hard-core cinema privileges, according to Linda Williams (as cited in Sobchack, 1992, p. 158), the ‘visible representations of […] ejaculation as the lived-body’s privileged act of exceeding itself’. When Marie holds the used condom in her hand, she questions Siffredi’s ‘lived-body’. The male lived-body is further contested in Sex is comedy, which highlights the complexity of shooting a sexually explicit scene. In this sense it can be argued that Sex is comedy refers to explicit sex in all of Breillat’s films and a discourse 5 It is also referred to as the ‘full monty’ shown in the English film of the same name released in 1997. This English film reveals how taboo male nudity still is as it avoids showing male nudity and hence does not fulfill what the title promises.

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on the actors’ simulation of penetration during sex scenes. This film rests on the use of a prosthetic to simulate an erect pernis and, thus, further contests the graphic representation of Siffredi’s genitals. It could also downplay his supposedly uncontestable maleness and, thus, accentuates his damaged male body as noted by some scholars. The male protagonist in Sex is comedy is made to wear a fake penis, which impacts on his notion of maleness. In this film, Breillat plays with the discourse of visibility/invisibility of the penis. Apart from domains such as hard-core cinema and its very specific objectives, the (erect) penis per se is not shown. The visibility/invisibility of the male organ has recently been a topic of study among scholars from diverse academic backgrounds. Lehman (2001, 2004), being the main one, has been followed by Reader (2006) and his study of ‘the abject object’ within a wide French cultural context in The Abject Object. Avatars of the Phallus in Contemporary French Theory, Literature and Film. In all these scholarly works, the debate over the penis’ invisibility is tied to the awe and mystique that such an invisibility or a non-representation evokes. As Whitehead (2002, p. 162) puts it, ‘the male genital organ suggests not only a physical actuality, and sexual potential, but, as phallus, symbolizes (the inevitability) male power and dominance’. When made visible – as in Breillat’s films – it is the penis as phallus that is threatened. However, since what is shown in Sex is comedy is not a real penis but a fake one, it can be argued that it is visible yet invisible, as the real one remains hidden and is, thus, at a safe distance. The safety of the fake penis means that it can be shown from various perspectives, and it can be detached and manipulated. It comes in different shapes and sizes, can be talked about and also perfected. The fake penis is an artifice to reassure the audience that what one sees does not really happen; the penis, being fake, is ‘politically correct’ as Jeanne’s assistant declares in Sex is comedy. It calls attention to the artificiality of the cinematic image; it is only cinema, which the-film-within-the-film maintains. Furthermore, when the main male lead starts wearing the fake penis, he reveals himself in front of the whole crew turning his fake sexual organ into an item of mockery. The emphasis on the (ridiculed) fake penis succeeds because it highlights ‘the importance, or lack thereof, of the penis […]. As such they betray a fascination with the penis and either an anxiety about or near jubilation with its possible cultural demolition from an object of awe, and mystique to one of little or no importance’ (Lehman, 2004, p. 196). Sex is comedy’s focus on the male actor’s response to the fake penis highlights men’s discomfort with putting their sexual organs on display. He seeks the film director’s attention and states that he feels ‘lousy’ and wants ‘to puke’. Furthermore, laughing at it seems to be, for the male protagonist, an act of self-protection to hide his anxiety.

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Other explicit images of the penis in Breillat’s films seem to suggest such a downgrading of its privileged position in cultural discourses. In Romancewhere Siffredi’s penis is contrasted with Paul’s flaccid organ, the same image occurs in Brève Traversée. The audience sees Thomas’ young naked body and a limp penis. In these two instances, the male body is shown in its actual form. In comparison to the erect penis, the flaccid penis shows the male organ just for what it is, which according to Lehman (2004), is a position that it cannot sustain. In its flaccid state, it loses its symbolic function and undermines the phallic economy founded on the potent penis. Many recent studies in film highlight the preoccupation with the male limp organ and conclude that the male body is in crisis. It can be argued that by focusing on the fake and limp penis, Breillat represents the male body as ‘damaged’. However, I prefer to argue that devoid of its symbolic function, the male body is shown in its simplicity or authenticity and the phallic representation of the male body is, thus, subverted. The penis is no longer the phallus, but is present in one of its physiological functions. Moreover, it could be pointed out that the magic show points towards the process of transformation of the penis. The image of Thomas’ limp penis follows the scene in which they make love. There is no doubt that Thomas’ penis was erect during their love making. The idea of process is also highlighted in the scene when he undresses before his first sexual experience. Naked and on display while Alice lies passively on the bed with her clolthes on, Thomas seems, nevertheless, to be shown taking initiative. In this main scene, set in Alice’s cabin, she seems to be the one who is inexperienced. Thomas shares his state of virginity with the young female protagonists of Breillat’s previous three films on adolescence. Like Alice, Lili and Elena, Thomas has never consummated his relationship with girls as he confesses to Alice. He tells Alice that he has already had girlfriends, but simply has never had any sexual relationships with them. Having girlfriends does not seem to be an issue for him. As a boy he even benefits from being able to change girlfriends and have several at the same time, as he claims. He declares: ‘Everything’s different for my generation. We don’t have steady girlfriends. No more tragedies or crises. It’s not like before. It’s more relaxed. You can date a girl, and while she’s away, you can even date her best friend. Later you can re-date her, no problem’. He is therefore not totally inexperienced with girls. One of Breillat’s recurrent places associated with men is the nightclub, as the introductory scene in Anatomie de l’enfer explicitly establishes. In most of her films, a sequence is set in a nightclub where the man usually takes the woman who can be reticent, as shown in Brève Traversée when Alice says to Thomas that she does not belong here. The club is a man’s place where he can display and assert his masculinity. Paul in Romance uses the dancefloor to flirt in front

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of Marie, as is the case of numerous other male characters in Breillat’s films, such as Christophe in Parfait Amour!. The nightclub can be a place where men go out together, as shown in Romance and Pafait Amour!. It is also a place of exhibition and desire for each other – as is illustrated in the introductory scene of Anatomie de l’enfer – and as such it emphasises men’s implicit ambivalent sexual identity. Ambivalence of the male character is apparent in most of Breillat’s films. In Romance, Wilson (2001) rests on the film’s opening images in the arena where Paul takes the role of a toreador for a photograph. It goes without saying that the toreador is the epitome of masculinity, and it is, therefore, clear that this scene confers Paul a macho position. However, it is subsequently contrasted with a shot focusing on Paul being made up before being photographed. His ambivalence is further sustained in the rest of the film; for example, Paul enjoys a night out with his male friends rather than in the company of Marie. Paul’s sexual ambivalence is pointed out by Wilson (2001, p. 152), when she argues that: ‘Indeed Paul’s own sexual ambivalence is hinted at in his solitary viewing of muscle-bound men on the television screen, and his insistence that a male friend accompanies himself and Marie on dates. In an inversion of the male fascination with lesbianism, prevalent in erotic and pornographic material, Breillat seems to stage Marie’s fascination with a (repressed) gay man’. Therefore, although Breillat’s male characters enjoy fast cars and motorbikes as signs of their virility, and usually display a strong macho behaviour towards women, it is undeniable that their male bodies tell another story. In the pivotal scene of Brève traversée taking place in Alice’s cabin, the camera follows Thomas’ minute actions as he undresses and closely focuses on his face and body as he lies on top of Alice. The camera’s close-up of Thomas’ face and body reveals his hesitancy and emotions. The close-up of Thomas’ body lingers on the redness of his face and his naked body and reveals the male body as a contested space. These emotions during his first sexual intercourse can be read as a sign of his sense of being in the world. Hence, Breillat reveals his personal experience or individuality through his intimate anxiety. A quite similar shot occurs at the end of the film. As the ferry approaches its final destination, Thomas runs to retrieve his bags. This is a scene reminiscent of Thomas being in a ‘in transit’ state as shown earlier in the film. When he goes back to the place where he left Alice, she has unsurprisingly disappeared. He sees her again in the car park in her husband’s car and looks at her confused. The camera rests on Thomas’ red face, mixed up with feelings of physical and emotional exhaustion. Thus, the film closes on and attests to Thomas’ intimate confusion. Scholars, such as Whitehead (2002), reveal that much has been written about men, masculinities and sexualities; much less has been written on men’s trust,

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intimacy and emotion. Breillat’s film concentrates on an underexplored, yet innovative area of masculinity and/or maleness. Thus, the simplicity of the film narrative conceals a delicate and daring position with regard to male intimacy. Anthony Giddens (1992) explores the transformation of intimacy in postmodern societies and argues (1992, p. 3) that this transformation brings a radical democratisation of gender relationships, which challenges nineteenth century discourses on sexuality founded on partriarchal rule. Breillat does not seem to share Giddens’ optimism as Thomas’ intimacy stands in contrast to Giddens’ thesis. Indeed, while his bright red face stands out from the rest of his white body and seems to disclose his anxiety that comes to undermine his masculine self-control, it also reinforces his male’s sense of embodiment. His visible emotionality, as Reader (2006, p. 56) says, ‘originates in our own ­intimacy; it is what is most intimate in us […]. Here the “I” is thus overcome by its own passivity, its ownmost sensibility; yet this expropriation and desubjectification is also an extreme and irreducible presence of the “I” to itself’. His redness is a sign of his inexperience with an experienced woman and reveals his shifting/changing position in the world. It is therefore a sign of the irreducible presence of his maleness. The focus on the male body’s emotion discloses his ambivalent intimate self. This uncertain physicality or, bodily presence and existence, speaks of his male embodied relation to the world and to others. It is undeniable, moreover, that the view of Thomas’ body brings to mind the widespread Calvin Klein’s adverts appearing in the 1990s. Calvin Klein’s adverts are well-known for their use of adolescent males. These adverts displayed the under-developed male body and conveyed the idea that the young male physique embodies a gender and sexual ambiguity. Androgynous bodies could thus appeal to any one, disregarding their sexual orientations. These types of adverts established a trend of slim and hairless young male bodies, which started to appear in film. The androgynous body has become an everyday trendy style for – heterosexual – adolescent males. It seems an astute marketing strategy since Calvin Klein plays on an aspect of male youth confirmed by many studies that: ‘The male youth can be considered as feminised because he is not yet fully mature and he presents an ambivalent figure, a figure which invites the dangerous contradiction for masculinity implicit in the homoerotic spectacle’ (Kikham and Thumin as cited in Powrie, Babington and Davies, 2004, p. 13). Thomas’ body could be said to carry these physial characteristics. He is therefore presented in the film as an adolescent boy defined by gender and sexual fluidity. He is also potentially appealing to men, as the introductory scene in the canteen confirms. As mentioned, Thomas is characterised throughout the film by his mobility. This is also a spatial mobility enhanced by his physical appearance revealing

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his young age and, thus, his gender indeterminacy. Breillat puts the emphasis on the idea that adolescence represents the moment in an individual’s life when nothing is yet fixed and stable. In terms of career, young people do not know what they want to do later in life. Thomas can say that he wishes to be a plastic surgeon, but this sounds more like a way of showing off than a real ambition. Thomas’ indefinite position is also reflected in his various movements. Bringing his movements to a near standstill at the custom control, he is allowed to board the ferry where he can resume his motions. The camera follows him closely as he tries to find a space for his bags in the labyrinthine corridors of the boat. Even in the canteen, where he meets Alice, he is the only person moving about because he is without a seat. While Alice is motionless, standing in the queue and then sitting down, Thomas is constantly in motion. From the start, they are shown in terms of their differences between movement and stability. He is in movement, in transit, whereas she is static or has a base since she has booked a cabin – and is on her way home to England. The differences between nationalities enhance the sense of non-belonging and not being fixed to any cultural location. Breillat’s film shares with a trend of European travel films an attention to the theme of the journey and, hence, of travelling. Mazierska and Rascaroli (2006) devoted a study, Crossing New Europe. Postmodern Travel and the European Road Movie (2006), to European cinema centring its narrative on travelling. Considering the year of its release – 2001 – and its subject matter, Brève Traversée could be included in the postmodern European travel films identified by these authors. In accordance with characteristics of travel cinema, Breillat’s film narrative concentrates on a pleasure trip across international and natural borders – the sea – via a ferry. In other words, in relation to her young male protagonist, Breillat draws on the motif of the journey as ‘an opportunity for exploration, discovery and transformation’ (Mazierska and Rascardi, 2006, p. 4). The film is, indeed, specifically concerned with the young boy’s (sexual) transformation, which explains the film’s lack of practical motives for his journey and, hence, gives emphasis to its psychological aspect. In this sense, the place where their relationship develops plays a crucial part. The boat is a place where magic can happen – and it literally does. The film’s main action takes place at sea, which offers different opportunities from the land. In the middle of the North Sea, or the Channel, between Le Havre and Portsmouth, that is to say between two shores – in-between – they can feel far away from social laws. This concept of ‘in-betweeness’ is borrowed from Deleuze, as mentioned by Mazierska and Rascaroli (2006, p. 141), who states that between two boundaries, people are ‘situated outside of the institutional and ideological frameworks of society’. Thomas’ identity card has expired, but he is

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still allowed to board the ferry. In the duty free shop on the ferry, he is asked to show the same identity card, but no mention is made of its invalidity. Thomas says to Alice, being out at sea ‘we’re beyond the law’. Being beyond the law, they are not fixed by any social constraints or repression and can forge new relationships. This environment is therefore conducive for articulating their individuality. On the deck, Thomas tells Alice, very naturally, that he wants to sleep with her. This spontaneous talk asserts his youth and inexperience, but it is also a true statement in disregard of conventions and social codes. They can experience ‘deterritorialisation’ or mobility over fixity or sedentariness and advocate ‘liberation of desire from oppressive institutions (or territories)’ (Mazierska and Rascaroli, 2006, p. 141). Most importantly, the notion of ‘deterritorialisation’ evokes travelling and is strongly associated with that of postmodern identity. As demonstrated by Alice, released from the restrictions of society, it is possible to play with one’s identity. Mazierska and Rascaroli (2006, p. 194) notice that the phenomenon of associating travelling with the notion of a postmodern identity is characteristic of European road cinema. They (2006, p. 194) argue that European films demonstrate that travelling facilitates a ‘tourist identity’ associated with postmodernism. In other words, when travelling, one is a tourist, that is a stranger to the people one meets and ‘can easily pretend to be somebody else’. In Breillat’s film, the tourist identity is, furthermore, facilitated and supported by being out at sea. The sea is a predominant visual manifestation of flexibility and in this case, flexible identity. In almost all her films, the sea features prominently and is usually associated with female identity. The sea is depicted throughout her films and refers to places where the protagonists live or spend their holidays, as for example the Landes region, which also evokes a strong autobiographical connotation. The protagonists live or go on holidays and find love close to the sea. Alice in Une vraie jeune fille and Lili and Elena in A ma soeur! are spending their summer holidays near the sea. This is where they are flirtatious, as in Sex is comedy, and where they can freely express their sexual desires, as shown in Anaïs’ case. Even though it is associated with love, Breillat does not portray the sea as a site of romantic nature, quite the reverse. As a site of holidays and love, Breillat shows the seaside as cold and desolate. In Parfait Amour!, the lovers are seen walking hand in hand accompanied by extra diegetic classical music, but the sea is out of reach in the background. Moreover, in Parfait Anour! as in Brève Traversée, the coldness and the desolation of the seaside are accentuated by its northern location. Hardly a romantic place, the sea expresses, instead, women’s fervent sexual desire. Close or surrounded by sea water, Alice in Une vraie jeune fille and Anaïs in A ma soeur! let their imagination flow. For instance, in a crucial scene, also rehearsed

