Studies in French Cinema最新文献

{"title":"Stereotypes of class, ethnicity and gender in contemporary French popular comedy: from Bienvenue chez les Ch’tis (2008) and Intouchables (2011) to Qu’est-ce qu’on a fait au Bon Dieu ? (2014)","authors":"R. Moine","doi":"10.1080/14715880.2017.1415552","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14715880.2017.1415552","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The deployment, reversal and reiteration of stereotypes constitute one of the major comic devices of the top three French box-office comedy ‘hits’ of recent years: Bienvenue chez les Ch’tis (2008), Intouchables (2011), Qu’est-ce qu’on a fait au Bon Dieu ? (2014). These comedies follow the same pattern: their contrasting protagonists, in terms of class, regional origin or ethnicity, manage to forget their prejudices and to become ‘friends’ in the classic tradition of a feel-good film. Although age-old, this scheme is rejuvenated by issues of ethnicity, in a contemporary French context characterised by the transformation of French society into a multicultural and multi-ethnic society, by the resistance to that transformation and by the emergence on the big screen of ethnic actors. This article examines how the use of stereotypes, in films that claim to promote alterity and diversity, turns out to be extremely ambiguous. It demonstrates how these narratives, whether they challenge or reiterate prejudiced notions of ethnic and regional identity, leave gender roles and class domination unquestioned. Finally, it casts light on elements that may challenge the reactionary aspects of the plot and characterisation, such as the performance of the actors and the opening up of mainstream French comedy to minorities.","PeriodicalId":51945,"journal":{"name":"Studies in French Cinema","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/14715880.2017.1415552","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43771930","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Enjeux socio-culturels et réception de la comédie Les Garçons et Guillaume, à table !","authors":"Jules Sandeau","doi":"10.1080/14715880.2016.1215954","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14715880.2016.1215954","url":null,"abstract":"AbstractCet article etudie les representations de genre et de sexualite vehiculees par la comedie Les Garcons et Guillaume, a table ! (Guillaume Gallienne, 2013). Apres avoir replace ce film dans son contexte de production, nous mettrons en lumiere la maniere dont il travaille les tensions ideologiques qui traversent alors la societe francaise, en portant une attention particuliere a l’usage qu’il fait de l’humour. Un examen de la reception dont il a fait l’objet sur internet nous permettra d’elaborer des hypotheses sur les raisons de son succes critique et public. Nous montrerons ainsi comment l’ambivalence de son discours sur la masculinite et la feminite d’un cote, et sur l’heterosexualite et l’homosexualite de l’autre, lui a permis de seduire a la fois un public progressiste et un public plus conservateur sur les questions de genre et de sexualite.","PeriodicalId":51945,"journal":{"name":"Studies in French Cinema","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/14715880.2016.1215954","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41644747","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"New directions in contemporary French comedies: from nation, sex and class to ethnicity, community and the vagaries of the postmodern","authors":"Mary Harrod, P. Powrie","doi":"10.1080/14715880.2017.1415420","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14715880.2017.1415420","url":null,"abstract":"Comedy, as is the case with many national cinemas, is one of the most dominant genres, if not the most dominant, in French cinema, as Raphaëlle Moine has shown (2014, 233–234). Comedies are even more popular now than they used to be in terms of spectator numbers. Since 2000, for example, French comedies have dominated the best-seller list in France, as can be seen in Table 1, which gives the 27 best-selling films since 2000.1 In the period 2000–2007 there were only 6 French comedies out of the 18 best-sellers in Table 1, representing a third (positions 11, 25, 26, 47, 57, 59), while from 2008–2014 6 out of 9 French films are comedies (positions 2, 3, 19, 51, 68, 96), representing two-thirds. This corresponds to a shift from a 39% share of the total number of French spectators in the first half of the period to an astonishing 72% of the best-selling films since 2008. And yet, surprisingly, while there are many coffee-table or popular books on the genre in French cinema, such as biographies of stars, there is as yet very little major academic work. General works on genre tend to focus on Hollywood comedies, occasionally with some nods to French comic stars, for example Olivier Mongin’s reflection on the genre which includes some work on Jacques Tati and Louis de Funès (Mongin 2002). There are few academic monographs on directors associated with the genre. There is a thesis on Pierre Colombier, active during the 1920s and 1930s, and director of major comic stars such as Georges Milton in Le Roi des resquilleurs (1930), Raimu in Ces messieurs de la Santé (1933) and Théodore et Cie (1933), and Fernandel in Ignace (1937) (Binet 2003), and a couple of standard introductions to the work of Jean-Pierre Mocky (Le Roy 2000; Prédal 1988). But there is as yet nothing substantial on Gérard Oury, JeanMarie Poiré or Francis Veber, directors of some of the most successful French comedies of the 1980s and beyond. The only two major works on French film comedy in recent times are both by Anglophone academics: Rémi Lanzoni’s broad introduction (2014) and Mary Harrod’s in-depth study of the recent development of the romcom (2015a). With the exception of some essential articles by Raphaëlle Moine, which we refer to in this introduction, there