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in Sex is comedy, Anaïs lies in the sea with her clothes on and sings a made-up nursery rhyme that articulats her personal and unconventional desire for love. Associated with the fluidity of women’s sexual identity, the sea in Brève Traversée also represents a space where Alice’s imagination is set free. At the sea she can be independent. As a matter of fact, she is associated with the dark and dangerous representation of the sea, in contrast to Thomas. While leaning against the railing on the deck, Alice tells Thomas that she is afraid of water and confesses: ‘when it’s black, it attracts me and I fall in’. The turbulent sea represents her multiple identities as well as her ambivalent desire towards an adolescent boy. Their relationship is dangerous because it is unconventional and amoral – as shown in Varda’s film (Kung Fu Master). The sea is not always rough and dark. It is also depicted as a calm and bright place, as shown in backdrop images behind Thomas. In Brève Traversée, the young boy is filmed with the sea in the same frame more often than the woman. For example, at the beginning of the film Thomas stands next to a window and looks out to sea. Thomas is also seen leaning against the railing on the deck before he is joined by Alice. He is shown looking onto the bright and clear sea all by himself. The sea stands for the young boy’s feminine and, thus, fluid desire. It is a metaphor for male adolescence associated with an open, contested space undermining fixed ontologies. The similarity of place at the beginning and at the end of the film could give an impression that nothing has really happened. The French port from where the male protagonist departs and the port where he arrives are similar, which seems to erase any differences between the places of departure and arrival. In this ‘in-between’ place, Breillat explores the relationship between the two different protagonists. They are on a boat, which is moving and yet the film leaves the spectator with an impression of stagnation. This lack of motion is reflected in what Marc Augé (1992) refers to as ‘non-places’. Augé’s ‘non-places’ are places in the contemporary cultural environment where people pass through without necessarily noticing them; their characteristics are a lack of particular landmarks such as the ports in France and in England marking the beginning and the end of the film. These ‘non-places’, quoting Mazierska and Rascaroli (2006, p. 147), ‘don’t contain any organic society’ and can, therefore, be assocatiated with ‘an experiential and phenomenological sense of being-in-the-world’. Travelling does not correspond to a linear, fixed trajectory, but what is most important about travelling is the renegotiation of (male) identity within the context of the film discussed. This idea is reinforced in the peculiar scene of the magic show referred to as ‘magic theatre’ or ‘a carnivalesque space’. The shot showing the magician’s act objectifying the woman produces a theatrical effect. The act of dismemberment/reintegration or disappearance/reappearance

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of the woman’s body highlights processes of becoming, which disrupts the assumed wholeness of the subject. In between two coastal nations, the ferry represents the ‘carnivalesque space’ where a flux from hegemonic discourses to transgression manifests itself, as epitomised by the presence of the magic act and reinforced by the sea. In this in-between space, the male body is no longer presented full of virility, strength and power but as a body full of tension. The male body shifts as shown by Thomas’ masculine but red, feminised and agitated body in front of Alice. The intense and precise attention to his gestures and poses as he undresses is meant to show emotionality contained in his male body. The emphasis is put on the shifting and fluid materiality of the male body or the multiplicity of male embodiment. For Thomas, travelling is associated with a process or a transition. Thomas says to Alice the following morning: ‘Stop saying “you’re all…” I feel I’m not me’. His identity as a man differs from the steretoptypical one because it is defined by tension and complexity. The male body is posed as not static, but fluid. The emphasis on the instability or fluidity that surrounds any being – and here the male – is echoed in and authenticated by the various masculine and/ or feminine positions that Breillat likes to adopt in her work. In interviews, Breillat has reiterated her masculine position when she writes and makes films. For the release of Une vieille maîtresse, she positions herself as a dandy: ‘Je suis un dandy ultraromantique’ (Breillat as cited in Tranchant). Reader (2006, p. 135) discusses female authors who, like Breillat, take the position of the male protagonist when writing/filming. By borrowing phrases such as ‘narrative transvestism’ or ‘transvestite ventriloquism’ to refer to this strategy, he aims to foreground ‘the impermanence and constructedness of the apparent gender change enacted’. With respect to this strategy in her work, I maintain that Breillat claims an ambivalent rather than a fixed male or female position and sexual identity. This shifting position is highlighted in her relation with her assistant in Sex is comedy. Also, in Anatamie de l’enfer, Breillat considers homosexuality and heterosexuality as non-fixed entities, but as being fluid. This is valid for all her films in which sexual behaviour is not clearly fixed but flows between homosexuality/heterosexuality. It is without saying that this treatment of homosexuality resonates in her representation of men. Her films convey the idea that the acquisition of appropriate gender roles and positions is damaging. The following chapter looks at this argument in relation to the French genre film par excellence, the crime film or its French equivalent, ‘le polar’.

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The Genre Film: Crime Drama in Sale comme un ange and Parfait Amour!

It has often been shown that, together with comedy, the crime drama, also known as ‘le polar’, is the most popular genre in French cinema since the 1950s.1 It is also one of the genres that is closely associated with masculinity. In the ‘liberated’ 1970s, pornography together with the ‘le polar’ was very popular in mainstream French cinema. In the 1970s and early 1980s, Jean-Paul Belmondo and Alain Delon were major French film stars who were associated with the French crime drama or ‘film policier’. Featuring male stars as lead characters, the polar is a celebration of masculine values and attributes and is undoubtedly directed to a masculine audience. As highlighted in this chapter, Breillat’s work does not conform to but rather plays with the genre; her cinema concentrates on the intimacy and intricacies of women’s sexual body with an aim, according to Jordan (2006, p. 16), ‘to resituate women outside a phallic logic’. The polar is a genre, which has often been affiliated with the buddy narrative; for example, Jacques Deray’s film Borsalino (1970) is significant with Belmondo and Delon as its main protagonists. Talking about the film, Guy Austin (1996, p. 107) declares that: ‘Deray’s film celebrates above all the iconic status of its stars. The characters played by Belmondo and Delon are images to themselves as well as to the spectator’. The buddy narrative has its origins in American cinema and Borsalino is no exception. Austin (1996, p. 107) notes iconographic signs that evoke ‘nostalgic’ and humerous homage to the American gangster movies of the 1930s. Austin as well as Hayward (1993) have remarked on the strong connection of the polar to American culture. They concur that the polar’s origins can be found in the American genres of film noir and the gangster film as well as in American crime novels. Adapting American crime novels to the French screen is a tradition, which, according to Austin, dates back to Truffaut’s Tirez sur le pianiste (1946) and continued with Jean-Jacques Beineix’s La Lune dans le caniveau (1983). This American influence still persists today with films such as De battre mon coeur s’est arrêté (2005) by Jacques Audiard and Ne le dis à personne (2006) by Guillaume Canet. The former is a remake 1 See Guy Austin (1996); Jill Forbes (1992); Ginette Vincendeau (1992); and Carrie Tarr and Brigitte Rollet (2001).

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���7 | doi 10.1163/9789004343849_007

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of a 1970s American gangster film and the latter is a filmic adaptation of an American novel from 2001 by Harlan Coben. Alongside American influences, there are films such as 36 rue quai des orfèvres (2006) by Olivier Marchal, which belong to the polars ‘naturalised as French’ (Forbes, 1992, p. 53) from the 1970s because of their use of well known French stars in main roles (such as Gérard Depardieu, Daniel Auteuil and André Dussolier for 36), and their strong connection to issues concerning French society. The film 36 follows the tradition of French polars such as La Guerre des Polices (1979) by Robin Davies. As Davies’ title indicates, both films share a similar subject matter. Austin brings up other familiar social issues in French polars such as ‘urban decay in Alain Corneau’s Série Noire (1979), colonialism in Bertrand Tavernier’s Coup de torchon (1981), or drug dealing in Maurice Pialat’s Police (1985)’ (Austin, 1996, p. 99). Pialat’s Police bears a strong connection to Breillat’s film, Sale comme un ange (1991) since ‘it is the original version of the script’ (Clouzot, 2006, p. 57; trans. by author) written for Pialat. Breillat was commissioned by Pialat to write the screenplay, Police; but her script was not used because Pialat was not entirely satisfied by it. Beside being famous for his temper often targeting his actors (and team in general) – ‘his memorable bursts of wrath’ as noted by Rémi Fournier Lanzoni (2002, p. 324) – Pialat was a well-known and e­ stablished filmmaker in the 1980s, after twenty years in the business. His films include Passe ton Bac d’abord (1979), Loulou (1980), A nos amours (1983) and Police. In 1987, he filmed Sous le soleil de Satan for which he received the Palme d’or at the 40th Cannes Film Festival. This was a memorable occasion, which was included in the awards ceremony for the 60th anniversary of the Cannes Film Festival in May 2007 – Breillat was nominated during that year. According to Fournier Lanzoni (2002, p. 326): ‘The film generated a great deal of controversy, and at the 1987 Cannes Film Festival, Pialat received the Palme d’or under the insults and contemptuous growls of the crowd at the awards ceremony’. Thus, when Pialat commissioned Breillat he had gained a reputation for his rejection of conventional film narratives and images. His naturalistic aesthetic determined by the ‘shaky, dull-toned photography shot in real locations’ (Austin, 1996, p. 116), as well as his innovation in ‘the value he gave to the still often ­underestimated importance of sex in social interactions and human patterns’ (Fournier Lanzoni, 2002, p. 324) are also apparent in his film Police. There were obvious qualities he recognised in Breillat’s work since by the early 1980s Breillat had already made two films and written five novels including scripts for well-known directors. She had never been involved, however, in a film genre such as a série noire (or polar). Beillat had her screenplay returned by Pialat and made her film Sale comme un ange which, like Police, is about the love affair of a detective, Deblache

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and a woman, Barbara. However, this woman is not any woman because she recently married Théron, Deblache’s colleague. Deblache and Théron work together and visit the Belleville underworld of cafés and nightclubs/brothels. When Deblache meets Théron’s wife he instantly falls in love with her and they become close. Now, he keeps Théron at a distance. Since Théron is employed to protect the wife of Deblache’s friend from her husband’s enemies, Deblache can approach Barbara, who after turning him away finally yields to his sexual advances. Sale comme un ange, like Police, belongs to the type of French polars that emerged in the 1980s and followed a French tradition initiated by Mark Swaim’s La Balance (1982). This is what Hayward (1993, p. 291) describes as ‘a new signifier of Frenchness’, and the drug underworld set in Belleville, north of Paris. La Balance, Police, and Sale comme un ange, among others, all deal with the investigations of Belleville multi-cultural community, which is associated with the underworld of drugs and prostitution. The association of crime and drugs with the Arab community has resulted in criticizing these films for perpetuating racist attitudes. Referring to La Balance and Police, Olivier Philippe (1996, pp. 108–109) declares: Le fait est que dans les films, cette nouvelle délinquance, liée à la drogue, est essentiellement le fait de population étrangères originaires de Maghreb, de l’Afrique noire ou de l’Asie. De plus en plus, le décor des films policiers se situe dans les quartiers qui sont marqués par de fortes concentrations de populations plus ou moins récemment immigrées: Belleville, pour La Balance et Police. Cette tendance du film policier français ne manque pas d’attirer la critique selon laquelle les réalisateurs entretiendraient sciemment ou pas, le racisme. Philippe’s comment applies also to Sale comme un ange, which portrays ­ elleville’s community in a similar way. Deblache and Théron frequent cafés B and illicit nightclubs in Belleville, which always seem to be owned by ethnic ­minorities, mostly Arabs. Thus, following Tarr’s and Rollet’s (2001, p. 219) observation, it appears that Sale comme un ange perpetuates the codes of the French crime films, which ‘have conventionally constructed stereotypical ­representations of ethnic minorities linked to the criminal underworld’. The detectives’ behaviour towards these ethnic minorities follows conventional representations of police abuse. Deblache and Théron verbally and sometimes physically assault them, also shown in Pialat’s Police. The stereotypical portrayal of the Arab c­ ommunity as well as the violent and misogynistic behaviour of the police, are attempts at ‘giving “true” transparence on society’ (Hayward, 1993, p. 291).

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This idea of transparency associated with the crime drama is made explicit in Parfait Amour!, which, unlike Sale comme un ange, does not follow genre conventions. The genre’s boundaries are rather blurred by the film’s approach and narrative structure. The complexity of the introductory scene presents the film on the borderline of genre conventions and then the narrative develops into a love story. The film’s narrative can be summarised as the story of a love affair between a young man, Christophe, in his twenties and a twice divorced and mature woman, Frédérique, in her thirties. The film starts as a perfect love affair, shot in a romantic way with the camera circling around the two protagonists during their first encounter. However, it ends on a dramatic note with Christophe murdering Frédérique in her kitchen. Parfait Amour! is a crime drama that revolves around the scene of a murder. The film opens with the police’s reconstruction of the murder, and shows Christophe, forced to reenact sodomising her with a broom handle and stabbing her with a kitchen knife. The film does not revolve around a police investigation but focuses on the killer and the victim’s daughter. The opening scene conveys a sense of realism due to the handheld camera and its shaky images of the reconstruction of the murder act and its focus on the witness, the victim’s daughter. With a closeup of her face, she announces matter-of-fact that the victim is not her mother but the murderer. At this moment, the film’s narrative and technical aspects change and blur genre expectations. When the daughter tells her story about how they first met through flashbacks, the narrative takes on a subjective tone; thus, departing from the objective investigatory perspective commonly associated with the genre. The flashbacks show how Frédérique and Christophe’s relationship began at a wedding ceremony; Frédérique’s daughter then becomes another character in the film. The love story between Frédérique and Christophe continues to unfold, shown at times through the lens of romantic fiction: the couple at a restaurant, taking walks on the beach and in the countryside accompanied by classical music, and with a mist gradually covering the mountains, announcing the dramatic turn in their relationship. These stylistic changes enhance the changing mood of the film. The film’s technique shifts from a documentarytype style to a more conventional one such as ‘drama’. These hybrid and fluid film styles are also reflected in her films’ sources. Each film emanates from a different inspiration. While the idea for Parfait Amour! originates from a ‘faitdivers’ read by Breillat in a newspaper, Sale comme un ange stems from her perception of Belleville realities as well as Pialat’s Police. For Sale comme un ange, Breillat did some research on the Belleville community and investigated, like an ethnographer, different types of people and the place itself. Her objectives were to provide a specific and authentic ­portrayal

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of the police’s behaviour. In accordance with Breillat’s treatment of genre films established by Parfait Amour!, Sale comme un ange could now be read as combining the usual ‘transparent’ image of the police recurring in the polar with authentic features. The idea of transparency pervades, indeed, the representation of the police’s violent and misogynistic behaviour. Like the archetypical character of the police detective found in polars, Philippe in Le Film policier français contemporain (1996) reinforces the misogynistic characteristic of the detective. He is described as single (or divorced, separated or a widower) and is never shown in a domestic environment. He is a typical loner cop who, like Deblache, likes the street, or ‘le trottoir’,2 as Barbara notes in Sale comme un ange. Indeed, the beginning of the film shows him and his colleague moving from the street to ‘le trottoir’. They frequent illicit places such as clubs used for prostitution. His recently married colleague, Théron, seems to be a regular of these brothels and has an affair with a prostitute. Breillat’s social observation of the relationship between the police and the Belleville community exposes the complex and ambiguous construction of the police blurring the boundaries between the law and the lawlessness. This is, according to Vincendeau (as cited in Hayward, p. 1993) a recurrent motif of the French film policier (or the polar). This ambiguous image of the French police contributes to the genre’s male oriented world or, as Hayward (1993, p. 290) argues, ‘is perfectly consonant with the “maleness” of this genre, as is the ultimate subjugation of the woman/wife’. In Sale comme un ange Théron’s wife, Barbara, is mostly seen at home; she never goes out on her own. The couple adhere to conventional gender roles, as discussed in de Beauvoir (1949),: Barbara is the housewife who is confined at home while her husband works outside and enjoys some freedom. Deblache tells her about her husband: ‘Evidemment s’il vous a enfermé ici c’est qu’il ne veut pas que vous rencontriez qui que ce soit. Il en a rien à faire que vous vous ennuyez. La seule chose qui lui importe c’est que vous ne lui échappiez pas. Si vous saviez ce qu’il fait pendant ce temps là’. The woman is the property of the man and as such she occupies a subordinated role, which means that she is subjugated to his power. In their study of French women directors, Cinema and the Second Sex, Tarr and Rollet (2001, p. 196) confirm the perpetuation of the conventional image of the subjugated woman ‘within a male-oriented fictional world’. They also expand on this observation by suggesting that the marginalization or absence of women in films policiers ‘may be symptomatic of a crisis

2 Barbara’s use of the word ‘le trottoir’ contains a pun. Its literal translation is ‘the pavement’ but in French, it also refers to a place where prostitutes operate.

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in relationships between the sexes’ (Tarr and Rollet, 2001, p. 197). Their study highlights that because of the genre’s common exploitation of gender roles, it can be a ‘fertile terrain for women’s interventions’ (Tarr and Rollet, 2001, p. 197). Tarr and Rollet (2001, p. 197) introduce a gender perspective to the film policier. Indeed, by examining it from French women filmmakers’ perspectives, they identify three ways of women’s interventions: ‘in deconstructing gender roles within conventional policiers, revisioning the crime drama as a vehicle for illicit female desires and female violence, or using film to explore crimes against women’ (Tarr and Rollet, 2001, p. 197). French women directors’ involvement with crime dramas is not new despite their quasi absence from major studies in French cinema. Tarr and Rollet (2001) highlight that French women directors made films of the genre since the 1970s, exemplified with Nadine Trintignant’s 1973 film, Défense de savoir. Breillat is, hence, not the first female director to work in the genre. Nevertheless, she explores the genre’s conventions in a new light. Breillat’s crime drama films, Sale comme un ange and Parfait Amour!, investigate the extent of women’s victimization of male violence. Both films link women to death, but each does provide a different perspective. In the first one, the film explores how, ‘a good housewife’, like Barbara can manipulate her lover, Deblache, to the extent that he will arrange for her husband, Théron, to be killed in order to stay with her. However, at Théron’s funeral she does not leave with Deblache, but instead smiles at him to express her satisfaction. Reminiscent of Breillat’s previous film, 36 fillette, Lili’s and Barbara’s smiles can be interpreted as evidence that they got what they wanted. In the second polar film, it is the woman, Frédérique, who gets killed by her young lover, Christophe. Instead of placing Frédérique in the position of the victim, Breillat shows how she pushes him to kill her and, hence, confers to the woman a position of power. It is apparent that Breillat uses the context of the conventional crime drama to bring to light the dominant construction of gender roles. She reveals how, within this dominant but ambiguous context, women can be the strongest and thus assert their sexual identity. Breillat’s choice of actors for her films has always been pertinent and is even more so in Sale comme un ange. While for Police Pialat chose Gérard Depardieu to play the role of the macho detective, Mangin, and Sophie Marceau for the role of the femme or ‘garce fatale’, Breillat relied on Claude Brasseur for the macho and misogynistic detective, Deblache, and on a popular singer, Lio, for the role of the ‘garce fatale’ – as noted by Tarr and Rollet (2001). Before working with Breillat, Claude Brasseur acted in mainstream cinema and is famous for his role as the father of Sophie Marceau in La Boum (1980) by Claude Pinoteau. Comedy but more importantly film policier, are the two dominant genres he is associated with. He played similar roles to the detective Deblache in various

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polar films: as Philippe Labro’s La Crime (1983), Nicolas Ribowski’s Une affaire d’hommes (1981), Robin Davis’ La Guerre des polices (1979) – previously mentioned as a landmark for the French polar – as well as playing the famous and popular detective Vidocq for a television series. Brasseur was given a role that fit his strong physical appearance, but does not suit the person he thinks he really is. He says (cited in Philippe, 1996, p. 44): On me propose beaucoup, beaucoup de rôles de flics parce que je sais – en tant qu’acteur, j’entends bien – me servir d’un revolver. Je sais donner des coups de poing, j’ai une allure physique, j’ai une apparence de bagarreur et de costaud que je ne suis pas du tout. Et j’en bénéficie, parce que ça m’apporte des rôles et d’un autre côté, j’en suis victime parce qu’effectivement parfois j’aimerais bien jouer autre chose et un personnage que je ressens plus que les flics. Within his role of the detective, Breillat cultivates this ‘other thing’ that Brasseur mentions he would prefer to play. As well as being ‘le plus macho et misogyne de la division’, as Théron describes him to his wife, the detective Deblache has another side. This aspect is revealed at the beginning of the film. Although Sale comme un ange shares a lot of similarities with Police, the films’ opening scenes are different. While Pialat chose to introduce his film right at the heart of the action, by showing the detective Mangin at work q­ uestioning one of the suspects of the drugs ring, Breillat depicts her main character, the detective Deblache, at home and getting ready to go to work. This difference is very meaningful since Deblache in comparison with his homologue, Mangin, is more often shown in a domestic environment – his or Barbara’s. In this surrounding, his weaknesses come into sight. He is portrayed in need of support, which he finds in drinking lots of pastis. For Philippe (1996), smoking and drinking habits reveal a psychological disequilibrium. He adds that smoking is commonly associated with the police, but drinking rarely so. The fact that Breillat prefers to portray the detective Deblache as a heavy drinker suggests her intention to bring attention to his psychological condition.3 His house is run by a woman who also plays a motherly role; she accompanies him to the hospital at the beginning of the film. At hospital he reveals not having been pampered as a child: ‘Je ne savais pas que c’était aussi agréable de se faire dorloter comme ça’. 3 It is not the first time that Claude Brasseur has played the role of a detective who drinks heavily. In the film La Crime (1983) by Philippe Labro, the detective Griffon played by Brasseur is also a heavy drinker.

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It is, however, in the company of Barbara that he is represented in his most vulnerable state. When he is invited for dinner to Théron’s and Barbara’s new place, Barbara asks him ‘the question’. Philippe (1996) notes that the question put to a detective concerning his reasons for joining the police is a recurrent motif in the film policier, and Sale comme un ange is no exception. ‘The question’, hence, becomes an important moment in the polar, when, according to Philippe, the audience sees the man speaking and not the detective. This is the moment when the most intimate self of the detective is disclosed. Philippe (1996, p. 62) relates it to the idea of ‘confession’: ‘Les raisons d’être policier sont toujours présentées comme relevant du jardin secret du personnage, comme si les motivations ne devaient pas toujours être avouables’. In the case of the detective Deblache, the audience can suppose that his reasons for joining the police are linked to his family background and especially to his mother. The police was a way for him not to go back to his mother. In a subsequent scene when he proposes to Barbara, he tells her that his mother did not like him and found him ugly. It is in this specific scene that while sitting on the armchair’s arm that he proposes to Barbara (see fig. 5). By adding that he has never said that to a woman, he shows the vulnerability of the detective. Clouzot (2004, p. 63) evokes this scene as ‘un passage exceptionnel dans la carrière de Claude Brasseur’. It also can be argued that this is this type of role that Brasseur always wanted to play – if one refers to his aforementioned quotation – and thus represents a realisation of his authentic desire. Within the context of the film, it is

Figure 5

Deblache sliding along the armchair in Sale comme un ange. © catherine breillat

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also an exceptional sequence as it portrays the detective ‘défait, sans défense’ (Clouzot, 2004, p. 61). Deblache’s ambivalent behaviour, such as his violence and misogyny, his drinking and his reasons for joining the police are all related to his difficult relationship with his mother. This is not an unusual motif for Breillat since in her second crime drama, Parfait Amour!, she uses the same motif to explain Christophe’s ambivalent behaviour and gender – his friend confesses to Frédérique that Christophe gets fucked by him. The mother’s role in the patriarchal society – discussed in Chapter 2 concerns the socialisation of young girls – and can lead to confused gender behaviour in men. As a result, Deblache represents an unusual detective with a confused personality; his strong external appearance and violent behaviour conceal his sensitivity. His feminine side is evoked by Barbara when she describes his apartment, as ‘C’est très joli ici. On dirait l’appartement d’une femme’. This is also reflected when Théron tastes his pastis and discards it by calling it a drink for ‘birds’ to which Deblache answers: ‘J’aime bien tout ce qui est sucré’. The fact that he likes sweet things explains his infatuation for Barbara, who is presented as ‘un bonbon fondant’, as she mostly wears pink clothes. Her clothes, her pitch of voice and her behaviour make her appear as a child-woman. This is an aspect of her character, which is reinforced by her image as a singer in real-life. As a singer,4 Lio, is also famous for singing in a low-pitched and childish voice, and hence represents the childwoman; she is even dubbed the Lolita. Just like Deblache, Barbara’s character is ambivalent: under her child-like behaviour hides a determined woman. During the whole film, she remains quite enigmatic in contrast to Deblache. She plays the role of the typical traditional good housewife staying at home while her husband works, and, in the case of Théron, frequents brothels. Barbara’s portrayal is the materialisation of what the woman in Anatomie de l’enfer talks about when she says to a man, ‘C’est pour ça qu’ils ont voulu toujours enfermer les femmes de tout temps, en tout lieu, sur toute latitude. Pour les protéger d’elles-mêmes disent-ils, pour conjurer le sort des femmes. En réalité, ils ont peur qu’ils ne leur appartiennent pas. Ils ne croient pas à la liberté toute seule’. Like the description of the housewife in de Beauvoir (1949), Barbara is sexually abused by her husband. She is a sexual object who has to satisfy his desires. This is illustrated in the scene when Théron asks for Barbara to be brought to him, because ‘ça [sexe] lui manque’. After spending the afternoon in bed with 4 Her famous hits include Banana split in 1980 and Les brunes comptent pas pour des prunes in 1986. It was not her first role in a woman auteur film. In 1983, she appeared in Chantal Akerman’s musical, Golden Eighties. More recently, in 2004, she moved to the stage and played the main role in the theatrical adaptation of Marie Darrieussecq’s Le Bébé.

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her, he tells Deblache: ‘y a pas à dire ça requinque’. This macho behaviour disgusts Barbara and prompts her to realise how different women are from men. The difference between men and women underpins the whole film, Sale comme un ange, as well as Parfait Amour!. In Parfait Amour! it is even contained within its ironic title which insinuates that perfect love can never be perfect, as love always entails the subordination of one or the other. As Susan Sellers (1991, p. 17) argues ‘caught up as it is in the “contradictions and ambivalences entailing the murder of the other” that are the characteristic of masculine rule’. Subordination or ‘murder’ of the other is explicitly expressed through the act of ownership that characterises patriarchal society. Hence, as soon as Deblache has a sexual relationship with Barbara, he wants to possess her by asking her to divorce and marry him. The incompatibility between the sexes is founded on masculine ownership and property in which women are reduced to the role of commodity. In Parfait Amour! Christophe also wants Frédérique to be his wife and thus become his; he tells all his friends that she is his wife. When married, woman’s sexuality is denied because she is expected to be faithful to her husband. When she is not married, she is expected to remain a virgin – like Barbara when she met Théron, her husband. Woman’s sexuality is repressed in patriarchal society. The common image of woman’s dormant sexuality to be awakened by a man is Sleeping Beauty. The myth of Sleeping Beauty is part of the male fantasy of women’s sexuality with the expectation of subjugation and passivity. Barbara is the embodiment of the Sleeping Beauty myth; she is pictured passively lying down waiting for the man, Deblache, to undress and take her. On the other hand, this appears to be the only solution offered to a married woman, such as Barbara, who cannot explicitly express her desires. Hence, married women’s sexuality is repressed to the extent that when she is married and has an affair, as does Barbara, she turns into a whore. After their first sexual intercourse, Barbara feels like a prostitute. And when they argue, it is Deblache who insinuates that she is a whore to which Barbara replies: ‘Tu veux dire que je suis une pute et bien vas-y, ne te gêne pas. De toute façon c’est exactement tout l’effet que je me fais’. Giving (or surrendering) herself to the male is her only possibility in a male dominated society; so lying on the sofa and placing her arms above her head, Barbara tells Deblache: ‘Vous êtes responsable si je me laisse faire. Je me laisse faire. Ca voudra rien dire du tout’. Lying under Deblache with her arms above her head is another frame/image known to be Breillat’s trademarks. It is an image that most of her female protagonists portray, including Frédérique in Parfait Amour! (see fig. 6). In this position they embody the masculine fantasy of the passive and muted female body. They expose, according to Susan Cohen (1993), the mind-body dualism, which relegates woman to the physical, erasing

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Frédérique putting her arm above her head during intercourse in Parfait Amour! © catherine breillat

the materiality of the female flesh. However, the camera focusing on Barbara’s and Frédérique’s face denies women’s association with the physical. The closeup of their faces reveals an expression of their own desires. Beugnet (2006, p. 34) focuses on close-up shots of the female body and face in women directors’ films, like Breillat. She argues (2006, p. 30) that ‘the close-up on the face, thus, becomes a pivotal figure’, in the sense that it aims to convey a sensation or ‘a character’s state of mind, thus creating a bridge between mind and body’. In the context of ‘the re-mapping of the cinematic territory’, the close-up functions as ‘a desire to blur the frontiers between the inside and the outside’ (Beugnet, 2006, p. 36). In Parfait Amour! Frédérique is heard and seen screaming during intercourse with Christophe. The camera focuses on her facial expression to reveal her pleasure. The close-up of her face also re-calls other senses, like sound, to portray Frédérique’s feelings. In Sale comme un ange during intercourse with Deblache, the camera focuses on Barbara’s face: her half-closed eyes express the intensity of her desire, and, hence, confirm her sexual identity. For Barbara, however, women’s pleasure is more complicated. Besides feeling pleasure in the arms of Deblache, she also experiences disgust and shame shown by the tears on her face in close-up. As noted by Tarr and Rollet (2001, p. 2001) the ‘pleasure as well as disgust and remorse’ experienced by a woman is ‘a Breillat trademark’. Breillat explores a woman’s ambivalent feelings caused by dominant society. In a dominant patriarchal society, where female sexuality is a taboo, women are socialised to experience their sexual pleasure only through feelings like shame and revulsion – like the young girls, Lili and Alice in 36 fillette and Une vraie jeune fille. However, Barbara’s ambivalent feelings make her carry on her adulterous relationship with Deblache.