is as yet nothing major by French academics on contemporary developments. It is not difficult to understand why this is the case. Comedy, more than any other genre, is a ‘bad object’, a repository of low-denominator stereotypes and the source of the potentially guilty pleasure accruing from them that appears to be difficult to justify critically. This is particularly the case in France, where the critical establishment has until recently been more interested in auteur cinema than popular genres. As Moine has argued in her book on genre (2005, 66–85), whether one adopts the position of the Frankfurt School – that comedies like all genres function principally to maintain the status quo – or whether one adopts the position inspired ","PeriodicalId":51945,"journal":{"name":"Studies in French Cinema","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/14715880.2017.1415420","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49019509","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Bruno Dumont’s comic look: P’tit Quinquin (2014) as a social and ethical intervention","authors":"Nikolaj Lübecker","doi":"10.1080/14715880.2016.1217611","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14715880.2016.1217611","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract For most viewers it came as a big surprise when Bruno Dumont ventured into TV comedy with the four-part series P’tit Quinquin (2014). This article examines why Dumont was attracted to comedy. Drawing on texts by Henri Bergson and Wolfgang Iser, the article first attempts to define the specificity of what shall be called Dumont’s comic look. Next, it analyses what it means to take a comic look at socio-political problems such as religious and racial conflicts. The article argues that Dumont refrains from trying to move beyond these problems, but also that P’tit Quinquin places the spectators in a non-tragic relation to the problems raised. The series therefore looks at the social world in a very different way than many of Dumont’s previous, more tragic feature films. Ultimately, this not only allows an auteurist reading of P’tit Quinquin (the series is gently laughing at Dumont’s earlier films), but also supports the more general point that comedy can be particularly well suited to negotiating contemporary social challenges.","PeriodicalId":51945,"journal":{"name":"Studies in French Cinema","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/14715880.2016.1217611","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48834584","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Les « comédies d’argent » dans le cinéma français des années 2000 : rapports de genre et échanges économico-sexuels","authors":"Thomas Pillard","doi":"10.1080/14715880.2017.1367896","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14715880.2017.1367896","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Les années 2000 voient la sortie sur les écrans d’une série de comédies dont les récits interrogent l’usage et la circulation de l’argent au sein de l’économie des relations hétérosexuelles et des interactions sociales entre hommes et femmes, via des situations mêlant rapports de genre et rapports financiers. Cette tendance présente des contours flous et recouvre des représentations hétérogènes qui ne se destinent pas nécessairement aux mêmes publics : favorisant en début de décennie des vedettes et une orientation masculines, elle se trouve plus fréquemment investie ensuite par des femmes cinéastes accordant plus d’importance aux rôles féminins, en écho à l’intérêt de plus en plus marqué des réalisatrices pour le genre comique depuis les années 1990 et 2000. Associant les études génériques et les gender studies, cet article se propose d’évaluer la cohérence de ce corpus diversifié et d’analyser ses enjeux idéologiques, en faisant appel au concept d’« échange économico-sexuel » forgé par l’anthropologue féministe Paola Tabet.","PeriodicalId":51945,"journal":{"name":"Studies in French Cinema","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/14715880.2017.1367896","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46033028","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"‘Les petits bruits’: little noises and lower volumes in Catherine Breillat’s Romance (1999) and Anatomie de l’enfer (2004)","authors":"Emilija Talijan","doi":"10.1080/14715880.2017.1362824","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14715880.2017.1362824","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article offers a discussion of the role of noise in the work of Catherine Breillat, and evaluates its importance in relation to the pornographic. The author argues that by focusing attention on the auditory, we open up another sensory dimension through which to think about Breillat’s key relationship with the pornographic and her appeal to listening in spectatorship. Drawing on the conventions of sound in pornography and discussing how Romance (1999) and Anatomie de l'enfer/Anatomy of Hell (2004) respond to these sounds, the attention to Breillat’s sonic practice offered here shows how noise reflects on wider questions of the ‘real’ and representations of the female body and pleasure that are at stake in Breillat’s work more broadly. Attending to the noises of the body, noises emitted by Breillat’s female protagonists and to her soundscaping, this article asks what possible critique of the pornographic thinking about noise offers, as well as what forms of resonant intimacy are constructed through Breillat’s formal engagement with volumes and amplitudes.","PeriodicalId":51945,"journal":{"name":"Studies in French Cinema","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-09-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/14715880.2017.1362824","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43235979","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Editorial