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Like Deblache, who as a detective moves between the law and lawlessness, she is attracted to the illicit – her own desires expressed through adultery. In this situation, a woman’s ambiguous feelings transform her into something abject in the male eyes; she is the ‘dirty angel’ of the French film’s title, Sale comme un ange. As a phenomenon of oppression, female pleasure is a disruptive element in the masculine social order. To paraphrase Diana Holmes (1996), female pleasure acts as a reminder of what is repressed and hence causes repulsion in the ordered society. As a result, abjection is exclusively associated with the female body. However, it is worth noting Kristeva’s definition of abjection. She defines it as follows (Kristeva, 1982, p. 4): ‘It is thus not lack of cleanliness or health that causes abjection but what disturbs identity, system, order. What does not respect borders, positions, rules. The in-between, the ambiguous, the composite’. Thus ambiguity causes abjection because it disrupts fixed identity and social order as ‘a figure of mixity and intermediary states’ (Braidotti, 2002, p. 162). As a[n] – dirty – angel, Barbara moves ‘between one order and the other’ – to borrow Grosz’s (1989, p. 161) definition of the angel. Selliers confirms (2005) the power of female pleasure as being situated beyond patriarchal control. By the end of the film, both female protagonists in Sale comme un ange and Parfait Amour! are portrayed as corporeal beings in possession of their own sexual identity. Frédérique is the stronger character in relation to Christophe, who claims to hate sex. Being unable to satisfy her sexual desires – a theme, noted by Tarr and Rollet (2001) that also underscores Romance’s subject matter – provokes Frédérique’s behaviour of assaulting his masculinity. This assault proves fatal for Frédérique. Christophe tries to sodomise her with a broom handle in an attempt to assert his virility. However, Frédérique’s ‘uncontrollable laughter’ (Tarr and Rollet, 2001, p. 209) at this ‘real male behaviour’ highlights his weakness, and it forces him to kill her. Tarr and Rollet (2001, p. 209) describe the end of the film as ‘demonstrating Breillat’s provocative thesis, that the desire to kill is a component of love and that the woman is guilty of her own murder’. The murder, though, is explained by Frédérique’s powerful position: she is laughing while Christophe can only revert to violence. Although at the end of Sale comme un ange, the woman does not die, the male protagonist is weakened in the face of the affirmative position taken on by the woman: he also chooses violence when he slaps her and signals his own humiliation. Another form of provocation from Breillat lies in her exploitation of the crime drama or the polar in the way she looks at the connection between death and women’s sexuality to highlight ‘women’s repressed anger’ (Tarr and Rollet, 2001, p. 205), and thus their non-adhesion to conventional feminine roles. Known for being a conventionally male-oriented genre, as asserted by Tarr and

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Rollet (2001), Breillat explores female sexual desire in an audacious way and disturbs genre boundaries to the extent that, borrowing Lisa Downing’s (2004, p. 265) expression, one can find in her films a ‘dislocation of ideology from genre’. Indeed, Breillat achieves this dislocation by exposing women’s subordinated sexual position and condition. Breillat thus follows Kristeva’s approach for as Cohen (1993, p. 5) puts it: ‘For Kristeva, women’s very marginality constitutes their revolutionary potential’. Undoubtedly, this observation is also valid for Breillat’s treatment of pornography, a genre, which like the polar, became popular in the 1970s – as a result of the crisis of masculinity. Both genres’ strong association with questions of what is moral and what is not creates a space for women’s directors’ to explore women’s ‘illicit’ desire. The following discussion focuses on Romance and Anatomie de l’enfer. The emphasis lies on the way Breillat takes women’s marginal position or victimisation to the extreme by expanding the idea of women’s ‘illicit’ desires or masochism as an expression of empowerment for women. A theme touched upon at the end of the film, Parfait Amour!, when Frédérique’s and Christophe’s relationship ends with the woman laughing at the man, subverting his misogyny and turning him briefly into a victim.

Empowerment in Masochism: Romance and Anatomie de l’enfer

For Romance, Breillat chose the name of a well-known and established but contentious genre among feminists. The genre of romance, as most other genres – and more specifically, crime drama as seen above – has its roots in literature. Romance in film and literature tends to be associated with women. Other commonly known names to refer to this category include ‘women’s films’, ‘women’s weepies’ or ‘chick flicks’. Just as in literature, the link between women and romance served to disassociate serious male writing/filming from women’s popular writing/filming. Scholars suggest that Breillat’s aim is to distort the genre by challenging the old conventions of romance; Krzywinsky (2006, p. 41) describes Romance as ‘the apparently non-romantic and “feminist”’. For others, the film is not a romance due to its main focus on Marie’s sexual experiences rather than on a traditional heterosexual relationship. However, if one looks at the discourses of feminists who defend as well as those who reject romantic narratives, Romance seems to align itself with a loose definition of the genre of romance. Tania Modleski (1990) and Janice Radway (1987) highlight and re-assess the benefit of romance in literature and film. In comparison, de Beauvoir (1949), Kate Millett (2001), Shulamith Firestone (1972) and Germaine Greer (1970),

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criticize the connotations of the romance genre for women. Greer (mentioned by Stevi Jackson, 1995: p. 50) even refers to romance as ‘dopes for dupes’. This group of feminists denounces the submission and subordination of women to a dominant culture. They claim that romance in literature and film reinforces and perpetuates the status quo by a process of ‘naturalisation’. Joan Forbes (1995, p. 294) explains: ‘Women are not only oppressed but their oppression is also concealed, rendered “private” and powerfully normalised through such ideologies’. Romantic narratives emphasize heterosexuality as the natural form of coupling, which in turn negates and suppresses preferences for other types of romantic partners as well as women’s sexuality in general. In contrast, other feminists saw in romance a way for women to escape their real life relationships by fantasising about a perfect union. The contrast between reality and fantasy fosters a woman’s intimate reflection. In this sense, the genre of romance is understood as offering an alternative scenario for women. It brings to light that women could resist and protest their gender role. The progressive aspect of romance was also underlined by Judy Giles’ (1995, p. 290) study, ‘“You Meet ’Em and That’s It”: Working Class Women’s Refusal of Romance Between the Wars in Britain’. Here, she highlights the fact that women in specific cultural and historical context – working class women in interwar Britain, for example – refused romance (as genre) ‘not in order to reform, but essentially to maintain, the status quo’. The feminist debate on romantic narratives highlights the genre’s instability and ambiguity. I argue that this ambiguity is expressed in women’s sexual stance, and propose that romance in [literature and] film is mainly concerned with love and female sexual experience or according to Deborah Ross (1991, p. 47), ‘the emotional intensity of women’s erotic experience’. With this view in mind, one can see how Breillat’s film, Romance, described as a film about a woman’s sexual experiences, could be consistent with the conception of romance in film [and literature]. This fundamental definition of romance is supported by Ross’ (1991) study, The Excellence of Falsehood. Romance, Realism and Women’s Contribution to the Novel. Ross examines fiction written by women mainly in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to explore, as she says, ‘the “nature” of love before its corruption by modern cynicism’ (Ross, 1991, p. 20). She opposes the definition of romance as a discourse that denies female sexuality, but rather presents it as a way to liberate female sexuality. She states (1991, p. 15): ‘The women writers in this study used romance to assert the legitimacy of feminine “truth”’. Ross’ comment concurs with that of Giles (1995) in the sense that they both consider romance as an expression of – what in a dominant culture would be termed – ‘dangerous’ female sexuality. Ross (1991, p. 40) observes that ‘Romance, with its celebration of the erotic and

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elevation of the feminine, could liberate the sexual imaginations of w ­ omen whose real-life marriages and affairs were likely to be unfulfilling’; further on she adds (Ross, p. 1991, p. 42): ‘By this time [eighteenth century] romances were blamed for arousing – even manufacturing female sexuality’. Romance as a genre is characterized by an inherent tension between fantasy and ­reality. Both feminist discourses highlight the connection between romance and the fantasy-reality dichotomy. It is either described as ‘false-consciousness’ hiding women’s ‘real’ conditions, or as a site of women’s liberation from their suppressed sexuality. Romance as a form of resistance underscores the significance of fantasy as an escape for women’s psychological and emotional power, to paraphrase Sue Vice (1995). It can be said that the ‘danger’ of romance lies in its real-life/fantasy dichotomy, since romance offers a world of imagination of female sexuality – understood as not defined and imposed by men. Ross (1991, p 58), on the other hand, stipulates that as long as this dichotomy persists and romance is equated to ‘the opposite of truth’, ‘it [does] not lend itself to such practical purposes’, that is to say ‘for romance to liberate’. Romance is hence considered as part of ideological discourses that impose on and shape women’s physical experiences and their sense of self as a sexual object. I argue that the tension between reality and fantasy – a Breillatian motif as highlighted in previous chapters – is at stake in Romance. Wilson (2001) mentions this tension within the context of critics’ responses to Buňuel’s Belle de jour (1967) and Romance. For some critics, Romance does not follow the conventions of romance and the depiction of idyllic images of heterosexual love. Hence, the title of Breillat’s film is not meant to mislead her audience, but, on the contrary, offers an opportunity to reflect on the underlying aspects of romance. The film rests also on the tension between documentary-style images – the most striking is the scene of an actual birth – and fiction. Breillat’s Romance offers a more ironic take on the genre of romance. One film poster is a close-up of female masturbating, covered by a big red cross; it confirms that this is a film about ‘dangerous’ female sexuality. The red cross hints at the film’s reception, its difficulties with the censorship board, and highlights society’s suppression of women’s sexuality. The red cross under the film title, Romance, seems to favour a reading of both meanings of the genres – romance and ­pornography – as well as its link to female sexual experiences. The beginning of Romance has a rather revelatory moment in relation to the reality-imaginary polarity. The film’s first scene opens with a shot of Paul’s face – Marie’s partner – being made up for a photo shoot. Paul is a model and he is asked to portray a matador and his masculinity while his feminine companion – the model Carla – plays the role of the submissive woman. After his make-up session, the camera is positioned behind Marie and her point of view.

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A frontal shot of Marie in Romance. © flach film

When Paul enters, the camera remains behind Marie and invites the audience to share pov. The subsequent scene is a frontal shot of Marie (see fig.7). Whereas the two previous shots emphasize her pov, this frontal shot highlights her gaze. The photographer’s instruction for the models, Paul and Carla, is that ‘it’s all in your look’ – amplified and reinforced by the frontal shot of Marie. Her gaze and facial expression reveal discontent; she looks straight ahead, her head is slightly tilted and a lock of hair slightly covers her right eye. This straight look can also be interpreted as an expression of desire. One may ask if this scene shows a real moment or emanates from her imagination. Wilson (2001, p. 149) asks: ‘Do we see the film’s scenes as events in the life of its protagonist Marie, or as scenarios that she imagines?’ The emphasis on Paul’s face being made-up reinforces the motifs of fantasy as well as the contrast between the made-up and the real. Wilson (2001) and Beugnet (2006) talk of enacting a ‘performance’ in a reference to Butler’s (1990) work on gender performance. In other words, Breillat’s emphasis on performance aims to denaturalise and de-essentialise gender roles and to magnify the power dynamics involved. Following Lesley Brill (1988, p. xiv) who ‘regards Hitchcock as a creator of romance’, it could be said that Breillat assumes that ‘movies are not made-up reflections that are therefore false, but heightened and essentialized engagement with life’ (Brill, 1988, p. 58). The close-up of Paul’s face being made up refers to the application or imposition of ideological masculine and feminine behaviours such as ‘brittle’ and ‘edgy’ for men/ Paul and ‘submissive’ for women/Carla. These behaviours are also reinforced in romance (literature and film) according to second-wave feminists. Seen

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in this light, the scene described above could emanate from Marie’s desire of unity with her partner, just as Paul and Carla seem to embody the illusion of wholeness formed by heterosexual couples in romance. Wilson (2001, p. 150) gives an interpretation of the character of Marie by referring to the genre of romance; she indicates that ‘Marie, like a fairy-tale heroine, contends with an imaginary world, a world of “romance”, fit for an enactment of “Beauty and the Beast”’. What prompts this interpretation is the contrast between the opening and the subsequent scene; the second scene still concentrates on a couple but this time, the idyllic couple (Paul and Carla) is replaced by real-life partners Paul and Marie. Marie is frustrated by Paul’s lack of sexual intimacy; in her own words, he can’t love her physically. Similar to a heroine in a romantic narrative, Marie sets out on a quest, ‘seeking and finding out who one really is’ (Ross, 1991 p. 98). Hence, the film could be described, following Anita Brookner’s (as cited in Joannou, 1998, p. 91) definition of true romantic fiction, as being ‘about delayed happiness and the pilgrimage you go through to get that imagined happiness’. A woman’s search for her own identity seems to be the major theme of romantic narratives. Instead of describing this quest in terms of ‘a pilgrimage’, Brill prefers (1988, p. 32) the terms of ‘descent’ and ‘ascent’: ‘their plots [romance] are shaped by descents to infernal places and by ascents to truth’. The romantic heroine’s trajectory, as defined by Brill appears to fit Marie’s journey or ‘pilgrimage’ of descent and ascent resulting in her transformation. Marie’s pilgrimage consists of sexual experiences with strangers, Paolo – played by the Italian porn actor Siffredi – whom she meets in a Parisian bar at night. She also meets a man on the stairs of Paul’s flat, who ends up raping her from behind. What has been deemed upsetting in Romance is the high visibility of Marie’s sexual explorations. Breillat renders visible what in the discourse of romance remains private, and thus invisible; it is hinted at, but is not made visible. Her sexual experiences cross boundaries and hence seem limitless. As such, the film has often been criticised for its open and sexually explicit or ‘pornographic’ images. To justify their reviews, critics referred to scenes where Siffredi is shown in the nude, the rape scene and especially Marie’s sadomasochistic acts with Robert, the headmaster of the school where she works. These scenes emphasise Marie’s ‘descent’ by showing her in a position of a passive object. They appear to reinforce the imposed objectified position of women in dominant society. Indeed, when Robert suggests gagging Marie, she accepts and says that it is the destiny of women to be dominated. She inflicts upon herself the same type of masochistic relationship she experiences with Paul. She feels the ‘need to cling to him like a leach’, and, furthermore, she ‘never asked to be free’. She

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thus enacts women’s dependency and submissiveness to men as perpetuated by the classic romantic narrative. Paul, by contrast, expresses his independence by going out and conquering the world like a man.5 Breillat confirms this view in her interview with Ruth Williams for Sight and Sound when she says: ‘the relationship that Marie has with her boyfriend is based on masochism and ­self-depreciation’ (Breillat as cited in Williams, 1999, online). Thus, when Robert dominates her by gagging her and tying her up – he says he senses that he can go far with her, – ‘he uses the fact that she is used to masochism, through her relationship with Paul, to take her somewhere else’, that is to say, ‘take her to the other side and free her from masochism’ (Breillat as cited in Williams, 1999, online). There are two scenes in which Marie with Robert is involved in masochistic acts. Both scenes focus – the second one mixed with slight irony – on the precision of Robert’s movements as he ties her up and the theatricality of masochism. This sense of theatricality is also conveyed by the Japanese decors in Robert’s room. Robert’s movements are significant because they refer back to the opening scene. Instead of covering up reality/the physical, as in the first scene, the enacted masochism actually suspends reality/sensuality. Robert appears to be like an artist as he becomes more precise in restraining Marie; the visuals led the viewer feel her constraint. Tied up and gagged, she is immobilised and now is on display for the spectator. However, the way the camera lingers on this spectacle does not objectify her. According to Robert, it is a ‘very beautiful, truly beautiful’ experience. This scene is not meant for pure consumption – as expected for such a scene in a pornographic film – but to be appreciated or contemplated: Marie’s constrained posture should be viewed. She is transformed into something greater than an object. In this state of suspense, sexual pleasure is postponed and transformed into a type of idealism/purity or art, which generates awe or contemplation among the creator/spectator. Wilson (2001, p. 153) draws a parallel with Bernini’s statue of St Theresa as the ‘archetypal embodiment of female sexual pleasure in a silent and lifeless statue’. However, Wilson (2001, p. 153) claims that Breillat challenges the notion of ideal femininity as presented in marble statue. She argues (2001, p. 153) ‘that in this bondage scene Breillat is precisely breaking that silence and breathing life into the white marble statue that has been, for so long, an icon of ideal femininity’. These masochistic scenes reveal the intensity of a woman’s desire in the elevation of the physical, or, as defined by Breillat during her interview with Claire Denis (Breillat as cited in Denis, 1999, p. 43), as 5 See Sophie Bélot (2005) for a Foucauldian discussion of Marie’s masochistic relationship with Paul.

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‘le ravissement’: ‘Ravissement est un mot qui veut bien dire ce qu’il veut dire; un visage éclairé d’une lumière intérieure, d’une beauté incroyable. Je disais souvent à Caroline Ducey que je voulais qu’elle soit un corps incandescent, un corps de lumière. Cela a à voir avec la sainteté’. The idea that women find purity through humiliation – to paraphrase Breillat (1999, p. 43) when she declares, ‘c’est le fait même d’en passer par la souillure qui amène les femmes vers la pureté’ – is further explored in her following film, Anatomie de l’enfer. Breillat’s film, Romance, takes the form of a romance, that is to say, a quest for sexual identity. In this way, she equates elements of romance with those of masochism. In other words, Breillat uses the structural components of the romantic narrative, or the quest informing conventional romance constituted by the metaphysical or literal patterns of descent and ascent, also described by Brill (1988, p. 66) as patterns of ‘sacrifice and resurrection’, to highlight the similar features they share with masochism. Breillat shows that romance is the cultural representation of dominant desire, which is masochistic for women because it requires women’s subordination to men and the suppression of their desire. Hence, in her film she presents the idea of masochism to confront and overcome the constraints of women’s emotional desire. By highlighting the subordination of women’s sexual experiences in dominant heterosexual relations, Breillat manages to show how it is possible to subvert women’s condition through masochism. This is achieved by Breillat’s concern with romance’s and masochism’s literal and metaphysical patterns of descent and ascent. These patterns produce an effect of suspense, which according to Deleuze (2006, p. 33), is ‘an essential ingredient of romantic fiction’. In this context, the idea of suspense should be understood as ‘scenes of frozen quality’ (Deleuze, 2006, p. 69), which ‘suspend gestures and attitudes’ (Deleuze, 2006, p. 70). In Romance suspense is expressed in Marie’s actual physical immobilisation as a way to postpone pleasure as long as possible. This suspension or disavowal of pleasure is what enables Marie to arrive at her ‘tangible reality’ (Deleuze, 2006, p. 37) or ‘a supersensual sentimentality’ (Deleuze, 2006, p. 52), which is the specific ‘point at which idealism is realised’ (Deleuze, 2006, p. 55). In this way, masochism is a vehicle for exploring women’s transformation into a state of purity as characteristic of their romantic ascent. Breillat has succeeded in rewriting the romance by focusing on the masochist criticism as part of the dominant cultural discourse. By making the cultural inscriptions of women’s desires explicit through masochism, Breillat demythologises romance and makes the intimate nature of female desire, or pure female desire, visible.

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Romance bears several similarities with Tapage nocturne in their treatment of the female protagonists’ masochistic acts, as discussed in the second chapter. Both films’ treatment of masochistic acts can be compared with the film Anatomie de l’enfer and its focus on a male/female relationship and the woman’s quest for her sexual identity. While the woman lies on a bed totally exposed, the man scrutinises her naked body with a particular attention to her anatomy. His observation involves drawing on and inserting objects into her genitals. The film revolves around the woman paying a man, randomly picked up in a gay nightclub, to watch her where she is unwatchable. Like in Romance, a woman enacts through her body the dominant cultural expectation of gender roles by displaying her body for the masculine scrutinising gaze. The woman pays the man – played by Rocco Siffredi – to come to her house and to look at, and explore, her most intimate bodily parts over the course of four nights. It is this female intimacy that men fear and makes them despise women as Marie in Romance tells herself: ‘You despise me because I’m a woman. You don’t love me one bit. I disgust you, I appal you. I think I’m the lowest’. A similar statement is made by the woman in Anatomie de l’enfer when she explains her suicidal attempt by saying ‘parce que je suis une femme. […] Vous comprenez très bien’. Because they are women, both female protagonists experience abandonment or rejection from men. A tv program watched by Paul, while he waits for Marie, gives an explanation for the men’s behaviour in both films: ‘Maybe due to his education, women always seemed strange to him, he preferred the company of his friends. Women were from another world, somewhat superior – et indéchiffrable’.6 The choice of a homosexual man in Anatomie de l’enfer is made clear in his function to exacerbate the idea that women seem strange to men, and, as a result, men prefer the company of men. As a matter of fact, Anatomie de l’enfer starts in a nightclub where woman look at men dancing, a scene reminiscent of Romance. The nightclub is the place where, according to Marie’s interior monologue, Paul ‘dances because he wants to seduce. He wants to seduce because he wants to conquer. He wants to conquer because he is a man’. The bar and the nightclub are common locations in Breillat’s films. In Une vraie jeune fille to Anatomie de l’enfer, the bar and/or the club is the place for male prowess and the alienation or rejection of the woman. The end of Anatomie de l’enfer also takes place in a provincial bar, where the man goes to drink to drown his humiliation. As a result of this humiliation, he feels threatened and resorts to a violent and misogynistic discourse – ‘bar talk’ – which

6 The last word ‘indéchiffrable’ is not translated into English in the film; therefore it is left in French.

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perpetuates myths about women. The man talks about women in a derogative way to hold on to their position of superiority. Throughout history, men have placed themselves in superior positions and defined women as passive objects. De Beauvoir’s landmark 1949 study clearly presented and developed this idea. Images of women as sexually available can be traced in traditional Western visual arts to film as well as literature. Its most extreme form can be found in pornography. Noting Lynda Nead, Rosemary Betterton (1996, p. 33) argues that the function of the female nude tradition ‘has been the containment and regulation of the female sexual body’ or, in other words, ‘the forms, conventions, and poses of art have worked metaphorically to shore up the female body – to seal orifices and to prevent marginal matter from transgressing the boundary dividing the inside of the body and the outside, the self from the space of the other’ (Nead as cited in Betterton, 1996, p. 33). The connection between visual art and Breillat’s films has already been highlighted by Wilson (2001) with regards to Romance. Another feature that Anatomie de l’enfer shares with Romance is thus its link to visual art. In an interview with Alexandre Tylski (2003) for Cadrage.net,7 Breillat declares that Anatomie de l’enfer, ‘c’est complètement de la peinture. Ce film est de la peinture vivante’.8 More precisely and interestingly, she relates her choice of actress, Amira Casar, to visual art to assert: ‘elle, je vais la peindre en odalisque. Je l’ai prise en rapport à la peinture’. Breillat reiterates, but also expands on, the same idea when she says, in an interview with Gaillac Morgue (2003),9 moi ce que j’aimais chez Amira, c’était son côté odalisque mais aussi odalisque avec tout ce qui est beau dans la peinture, c’est-à-dire un corps de peinture avec des petits ventres, une peau qui est complètement nacrée et puis cet abandon au regard qui n’est pas ostentatoire, qui est un abandon. C’est le peintre qui regarde, mais c’est pas pour rien que l’on dit que les modèles posent. In Anatomie de l’enfer the woman poses for the painter/the man to paint/tell what he can see (see fig.8). The woman’s pose and the man’s gaze are ­significant factors in the film as well as in other forms of visual art. Both of these factors 7 See Alexandre Tylski (Octobre 2003). 8 During the same interview Breillat also mentions the exhibition in Paris on 16 November 2003, which enables her to explore the relation between painting and the film, Anatomie de l’enfer. In this exhibition, she was able to show ‘photogrammes’ (shots/pictures) of the film due to their resemblance to paintings. 9 This interview appears on the French version of the dvd, Anatomie de l’enfer, 2003.

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The woman poses for the man in Anatomie de l’enfer. © flach film

form the basis of art enquiry in general. In Anatomie de l’enfer, the woman lies naked on a bed with iron bars, a crucifix hangs on the wall above her head; an association of woman’s sexual body with the inferno and a concrete illustration of the ‘hell’ in the film’s title. In her study of cultural representation of the monstrous feminine, Barbara Creed (1998) concentrates on the association of woman’s sexual body with the devil. Considered unclean, women’s anatomy must be contained and suppressed in symbolic religious society.10 An image in the film shows the man inserting a three-pronged fork into the woman from behind. With the three-pronged fork in the foreground, the woman is seen through the bars connotating her containment and repression. The bars mark a spatial division between the foreground – the man – and the background – the woman. They establish the boundary between the inside – the woman’s body – and the outside. The inside must be contained in the background because it is associated with the unclean in western dominant culture. Loathing is expressed in the act of containment or repression; the ambiguity of the female body is revealed. According to Kristeva (1982, p. 4), the female body is abject because of the ambiguity it sustains, for the female body is ‘what does not respect borders, positions, rules. The in-between, the ambiguous, the composite’. The sexual female body is fluid, and in this sense the boundary between the inside and 10

I have already stressed this link mentioned in Barbara Creed’s study in ‘Embracing Sexual Difference in Catherine Breillat’s Anatomy of Hell (2003)’ (2010).

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the outside collapse. In the film, the female body is associated with the ocean: ‘Puisque cet océan comme la femme était un vide et pouvait ouvrir ses flans pour étreindre jusqu’à la disparition totale’. The female body is compared to a hole, a pit, also referred to as such by Marie in Romance; it can make things totally disappear and then appear again. What is outside can be inside and vice versa, as shown by the oval-shaped stone that the man inserts into the woman’s body but is rejected by her body. The scene that has been referred to as most disturbing by critics involves a tampon dipped into a glass, the close-up shot highlights this crucial moment. As already noticed by Marie in Romance, tampons are disgusting to men. They must be taken out and discreetly hidden under the bed so that ‘the guy’s not turned off’. What comes out of the woman’s body, like menstrual blood, should be hidden, repressed and is hence ‘subject to cultural taboo’ (Betterton, 1996, p. 117). However, in Anatomie de l’enfer, Breillat shows what is expelled from the female body, such as menstrual blood. Menstrual blood is not unclean or taboo, but is related to Christ’s pure blood. This conflation is shown in the act of sharing the glass containing a tampon diluted in water. The camera focuses on this glass and the act of sharing her blood with the man, her enemy. This is a crucial moment as the act of drinking transforms the woman’s blood into pure or royal blood; distinctions or boundaries between both of them are collapsed. The strong link between blood and religion has already been established in the recurrent images of the woman asleep under the crucifix. In an interview, Breillat talks about the bars of the bed and the cross that is created by two bars, which produce the effect of the bed as a sacrificial space. On one occasion, the camera lingers on the crucifix and then switches to the woman with the same lingering pace and resting on bloodstains from Christ’s feet and hands. These marks of blood symbolise Christ’s and the woman’s sacrifice, but also his sacrifice and, hence, her resurrection. At the end of the film, she disappears and in a subsequent scene this is interpreted as her death shown by her falling into the sea. However, she is pushed over the cliff by a man, and her fall into the sea is a symbolic death. According to the woman, ‘l’homme donne la mort et donc la vie éternelle’, like Christ. Similarly to Marie in Romance, the woman achieves purity and hence the transition from the human body to a work of art is also achieved in Anatomie de l’enfer. As a result, the scenes focusing specifically on the woman’s genitalia have been equated to Courbet’s painting, L’Origine du Monde – as mentioned for example in an interview by Laurent Devanne (2004). All these conflations of woman, Christ and paintings grant her a phenomenological grace and hence require a way of looking, which differs from the objectifying male gaze. The reflection in the mirror of the naked woman, as seen by the male gaze, becomes blurred

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expressing the male’s inadequacy on looking at the woman. The mirror places the female body at a distance as an object of representation for the male gaze. The blurred image, suggesting the unrepresented woman, thus challenges the distance between the viewer and the person/object viewed and requires instead ‘an intimate distance’ – to borrow an expression from Betterton (1996) to refer to woman’s embodied transgression. What the viewer is presented with is not the unrepressed or perfect female body as an object of the male gaze, but, on the contrary, the viewer is presented with the unmasking of ‘the horror of the “marginal matter” contained in its interior’ (Betterton, 1996, p. 135). The pose adopted by the woman is intimate, her body is totally opened, her orifices are not sealed but opened and fluid destabilising any fixed cultural boundaries or taboos. This transcendence of the visible world introduces ‘other ways of seeing’ (Gronstad, 2006, p. 163). Anatomie de l’enfer’s narrative centres around this specific idea of a man paid to come and watch a woman’s most intimate body parts, or her ‘body lived from inside’ – to borrow an expression from Vivian Sobchack (1992, p. 165). In a sense, the film enacts Marie’s thought in Romance of being ‘opened up all the way, when you can see that the mystique is a load of innards, the woman is dead’. For the woman explicitly opens herself up to the man’s vision. This type of vision can be called phenomenological because it refers to ‘the phenomenology of vision’, as described by Sobchack (1992). Indeed, in The Address of the Eye. A Phenomenology of Film Experience, Sobchack (1992) takes a phenomenological approach to film reception and illustrates her position by taking the example viewpoint of a painter – an example taken from Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1968).11 In comparison to a familiar type of vision, the painter’s vision – as well as the filmmaker’s, as Sobchack (1992, p. 90) notes – ‘interrogates’ because the painter searches and rests on ‘the latent visibility from which such figures emerge and against which they stand in relation to its latency’. Breillat has often compared her filmmaking to painting and herself to a painter – especially in the case of Anatomie de l’enfer. It is not surprising that she should take the position of the man in Anatomie de l’enfer; this is also an issue, which she has frequently addressed in interviews. In order to make her position and his interchangeable, she uses her own voice for the narrator’s voiceover as well as the man’s inner thoughts. Therefore, the man should be understood as occupying the position of a filmmaker/painter in front of his work/model who needs to search for and rest on the woman’s latency, or latent visibility.

11

Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1968) notes the example of the painter in his phenomenological study of Le Visible et l’invisible as well as in his last essay entitled L’Oeil et l’esprit (1964).