Board","authors":"","doi":"10.1080/14715880.2017.1371401","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14715880.2017.1371401","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51945,"journal":{"name":"Studies in French Cinema","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/14715880.2017.1371401","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48772058","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Situating La Princesse de Montpensier: Tavernier’s adaptation of Madame de Lafayette","authors":"T. Kline","doi":"10.1080/14715880.2017.1330914","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14715880.2017.1330914","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract When Bertrand Tavernier discussed his project to make a film adaptation of Madame de Lafayette’s novel La Princesse de Montpensier, he explained the contradictory nature of his project. On the one hand, he wanted to attempt a true account of both the events and the exotic nature of France in the 1550s, but on the other hand, he then added a potentially contradictory challenge to his project, proposing that his camera become ‘contemporary’ to the historical events and feelings depicted while at the same time convincing us that these historical events could be taking place in today’s Paris, and seem completely modern. This ‘chronological contradiction’ between what can be termed the exotic flavour of the Renaissance versus an injection of a flavour of contemporaneity – the endotic – will be examined in the way Tavernier develops the portrayal of the spirit of the Renaissance in language that is particularly resonant with the very terms that both Du Bellay and Ronsard employed to capture the epistemology of their times. This exotic level of the film will then be contrasted with the way Tavernier manages to give us an endotic representation of the Paris of the twenty-first century.","PeriodicalId":51945,"journal":{"name":"Studies in French Cinema","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-08-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/14715880.2017.1330914","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60253167","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Ecologies of debt in Claire Denis’s L’Intrus/The Intruder (2004)","authors":"K. Pesch","doi":"10.1080/14715880.2017.1314147","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14715880.2017.1314147","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In reading Claire Denis’s L’Intrus, the author enters into a dialogue with two recent publications that consider her cinema in light of contemporary discussions on ecology and economy: Laura McMahon’s work on the ‘ecological impulse’ at play in Denis’s films and Rosalind Galt’s analysis of the way in which Denis’s ‘default cinema’ resists contemporary neoliberal formations. The author examines the complex notions of indebtedness that shaped the film and its production. Moreover, she explores how the idea of nature in L’Intrus appears as a construct in which economic and ecological relationships of debt are mediated through imaginaries of place. Rather than proposing new ecological or economic imaginaries, she argues that L’Intrus is a significant ecological text precisely because it makes legible how debt-ridden imaginaries of nature intrude upon another and affect the experience of places and the policies that regulate them. Furthermore, L’Intrus’s complementary depiction of imaginaries of the South Sea islands and the Northern mountain forest suggests that the imagined relationship to a place that is unknown and far away is dependent upon an imagined relationship to the natural environment that is familiar and close by.","PeriodicalId":51945,"journal":{"name":"Studies in French Cinema","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-08-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/14715880.2017.1314147","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41353229","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"‘Shine Bright Like a Diamond’: music, performance and digitextuality in Céline Sciamma’s Bande de filles (2014)","authors":"I. McNeill","doi":"10.1080/14715880.2017.1345187","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14715880.2017.1345187","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article examines the use of music in Céline Sciamma’s Bande de filles (Girlhood, 2014), a film depicting the experiences of a black girl and her friends growing up in the Parisian banlieue. In addition to music written for the soundtrack, the film features diegetic performances by its characters of globally popular songs, the dance routine Internet hit ‘Wop’ by J. Dash, and ‘Diamonds’ as performed by Rihanna. These performances not only occupy key narrative roles but also situate the film in relation to a widely familiar and/or accessible pop cultural landscape that encompasses an online visual imaginary or ‘digitextuality’ constructed through YouTube, Vevo and Vine videos circulating, sharing and responding to the songs and their video performances. This article examines the significance of weaving such sounds and images into the film’s fictional world, aiming to understand the implications of this for questions of gender, sexuality and race raised by the film. Taken together with the film’s wider aesthetic and musical choices, its digitextuality serves both to implicate the spectator and to frustrate a fixed view or reading of the characters. The result is a queer film that exposes the rigid lines of straight, white culture whilst also working to disorient them.","PeriodicalId":51945,"journal":{"name":"Studies in French Cinema","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-07-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/14715880.2017.1345187","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45586818","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}