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The woman reminds him during the first night that ‘la nuit est déjà avancée, vous ne savez rien de ce qu’est une femme’. Later on she tells him ‘vous n’avez pas fait ce que j’appelle regarder’ because he cannot stop at the familiar type of vision or the vision taken for granted. She thus invites him to come closer instead of keeping him at a distance: ‘Pourquoi vous êtes venu vous asseoir? Approchez. Venez voir. C’est pour ça que je vous paie, non?’. She encourages him to take an even more intimate approach by going beyond what is visible – or what is objectively visible. Similar to a painter, it is through colour that he is expected to experience the female body beyond the taken for granted vision, that is to say, vision as understood in its ‘intentional structure’ – to borrow an expression from Sobchack (1992). Vision should be understood not only in its visible and objective modality, but also in its invisible and subjective modality. The woman asks him to pull the string of the tampon and bring to light the red colour. The camera rests on the red colour of the stained tampon and what supposedly represents women’s impurity: ‘Tu vois tout est là. A cause de ce sang ils nous disent impures’, she says holding and touching it with her hands. She then transfers it to a glass of water. While looking at the red colour intermingling with the water, she notes: ‘je regarde ces efflorescences de sang rouge qui se libèrent dans l’eau’. The same red colour of the tampon, which is stained, is transformed into a different red colour and into a liquid that can now be drunk. What must be suppressed or hidden is now touched, smelt and tasted. The female body is comprehended ‘haptically and also proxemically’ (Sobchack, 1992, p. 133). Breillat hence comprehends vision in its broader form drawn from ‘the ­perceptive capacity of the body to touch and feel, to hear, to smell, to taste, to move, to inhabit the world intentionally as a total being’ (Sobchack, 1992, p. 94). This act of vision conceived as a perceptive experience ­acknowledges the existence of the introceptive aspect of subjective embodiment of the woman. The intimate and subjective vision enacted in this film is connected to the woman’s sense of self. She has made visible to him the invisible and private body experienced as ‘my own’. Instead of seeing the female body in its usual objective invisible form, the man experiences her body as a subject of vision. In talking about the body, Sobchack (1992, p. 304) declares: ‘it is a body that living perception and expression visually from the inside as “mine”, cannot simultaneously live it visually from the outside except through the eyes of others’. The expectations require that the man looks at the woman’s body not in terms of ‘sameness and uniformity’ (Gronstad, 2006, p. 166) as propagated by mass mediated images of the body found in its most explicit way in pornographic magazines. While looking at her body from the inside instead of the outside, he is faced not with a passive body but with ‘a lived-body, informed

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by its particular sensible experience and charged with its own intentional impetus’ (Sobchack, 1992, p. 305). This film has, hence, allowed Breillat to explore new ways of seeing and of considering the female body not as an image but as a subject. I therefore concur with Gronstad’s (2006, p. 168) conclusion: ‘What Casar wants is an acknowledgement of her body’s actual existence independently of the process of visualisation. […] a gaze that remakes the individual as a complex, composite being: a subject rather than just an image’. The contract sets up a relationship between the woman and the man founded on vision. Vision has always been a fundamental element in the c­ onstitution of the Self and the Other, especially concerning gender relations. For, the Other is usually positioned as the object of the Subject of vision. It is even more present in relation to the female body, as noted by Sobchack (1992, p. 157), women live the ever present possibility that ‘one will be gazed upon as a mere body, as shape and flesh that presents oneself as the potential object of another ­subject’s intentions and manipulations’. In the film, the contract, founded on vision in relation to the woman’s body, relies on an unusual act of vision as it requires the man to watch the woman’s most intimate body and body parts or, the body lived from inside or introceptively – as stated in the film. This vision blurs any boundaries that social norms establish between the inside and the outside of the body, the visible and the invisible or the subject and the object. Here, the contract challenges fixed positions and sets up a dialogical relationship of the visible and the invisible and hence destabilises man’s dominant position vis-à-vis the ambiguous watchable/unwatchable woman’s body. The invisible aspect of the woman’s body is usually reduced to a visibility that is revealed. The intimate way in which she sees herself is made accessible to the man and, it can hence be inferred that the man is made to experience the woman’s body as she experiences it herself, that is to say as an incarnate being. Thus, the film rests on the woman’s lived-body and the ambiguity and synthesization of its senses. With Breillat’s voice-over uttering or enunciating the man’s inner thoughts, he is inflected with a real creative status and thus similarly a painter or filmmaker, the man needs to practice ‘a phenomenology of vision’ (Sobchack, 1992, p. 91) or to bring into being the figure through his vision. As Gary Madison (1988, p. 104) comments on Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s arguments on painting: ‘Painting does not copy anything whatsoever which exists before it; it expresses only visibility, that opening in Being; and an opening is nothing at all, merely the fact that something begins to appear’. He hence learns to comprehend her body as she does, that is to say through its different senses – smell, taste and touch, i.e. haptically. This position implies that the man has to transgress preconceived constructs of what a woman is. The man should adopt a

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reflective and reflexive position, or in other words: ‘a process of critically distancing oneself not from the phenomena under investigation, but from the taken-for-granted judgements, beliefs, and presuppositions that ground our everyday existence as “reality” and limit the possibilities for understanding the phenomena’ (Sobchack, 1992, p. 36). Anatomie de l’enfer stands as Breillat’s desire to liberate women from hegemonic ideologies that posit their body as a passive object for and by the male gaze. Instead, she demythologises this representation of women while questioning modern dominant discourses that disseminate prevailing perceptions of the female body. The film foregrounds woman’s ‘lived-body informed by its particular sensible experience and charged with its own intentional impetus’ (Sobchack, 1992, p. 305).

Conclusion This concluding section will look at Breillat’s latest two fairy tale films, Barbe bleue (2009) and La Belle endormie (2010) in relation to adaptations and female sexual be(com)ing, underpinned by the notion of intimacy, as addressed in the introduction and developed throughout this book. Although seen as a departure from her early work, this section will point out that crossovers exist with Breillat’s previous films. It will be emphasised that despite the fact that the fairy tale films have been made after the Decalogue, they could be seen as formative influences on Breillat’s creativity.

Adaptation of Fairy Tales: Reading and Dreaming

Following Breillat’s cinematographic tradition (as established in Chapter 1), her latest films are adaptations. Breillat has brought to the screen two fairytales, Barbe bleue (2009) and La Belle endormie (2010) and intends to adapt a final one, La Belle et la Bête written by Jean-Marie Leprince de Beaumont in 1757. Barbe bleue is, as the title would suggest, a more faithful rendition of the original text written by Charles Perrault than La Belle endormie. Breillat changed the title of Perrault’s text La Belle au bois dormant because the main story remains faithful to the idea of a young girl being put to sleep for a hundred years. La belle endormie opens with the birth of Anastasia, a young Russian princess who, on her 6th birthday, is sentenced to sleep for one hundred years until she wakes at the age of 16. While asleep, Anastasia dreams of great adventures. The film centres on her dreams as both a development of the story and of its main character. In her dreams she wanders alone until she comes across a mother and her son, Peter, who adopt her. When Peter is abducted by the Snow Queen, Anastasia goes searching for him. She then meets a Gypsy girl who gives her a deer to cross snowy fields to Lapland. When Anastasia wakes up at the age of 16, she meets her prince, Johan, who she (mis)takes for Peter. Barbe bleue’s narrative is told from the perspective of a young girl, Catherine, who reads Perrault’s tale to her older sister, Marie-Anne. The tale tells the story of two sisters, Marie-Catherine and Anne, who are left destitute when their father dies. The older sister, Marie-Catherine, decides to marry the wealthy owner of the castle, Bluebeard, of whom it is said his previous wives all mysteriously disappeared soon after their wedding. Before departing for a long journey, Bluebeard entrusts the keys of the castle to his new wife, Marie-Catherine; he tells her that one of them must not be used because it opens the door to a forbidden

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���7 | doi 10.1163/9789004343849_008

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chamber. When Bluebeard finds out she has opened this door, he tells MarieCatherine she must die. In fact she is spared and it is Bluebeard who dies instead. The film then returns to the present and to Catherine reading about this incident. This frightens her older sister, Marie-Anne, so much that she falls through an open trapdoor to her death. These two tales, Barbe bleue and La Belle endormie are well-known, canonical texts that stand in stark contrast to Breillat’s previous adaptations, as examined in the first chapter. Perrault’s adaptation of these texts from oral tales and subsequent versions of these tales by other writers and filmmakers, such as Walt Disney, have contributed to their popularity and cultural authority underpinned by conformity and conventionality. As Jack Zipes (2011, p. 19) stresses: ‘it is Walt Disney who became king of the fairy-tale film in the twentieth century’, and adds, ‘the classical fairy tale narrative for children and for adults reinforced the patriarchal symbolical order based on rigid notions of sexuality and gender’. This is where Breillat’s new direction in cinema lies, in adapting classical texts, such as fairy tales. However, aspects of her films, such as the complex narrative being framed by acts of reading and dreaming by contemporary female protagonists, suggest that Breillat offers a reappraisal and recreation of these tales. This section will, therefore, show that adapting classical texts, such as the fairy tales is, for Breillat, a way of addressing (female) self-formation through re-creating texts. It will be shown that the fairy tale films explore female sexual be(com)ing from an authorial point of view informed by textual interactions and transformations. Barbe bleue and La belle endormie may be classical texts, but the change in the tale’s title (La Belle endormie) heralds Breillat’s new personal or authorial stance towards adaptations. As shown in Chapter 1, Breillat’s personal adaptations are characterised by the idea of dialogic, understood as a textual synergy flowing both ways. This textual synergy is mainly illustrated in notions of repetition and recycling; adaptations are repetitions of previous texts or films and recycling of actors creating a family of texts in interaction (her Decalogue and her forthcoming trilogy composed of fairy tales are illustrations of this idea). A dialogue between texts or films is thus suggested which has been referred to as a synergy between a diversity of texts or films to highlight the idea of repetition or recycling through time and their transformation. As for fairy tales, they are based on this idea of synergy linked to the notions of repetition and recycling. Fairy tales originate in oral culture. They have been adapted several times and have a strong influence on popular cinema (see Zipes, 2011) as well as auteur cinema (Breillat, and Jean Cocteau with his adaptation of La Belle et la Bête in 1946). For instance, fairy tale motifs have impacted on the female protagonists’ attitudes in Breillat’s films, like in A ma soeur! and Romance

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discussed in Chapters 3 and 5. Fairy tale motifs and characteristics are so pervasive that they permeate and result in cultural creations as well as social conventions. The films, Romance and A ma soeur!, reveal these cultural and social conventions and challenge them. The youngest sister, Anaïs utters a crude vision of the world and the film deconstructs the ideal of romance by turning the idyllic relationship between Elena and Fernando into a nightmare. By adapting classical fairy tales, Breillat focuses on the idea of repetition as a transformative act. In Breillat’s films, the process of repetition or recycling is linked to the ideas of reading and dreaming. Repetition in Breillat’s fairy tale films is enacted through the parallel narratives created by the young girls’ reading and dreaming, prompting the films’ story in Barbe bleue and La belle endormie. Reading and dreaming are posited as transformative processes in their protesting and challenging cultural and social conventions. Repetition and recycling of the tales through the acts of reading and dreaming are presented as influencing the sexual behaviour of young girls by challenging gender conventions (their values and behaviours for girls). In numerous interviews Breillat has highlighted the importance of reading at an early age for her and for young girls in general. Breillat confesses to Clouzot (2004) that she experienced Alice’s parental confinement during her teenage years and that the local library was her place for escapism. She explains that she read a wide range of authors, among them Gilbert Cesbron, Jacques Prévert, Boris Vian, François Villon, Lautréamont, Dostoievski, Sade and Georges Bataille (the fairy tales could be added to this list). This practice influenced her work where literature, cinema, fiction and reality all intermingle. In a more recent interview released on the Bluebeard dvd (2009), Breillat mentions the connection between dreaming and reading when she says: ‘so, in order to dream, children read fairy tales, especially those of Perrault’. Tales more so than any other written texts are strongly associated with the act of reading – parents reading bedtime stories to their children or, at a later stage, children reading these stories to themselves like in Breillat’s film, Barbe bleue. Reading and its association with imagination are prominent elements in Breillat’s films, as seen in Chapter 1. The act of reading (the script) highlights the connection between imagination and generating mental images. Chapter 1 emphasised that these mental images create a ‘reality effect’, which impacts on and is transformed by the reality of lived experiences or the real world. The connection between her fairy tale films and acts of reading and dreaming foregrounds Breillat’s personal position towards adaptations. Breillat highlights the complexity of acts of reading, which implies that a multitude of readers can create or recreate the stories in their own ways. Referring to Angela Carter’s writing, Martine Dutheil de la Rochère (2013, p. 26)

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states: ‘[…] every reader is a potential author who can tease out new meanings in old texts’. The themes of reading and dreaming also highlight the tales’ origin in oral tradition, which brings to the fore the idea of repetition, recycling and transformation or recreation of a text. The act of transformation is associated with oral culture as based on the transference of a story from a storyteller to the listener (who could then become the teller of the tale). This relationship is suggested between Catherine as the storyteller and Marie-Anne as the listener in Barbe bleue. In the film, the telling of the story is interrupted on several occasions by them discussing the text, as well as by the older sister’s ‘sensitivity’. Marie-Anne is occasionally too frightened to carry on listening to her sister, especially the end of the story when the characters face death. What transpires are the sisters’ differences underpinned by their different points of view on the themes of the tale but also their diverging interpretation. They talk about marriage, seen in a romantic light for the oldest, Marie-Anne, and associated with violence in Catherine’s eyes. Their divergent views relate to each imagining a different story in accordance with their experiences with previous cultural texts (or readings). It is obvious that Marie-Anne’s vision of marriage is based on traditional cultural myths, such as Cendrillon and La Belle au bois dormant, as adapted by Disney. Repetition and recycling are also connected with intertextuality, as highlighted by Breillat’s adaptations. Interactions between texts inform the making of Breillat’s films; Barbe bleue shifts between Catherine’s reading of Perrault’s tale and film images, while La Belle endormie is a combination of different texts, mainly La reine des neiges (Hans Christian Andersen, 1844) but also Alice au pays des merveilles (Lewis Carroll, 1865). The online review for Cabinet des Fées (2011) identified elements from other tales such as the Ugly Duckling and Ali Baba in Breillat’s La Belle endormie. Consistent with the traditional storytelling, one tale is influenced by another as it is passed on from one generation to the next; the narratives of Breillat’s films are also being reinvented as they are being told/screened. Intertextuality raises questions of authorship; in this case, the young girls are the creators of their own texts. When Catherine is reading the story, her mental images are projected onto the screen to match the images of the film. For instance, the film shows Catherine’s imagining herself entering the forbidden chamber and stepping into the puddle of blood dripping from Bluebeard’s wives’ corpses. Both Catherine and Anastasia are the narrators/authors of the films’ stories as their imagination and dreams, fostered by their reading, drive the narratives. Catherine and Anastasia are young narrators and their age highlights the cultural power these stories have on their minds and behaviours. As aforementioned, Marie-Anne’s vision of marriage is based on the romantic plot defined by patriarchal society as opposed to Catherine’s informed by her own vivid imagination.

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In Barbe bleue, the film narrative is framed by the young Catherine’s reading the tale to her older sister, Marie-Anne. In La Belle endormie, when the young princess Anastasia is sent to sleep for a hundred years by the evil fairy, the film shows her dreams. Breillat’s adaptations consider the interactions between visual as well as written texts, as seen in Chapter 1, but then also explore their effect on young girls. Adaptation is thus understood and examined in relation to these acts of reading and dreaming and their effect on young girls’ transformation.

Fairy Tales and Gender Expectations

Since the early 1970s,1 feminists have influenced the production and reception of fairy tales. Feminist writers and theorists uncovered and challenged fairy-tales’ complicity with patriarchal constructions of identity. Cristina Bacchilega and John Rieder (2010, p. 24) state that ‘North American feminists argued vehemently in the public sphere about the genre’s role in shaping gender-specific attitudes about self, romance, marriage, family, and social power’. These feminist critiques have been influential in identifying and questioning romanticised views of the genre. A pioneer of this position is the French writer and philosopher, de Beauvoir, who in Le Deuxième Sexe (1949) was already criticising fairy tales’ socialization power and was hence a precursor of American feminists, according to Donald Haase (2004). De Beauvoir’s work in exposing the feminine myth was further developed by feminists who looked at depictions of fairy tales’ heroines to ask questions of their representation of women and their effect on gender identity and behaviour. As Haase (2004, p. 3) comments: There was – and still is – widespread agreement with Lieberman’s argument that fairy tales ‘have been made the repositories of the dreams, hopes, and fantasies of generations of girls’ and that ‘millions of women must surely have formed their psycho-sexual self-concepts, and their ideas of what they could or could not accomplish, what sort of behaviour would be rewarded, and of the nature of reward itself, in part from their favourite fairy tales’ (385). In France, fairy tales continue to interest women writers and philosophers, such as Hélène Cixous (‘Sorties’, 1975) who uses the fairy tale form to contest the binary division and hierarchy of gender. Elizabeth Harries (2004, p. 100) 1 Alison Lurie published ‘Fairy Tale Liberation’ in 1970.

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claims that: ‘[Cixous] believes that it is precisely the repetition of the “once upon a time” that has helped create women who cannot value themselves, who are most themselves precisely and paradoxically when they are absent or not themselves, “the same story repeating woman’s destiny in love across the centuries with the cruel hoax of its plot” (67)’. In light of this statement, the significant role attributed to reading and dreaming in Breillat’s fairy tale films can already be anticipated. Fairy tales impose on our imagination a certain vision of our world governed by hegemonic norms and values, which Breillat intends to counter by focusing on the process of (textual and self) transformations underpinned by the imagination (and reading). Spatial and temporal indeterminacies in Breillat’s tales corroborate the idea of persisting ideological underpinnings in fairy tales. In Barbe bleue, the film shifts from the present, of the young girl reading the story, to the past and Perrault’s tale set in the late eighteenth century. This implies the enduring effect of the socialization processes of fairy tales on the psycho-sexual formation of young girls. The same applies to Breillat’s La Belle endormie where temporal and geographical markers are totally absent. Even the clocks around Anastasia’s bed do not serve any real purpose. The clocks act as reminder of the time, working as a constraint on young girls who experience it as lengthy and boring before reaching adulthood. Breillat has already expanded on the idea of time associated with boredom in her films about female adolescence as explored in the character of Elena in A ma soeur! in Chapter 3. As a young girl, Anastasia, in La Belle endormie, has to comply with conventional gender roles (imposed by the fairies at her birth) of waiting passively for a charming prince to awaken her. Breillat’s film narrative is built on this specific time frame when Anastasia falls asleep and starts dreaming. It is a pivotal moment in the narrative development of the film. Breillat introduces the idea of dreaming as a passive as well as an active act by focusing on the young girl’s transformation. The film shows the young girl’s dream world where gender identities and behaviours are challenged. In this sense, Breillat follows in de Beauvoir’s and other feminists’ footsteps by creating awareness of fairy tales’ modelling of gender-specific identities and behaviour. Like the feminists, she explored the potential of fairy tales, in their repetition and recycling, to ask questions about female identity, social conditioning, gender and relationships. However, as far as Breillat’s relation to feminism is concerned, it is a contentious issue as shown with regards to her previous films. She has often been criticised for perpetuating the gender war. It is fair to say that Breillat follows women writers’ tendency to use fairy tales ‘to explore questions of female identity, social conditioning, gender, and relationships’ (Odber de Baubeta, 2004, p. 143). Breillat’s adaptations suggest a new version of the tales underpinned

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by an innovative perspective supporting a woman’s position of recycling or revisiting traditional tales in order to create countertexts to male-authored ones. Tales are being revisited in order to address contemporary issues. It is within this framework (or mind frame) that Breillat revisits classical texts, as Zipes (2012, p. 52) states: ‘But we do know that Breillat’s remake of Perrault’s tale revolutionizes the mimetic tradition of Bluebeard tales in a manner consistent with changed attitudes about women’s roles in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries’. In line with this statement, Breillat’s adaptation of the tales to cinema is a revision of classical texts with a view to address contemporary female be(com)ing. Breillat’s films follow the traditional outline of the tales as told by Perrault; she remains faithful to their narrative development. In Barbe bleue the film’s narrative follows Perrault’s tale as being told/read by Catherine. In remaining close to the tales’ content and structure, Breillat exposes the tales’ original conformist and rebellious aspects. Indeed, Zipes (2012, p. xi) points out the fact ‘that fairy tales can be both provocatively subversive and trivially traditional’. He uses terms such as ‘taming of the wild’ or ‘sanitizations’ to highlight the subversive current of fairy tales that has been undermined with time. Breillat explores this original feature through her characterisation of the two young sisters with contrasting viewpoints and positions. Whilst the older sister is frightened of the story’s outcome and thus her desire to conform to gender ideology, the younger one is eager to fulfil her curiosity like the female protagonist in Perrault’s tale. For the last scene of the film, Catherine’s desire is materialised on the screen as she is seen entering the forbidden chamber. This last scene also serves as evidence that Catherine determines the narrative development of the film. The film’s narrative rests on a close-up shot of Catherine’s face while she is reading. This is meant to create another world. Reading and dreaming in Barbe bleue and La Belle endormie are associated with the idea of dislocating the readers from their familiar setting. In Barbe bleue, the reading takes place in the attic, a possible forbidden chamber (according to Marie-Anne who questions their right to be there) cut off from the rest of the household. This is also a place full of mysteries and memories as discarded objects are often relegated to the attic such as the books (including the fairy tales) the two girls have stumbled upon. La Belle endormie is mostly based on Anastasia’s dreams, in which she travels to mysterious places and meets different people. She will stay with her new family that includes the mother and her son, Peter, until the Snow Queen takes him away and forces Anastasia to resume her journey to search for him. The quest, as well as reading, indicates possible alternative choices that we can make to transform our selves and the world. La Belle endormie’s structure

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is based on the interaction of several texts, mainly La Belle au bois dormant and La Reine des neiges by Hans Christian Andersen (published in 1844), that provide insight into social and political aspects of the present time. During one of her trips, Anastasia is confronted by a group of gypsies; a member of this group, a girl, becomes fond of her and decides to let her continue her search for Peter. They meet again when Anastasia awakens from her sleep at the age of sixteen. The gypsy girl is politically, socially and culturally embedded in the French society of the twenty-first century. At the time of Breillat’s film release, the gypsies (or Romani) were making media headlines with their expulsion from France under the former government of French President, Nicolas Sarkozy. The film refers to their oppression and alienation from a country by reinforcing stereotypes of robbery, violence and passion. In French cinema, the gypsy communities are mostly absent except for the films by Tony Gatlif.2 The character of the Gypsy girl provides the fairy tale with a political and social stance. Breillat draws a parallel between images of gypsies and that of girls/ women as being shaped by cultural, social and political ideologies. She adheres to romanticised stereotypes of the Gypsy girl, but she, nevertheless, challenges this perception by flaunting the girl’s independent behaviour. The Gypsy girl returns later in the film, La Belle endormie, to initiate Anastasia’s first sexual experiences when she wakes up from her slumber. The Gypsy girl’s freedom and mobility she experiences as a young girl persists in her adolescent years, but stands in stark opposition to Anastasia’s limited world conforming to gender expectations. The character of the Gypsy girl works as a sign for female independence and self-motivation; she does not conform to socially constructed ideas of femininity and sexuality reflecting male fantasies of womanliness, as in fairy tales. As noted by Sydney Matrix (2010, p. 190): ‘The women must be placed under absolute male control – their headstrong desire subdued, their passionate energy harnessed and safely contained by husband, fathers, and other powerful men’. By contrast, Breillat’s tales focus on women’s assertion of their own power in Barbe bleue, and their sexual agency and autonomy in La Belle endormie. Breillat freely adapts fairy tales to show their influences on our psychosexual development. She reveals how we are made to involuntarily adhere to gender norms and sexual conventions. Breillat signals the tales’ formative influence on her artistic creations (novels, scripts and films) through the depiction of the young female protagonists in the films. These young girls develop 2 Three of his films form a Gypsy trilogy: Les Princes (1983), Latcho Drom (1993) and Gadjo Dilo (1997).

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into assertive and confident individuals challenging gender and sexual expectations in accordance with her previous work, as shown in this study. As such, they suggest an alternative to young women’s attitudes and sexual standing in current Western society. Zipes (2007, p. 40) points towards the origins of the fairy tales as ‘transform[ing] the stories to address social and political issues as well as the manners and mores of the upper classes’. For instance, in Fairy Tales and the Art of Subversion (2012), he (2012, p. 32) stresses the fairy tales’ purpose of ‘engag[ing] in an ongoing institutionalized discourse about mores and manners in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries’. Breillat follows the fairy tale tradition of awakening our wonderment and of projecting counterworlds to our present society – to borrow Zipes’ (2007) expressions in When Dreams Come True. Zipes (2007, p. 31) further notes that ‘Instead of petrifying our minds, they arouse our imagination and compel us to realise how we can fight terror’. Breillat re-tells Perrault’s tales and appropriates fairy tales’ tradition of ‘wish fulfilment coupled with a desire for other moral worlds’ (Zipes, 2012, p. 155). Tales offer alternative worlds to current society and question the dominant view of traditional patriarchy; they address current social and political issues by challenging social norms. Breillat’s films highlight the fact that reading and dreaming are conducive to the creation of another world. Both acts challenge socialization and constraints with the idea of dislocating readers from their familiar setting; Zipes (2011, p. 2) comments: ‘[…] the very act of reading, hearing, and viewing a fairy-tale is an uncanny experience in that it separates the reader from the restrictions of reality from the outset’. Getting away from constrained places (as suggested by the attic where the reading of the tale takes place) encourages discussion and free interpretation, which subverts conformity and conventionality. The fairy tale film, Barbe bleue, encourages elucidation or explanation of the text in order for the girls to become better readers of patriarchal culture. In this way the position of the reader is defined by their active trait, that is to say, liberated from oppressive cultural myths. The film sustains this view in its constant moving between text and images that escape categories. Texts interact with other media and provide the practical and intellectual means to open up and subvert traditional socialization by posing infinite textual possibilities. The quest and the intertextual interactions on which the fairy tale films are based on indicate possible alternative choices to transform the (female) self and the world. The familiar setting of gender and sexual conventions is one amongst many other possibilities of be(com)ing a woman. Adaptation, like reading and imagining, or dreaming, in Breillat’s fairy tale films, is understood as a creative, transformative process that challenges patriarchal norms and values.

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Intimacy in Catherine Breillat’s Cinema

The notion of intimacy, connected to ideas of the personal and the private, continues to influence the form and content of Breillat’s work. Breillat has been working on an adaptation of two of her own novels, Bad Love (2007) and Abus de faiblesse (2009). The title Bad Love is reminiscent of and is a reflection of her film, Parfait Amour!, first released in the United States under the name of Perfect Love! Bad Love’s English title and its setting, Toronto, stand as a personal dedication to the two countries, the United States and Canada, which were the first to recognise her work. In this film she follows her personal interest: the story deals with the tormented sexual relationship between a woman filmmaker and a journalist who meet at the Toronto Film Festival. The role of the female film director is meant for model Naomi Campbell and the role of the journalist is to be filled by the controversial actor Christophe Rocancourt.3 In its written form, it is undeniable that the film highlights, reinforces and therefore affirms Breillat’s independence and creative capacity. I believe that it is a production of/from her intimate self/scene. The film Bad Love was never completed but resulted in Breillat bringing a law suit against her male actor, Rocencourt, who was subsequently convicted of ‘abus de faiblesse’ (abuse out of weakness). Out of this drama, a book and a film were produced sharing the same title, Abus de faiblesse. Here Breillat recreates and brings to the public’s attention her personal and intimate situation. Isabelle Huppert plays the role of the filmmaker who has just suffered a stroke (like Breillat in 2004) but decides to start working on her next film (Breillat’s Bad Love) for which she hires a former con artist in the main role. The film centres on their complex relationship and as such is a filmic rendering of the legal terminology ‘abuse of weakness’. The film is not yet released on dvd, but was shown at international festivals such as the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival and the 2013 New York Film Festival. Referring to her corpus of films up to 2007, Breillat’s work has been classified as being part of a new trend in French cinema called ‘le cinéma du corps’ – ‘the cinema of the body’ – or ‘the New French Extremism’ (Annette Kuhn and Guy Westwell, 2012: p. 188). Even though I would probably agree with these labels, as her cinema clearly deals with the (female/male) body shown in an extreme/explicit way, I would prefer to say that her work defies categorisation as evidenced by the different trends she seems to represent in scholars’ eyes. Furthermore, as mentioned her work foregrounds a specific 3 He is described by the press as a ‘fraudster’ and ‘criminal’, see the article by Michael Ellison (2000).

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­ ersonal view, her ‘soi/scènes intimes’ – intimate self/scenes. Cinema and herp self are intimately connected in the sense that (her) cinema produces her/a woman-self; they are both linked by a creative capacity. She herself claims that her producer, Jean-François Lepetit, produces her ‘dans le vrai sens du terme, ­c’est-à-dire qu’il me fait apparaître, il me produit’.4 Breillat and her protagonists appear in her/their authenticity in cinema whose principal role is to make visible her/their lived experiences. She makes visible what is kept invisible, hidden: (young) women’s constructed desire maintained as a tabooed (hidden) issue. From Une vraie jeune fille to La Belle endormie, her films deal with the relationship between a young girl/woman and a man/young boy with the aim to focus on a woman’s quest for her (sexual) being. Breillat reveals and challenges social and cultural discourses that construct and regulate women’s desire and being and make them conform to an ideal definition of femininity and sexuality. In other words, her cinema is concerned with the intimate, that is to say, that which is related to the self-other relation (men and women) and the self (women). Also, Breillat’s cinema is specifically concerned with women’s sexual selves, which links it further to the notion of intimacy when considering its connection to sexuality (in common parlance). As a result, this study has identified intimacy as a significant notion with which to comprehend Breillat’s cinema. The complexity and ambiguity of the notion of intimacy is highlighted in Breillat’s films. The concept of intimacy has served different purposes pervading every area, as for example the personalised writing of history as well as the outpouring of autobiographical texts from the 1960s following the 1968’s events. It is fair to say that the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first century have been preoccupied with the intimate and the cinema of Breillat relates to this epoch in that way. Breillat demythologizes the utopian notion of intimacy by revealing its privatization. According to dominant societies, the intimate is what should remain private and is thus connected to the inner self. In the Introduction to the Special Issue of Critical Inquiry devoted to intimacy, Lauren Berlant (1998, p. 288) highlights the normative aspect of intimacy in its inner form; she aims to show: ‘how public institutions use issues of intimate life to normalize particular forms of knowledge and practice and to create compliant subjects’. In western society, sexuality is a private affair under public control. One’s privacy is regulated by social and cultural norms; as a result the private affair of women’s sexual life is the domain of the social/public (the husband, the magistrates, and the media to a certain extent). Breillat’s cinema intends to disclose how the social and cultural ideologies construct 4 An interview with Catherine Breillat on the French dvd release of Anatomie de l’enfer (2007).

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women’s sexuality as intimate, which results in the control and regulation of their selves. By revealing women’s intimacy, she also brings to the fore their be(com)ing. Referring to Lauren Berlant’s and Michael Warner’s (1998, p. 553) thinking, it can be said that Breillat uncovers the link between intimacy and the private self to suggest an ‘explicit public sexual culture’. In this sense Breillat’s cinema should be understood as intimate. Her cinema concerns women’s selves and her-self as a woman, which is sometimes seen as mistakenly autobiographical, as for example in her latest film Abus de faiblesse (2013).

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Filmography Irma Vep (1996) Directed by O. Assayas [Film] France: Zeitgeist Films. De battre mon coeur s’est arêté (2005) Directed by J. Audiard [Film] France: ugc. Le Blé en herbe (1954) Directed by C. Autant-Lara [Film] France: Pathfinder Home Entertainment. Selon Mathieu (2001) Directed by X. Beauvois [Film] France: Mars Distribution, Vertigo Films. La Lune dans le caniveau (1983) Directed by J.J. Beineix [Film] France: Gaumont International. Jean de Florette (1985) Directed by C. Berri [Film] France: Orion Pictures. Manon des sources (1986) Directed by C. Berri [Film] France; Pathé Distribution, Orion Classics. Germinal (1993) directed by C. Berri [Film] France: Renn Productions. Les Valseuses (1974) Directed by B. Blier [Film] France: Gala Film Distributors. Une vraie jeune fille (1976) Directed by C. Breillat [Film] France: Rezo Films, Pyramide International, Boomerang Productions. Tapage nocturne (1979) Directed by C. Breillat [Film] France: Gaumont, ifd. 36 fillette (1987) Directed by C. Breillat [Film] France: Gaumont. Sale comme un ange (1991) Directed by C. Breillat [Film] France: Pyramide Distribution. Parfait Amour! (1996) Directed by C. Breillat [Film] France: Pyramide International. Romance (1998) Directed by C. Breillat [Film] France: Flach Film, cb Film, Arte France Cinema. A ma soeur! (2000) Directed by C. Breillat [Film] France: Canal+. Brève Traversée (2001) Directed by C. Breillat [Film] France: Pyramide Distribution. Sex is comedy (2002) Directed by C. Breillat [Film] France: ifc Films. Anatomie de l’enfer (2003) Directed by C. Breillat [Film] France: Rezo Films, Les Films de l’Elysée, Oy Cinema Mondolta, Tartan Distribution, Sharada. Une vieille maîtesse (2007) Directed by C. Breillat [Film] France: StudioCanal. Barbe bleue (2009) Directed by C. Breillat [Film] France: Arte. La Belle endormie (2010) Directed by C. Breillat [Film] France: Strand Releasing. Abus de faiblesse (2013) Directed by C. Breillat [Film] France: Strand Releasing. Un Chien Andalou (1929) Directed by L. Buñuel [Film] France: Les Grands Films Classiques. Belle de jour (1967) Directed by L. Buñuel [Film] France: Valoria, Allied Artists. Ne le dis à personne (2006) Directed by G. Canet [Film] France: aos. Emilienne (1975) Directed by G. Casaril [Film] France: Twentienth Century Fox. Intimité (2000) Directed by P. Chéreau and A.L. Trividic [Film] France: spi International. Série Noire (1979) Directed by A. Corneau [Film] France: Gaumont, StudioCanal, ­Putman Square Films.

Filmography

157

Tous les matins du monde (1991) Directed by A. Corneau [Film] France: Entertainment One Films. Crash (1996) Directed by D. Cronenberg [Film] Canada, United Kingdom: New Line Cinema, Alliance Films, Fine Line Features. La Guerre des Polices (1979) Directed by R. Davies [Film] France; Union Générale Cinématographique. La Dérive (1962) Directed by P. Delsol [Film] France: art Films. Borsalino (1970) Directed by J. Deray [Film] France, Italy: Les Films Paramount. Baise-moi (2000) Directed by V. Despentes and C. Trinh Thi [Film] France: Pan-Européenne. The Edge of Heaven (2007) Directed by F. Akin [Film] Germany, Turkey: Strand Releasing. Lady Chatterley (2007) Directed by P. Ferran [Film] France, Belgium, United Kingdom: Ad Vitam, Artificial Eye, Rosebud, spi, Agora, Future Films, Imagine, Stadtkino Filmverleih. L’aveu (1970) Directed by C. Gavras [Film] France, Italy: Paramount Pictures. A bout de souffle (1960) Directed by J.L. Godard [Film] France: StudioCanal. Le Mépris (1963) Directed by J.L. Godard [Film] France, Italy: Embassy Pictures. Masculin Féminin (1966) Directed by J.L. Godard [Film] France: Columbia Films, Royal Films International, Neue Filmkunst Walter Kirchner, Rialto Pictures. La Pudeur et l’impudeur (1990) Directed by H. Guibert [dvd] France: bqhl. Bilitis (1976) Directed by D. Hamilton [Film] France, Italy: Société Nouvelle de ­Cinématographie, Pan-Canadian Film Distributors, Topar Films, Cupido Films, Toho-Towa. Emmanuelle (1974) Directed by J. Jaeckin [Film] France: Parafrance Films, Columbia Pictures, Gloria Filmverleih, Tuschinski Film Distribution, Warner-Columbia Films. Néa (1976) Directed by N. Kaplan [Film] France: Films La Boetie. Baby Doll (1956) Directed by E. Kazan [Film] usa: Warner Bros. Lolita (1962) Directed by S. Kubrick [Film] United Kingdom, usa: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayor. Diabolo menthe (1977) Directed by D. Kurys [Film] France: Gaumont Film Company. La Crime (1983) Directed by P. Labro [Film] France: Union Générale Cinématographique. L’Hôtel de la plage (1978) Directed by M. Lang [Film] France: Gaumont. Confidences trop intimes (2004) Directed by P. Leconte [Film] France: Paramount Vintage. Lacombe Lucien (1974) Directed by L. Malle [Film] France: The Criterion Collection. 36 rue quai des orfèvres (2006) Directed by O. Marchal [Film] France: Gaumont. Intimité (1994) Directed by D. Moll [Film] France: Serenade Productions. Zanzibar (1988) Directed by C. Pascal [Film] France: Les Films Number One. La Gueule ouverte (1974) Directed by M. Pialat [Film] France: Eureka.

158

Filmography

Passe ton Bac d’abord (1979) Directed by M. Pialat [Film] France: Films du Livradois, amlf, New Yorker Films. Loulou (1980) Directed by M. Pialat [Film] France: Gaumont. A nos amours (1983) Directed by M. Pialat [Film] France: Gaumont, Eureka Entertainment. Police (1985) Directed by M. Pialat [Film] France: Eureka. Sous le soleil de Satan (1987) Directed by M. Pialat [Film] France: Gaumont. La Gifle (1978) Direted by C. Pinoteau [Film] France: Gaumont. La Boum 1 (1980) Directed by C. Pinoteau [Film] France: Gaumont. La Boum 2 (1982) Directed by C. Pinoteau [Film] France: Gaumont Film Company. Cyrano de Bergerac (1990) Directed by J.P. Rappeneau [Film] France: Orion Pictures. Van Gogh (1948) Directed by A. Resnais [Film] France: Films du Panthéon, Films de la Pleiade, French Institute. Nuit et brouillard (1955) Directed by A. Resnais [dvd] France: Aurora. Hiroshima mon amour (1959) Directed by A. Resnais [Film] France: Pathé. L’année dernière à Marienbad (1961) Directed by A. Resnais [Film] France: Cocinor. Une affaire d’hommes (1981) Directed by N. Ribowski [Film] France: ccfc. La Balance (1982) Directed by M. Swaim [Film] France: Acteurs Auteurs Associés. Coup de torchon (1981) Directed by B. Tavernier [Film] France: Parafrance Films, Biograph International. Mon amour, mon amour (1967) Directed by M. Trintignant [Film] France: Les Films Marceau. Défense de savoir (1973) Directed by N. Trintignant [Film] France: Medusa Distribuzione, itt Contrast. Les 400 Coups (1959) Directed by F. Truffaut [Film] France: Cocinor, MK2 Diffusion. Tirez sur le pianiste (1960) Directed by F. Truffaut [Film] France: Cocinor, Gala Film Distributors, Astor Pictures Corporation. Jules et Jim (1962) Directed by F. Truffaut [Film] France: Janus Films. La nuit américaine (1973) Directed by F. Truffaut [Film] France: Warner Bros, Columbia Pictures. Et Dieu… créa la femme (1956) Directed by R. Vadim [Film] France: Cocinor, Columbia Film-Verleih. Kingsley-International Pictures, Miracle Films, Suomi-Filmi. Kung Fu Master (1987) Directed by A. Varda [Film] France: Capital Cinema, Expanded Entertainment. Les amazons (1972) Directed by T. Young [Film] France: cic.

Index 36 fillette 1, 58, 60, 69, 74, 76, 78–79, 81, 86, 88, 111, 116 abjection 87, 117, 127 A Bout de Souffle 70 Abus de faiblesse 142, 144 adaptation(s) 29, 30, 32, 133–138, 141 adolescence 55, 61, 88 Alexandre, Astruc 20 Ali Baba 136 Alice au pays des merveilles 136 alienation 5 A ma soeur! 26, 55, 58, 60–61, 65, 69, 73–74, 76–82, 84–85, 87, 89, 92, 103, 135, 138 Amira, Casar 126 Anatomie de l’enfer 17, 33, 46, 54, 99, 105, 114, 118, 124–126, 128–129, 132 André, Bazin 29 Androgynous 101 Annette, Kuhn 47 audience 11 auteur 21, 31 authenticity 39, 143 authorship 136 Bad Love 18, 142 Baise-moi 4 Barbe bleue 133–136, 138–141 Barbey d’Aurevilly 12, 31 Bardot 68, 71–76, 86, 89 becoming 7, 89 being’ 7 Belle de jour 120 Bonjour Tristesse 4 Boris, Vian 135 Borsalino 106 Brève Traversée 5, 90–92, 94, 99–100, 102, 104 Brigitte, Bardot 68 Bruce, Fleming 22 Butler 121 Calvin, Klein 101 Catherine, Millet 4 Cendrillon 136

censorship 7, 9 Ce sexe qui n’en est pas un 85 Christophe Rocancourt 142 cinéma intimiste 34 cinema of sensation 42 Claire, Clouzot 2 Claude, Brasseur 111 coming-of-age 65, 67, 76 Confidences trop intimes 4 corporeal 27 costume drama 33 Crash 8 crime drama(s) 16, 106, 109, 111, 117–118 David, Cronenberg 8 David, Frampton 23 de Beauvoir 62, 67–68, 71–73, 89, 110, 114, 118, 126, 137–138 décalogue 9, 133–134 desire(s) 51, 64 deterritorialisation 103 Deux vraies jeunes filles 1 dialogics 33 disgust 8 Domnique, Moll 4 Dostoievski 135 dreaming (dreams) 133–135, 137–139, 141 écriture feminine 79 education 58 ennui 65 Et Dieu… créa la femme 72 excess 63, 89–90 fairy tale(s) 122, 134–135, 137–138, 140–141 family 58 female spectator 46 femininity 6, 60, 123 film scripts 18 flashback 37, 40 fluidity 50, 105 Françoise, Sagan 3 François, Truffaut 72 François, Villon 135

160 gaze 76–77, 81, 125–126, 128, 132 Geneviève, Sellier 34 Georges, Bataille 135 Gilbert, Cesbron 135 Ginette, Vincendeau 2 gypsies 140 Hans Christian, Andersen 140 haptic 11 Hélène, Cixous 137 heritage cinema 30 Hervé, Guibert 4 homosexual 125 impure 5 innocence 95 internet 58 intertextual dialogism 33, 35 intertextuality 13, 33, 136 intimacy 5–6, 54, 133, 142–143 intimate 3, 11–12, 142–143 intimate scenes 3, 27 Intimité 4 invisible 11 Isabelle, Huppert 142 Jackie, Stacey 46 Jack, Zipes 134 Jacques, Prévert 135 Jan, Campbell 47 Jean, Cocteau 134 Jean-François, Lepetit 142 Jean-Luc, Godard 93 Jean-Pierre, Léaud 78–79, 86 journey 102 Judith Butler 92 Julia Kristeva 5 Julie Seymour and Paul Bagguley 4 Keith Reader 15 Kung Fu Master 91 La Belle au bois dormant 136, 140 La Belle endormie 133–136, 138–140, 143 La Belle et la Bête 134 La Maladie de la mort 2 Landes 1 La Pudeur et l’impudeur 4

Index La reine des neiges 136, 140 Laura, Betti 73 Laura, Marks 47 Laura, Mulvey 44 Lauren, Berlant 5 Lautréamont 135 La vie sexuelle de Catherine M. 4 Léaud 88 Le corps amoureux 6 Left Bank filmmakers 21 Les Liaisons dangereuses 36 Le Soupirail 1 les trente glorieuses 56 Lewis, Carroll 85 L’Homme facile 7, 56 L’Origine du Monde 128 Lolita 13, 68–69, 71, 73, 76, 89, 114 magic 95, 99, 102, 104 magical realism 96 male body 97 Marc, Augé 104 Marguerite, Duras 2, 21, 32 Marianne, Hirsh 59 Marie-Hélène, Breillat 3 Mary Ann, Doane 45 Masculin, Féminin 93 masculinity 16, 93, 99, 106, 120 masochism 10, 16, 51–52, 54, 118, 123–124 masochistic 53, 123 Maurice, Merleau-Ponty 129, 131 Maurice, Pialat 16, 107 mirror 83–85, 89, 128 modernity 72 mother/daughter relationship 61 movements 60 Mulvey 68 Naomi, Campbell 142 Nicolas, Sarkozy 140 nightclub(s) 99, 108, 125 nineteenth century 40 ‘non-places’ 104 Nouvelle, Vague 20–21, 30–31, 71, 79 nude scene 2 nudity 8

161

Index obscene 5 Pacs 92 Parfait Amour! 91, 100, 103, 109, 114–118, 142 parité 92 Pascale, Ferran 33 passion 38–40, 51 Patrice, Chéreau and Anne-Louise, Trividic 4 Patrice, Leconte 4 performance 121 Perrault 133 personal 142 personal cinema 28 personal creation 34 perverse 5 Pialat 107 Police 16, 107, 109, 111–112 Popular music 82 Pornocratie 2 pornography 7, 9–10 privacy 143 purity 6, 16 reading 133–135, 137, 139, 141 reality 22, 26, 42 rebelliousness 1 recreation 136 recycling 136, 138 repetition 135–136, 138 repression 1 Révolte intime 5 Rocco, Siffredi 10, 26, 125 Romance 1, 10–11, 17, 46, 97, 99, 118–122, 124–126, 128–129, 135 Roxanne, Mesquida 34 Sade 135 sadomasochism 6 sadomasochist 87 sadomasochistic 122 Sale comme un ange 107–112, 116–117 sameness 64 Scènes intimes 1 script 20, 22–23, 25, 27–28, 44 scriptwriting 19 sea 6, 41, 82, 86–87, 89, 95, 102–104, 128 seaside 23

Self-referencing 34 self-referentiality 35 sex 9 Sex is comedy 1, 19–20, 22–25, 27–28, 44, 52, 55, 97–98, 103, 105 sexuality 4, 143 shame 8 Shaviro 52 Shirley, Jordan 4 silence 59, 81 Simone, de Beauvoir 57 Sisterhood 84 Sleeping Beauty 115 socialization 141 Solitude 6 spectator 42, 48–49, 52–54 spectatorship 44 spontaneity 72–73 Stephanie, Dowrick 4 Steven, Shaviro 24, 47 summer holiday(s) 56, 66 swimming pool 6 tableaux vivant(s) 41, 42 Tanya, Krzywinska 7 Tapage nocturne 44–46, 48–49, 54, 125 teenage boy 92 teenage girl 67 the body 27 the eternal female 71 the female body 63 The gaze 75 the mother 59 the mother-daughter relationship 59, 62 the sleeping beauty 65 the young girl 64 Tony, Gatlif 140 tradition de la qualité 30 transformation 102, 122, 124, 136, 138 Truffaut 20, 78, 86 Ugly Duckling 136 Un Chien Andalou 95 Une vieille maîtresse 2, 29, 33, 41, 44, 46, 51, 105 Une vraie jeune fille 1, 56, 58–59, 63, 71, 80–82, 85–87, 103, 116, 125, 143 unwatchable 11, 125, 131

162 Virginie Despentes and Coralie Trinh Thi 4 virginity 5–6, 14, 64, 66, 77, 79, 88, 92, 99 virgins 5 visualisation 22–23 Vivian Sobchack 47 womanhood 66 writing 81

Index young boy 15 young girl(s) 1, 5, 14, 55, 57–58, 61–62, 64, 66–70, 71–78, 81–82, 85–89, 133, 135–138, 143 young women 68