Nostalgia, Melancholy, Trauma: Backlash Postfeminism in Contemporary French Screen Romance

This article draws on Diane Negra’s (2009) assessment of neo-global postfeminist popular culture and cinema as displaying an obsession with time-control that is largely inimical to feminist progress, arguing that similar currents are visible in 2010s French screen romances. While manifestations of this obsession with relevance for the contemporary French context range from celebrations of ritualized, time-sensitive milestones (marriage, pregnancy) to narratives of female professional retreatism in the face of ‘time-poverty’ or the expansion of sexualized female identities across ages, this article focuses in depth on themes of actual or symbolic historical reversion in the intimate sphere through a close analysis of the films Camille redouble (Noémie Lvovsky, 2012) and Un peu, beaucoup, aveuglément (Clovis Cornillac, 2015). After surveying other cognate fictions, the discussion demonstrates that both these films reflect a wider backdrop of time-related trauma informing contemporary French onscreen romance and are accordingly melancholic, as well as openly nostalgic, in theme and tone. The article interrogates the backlash aspects of such narratives but also the different resonances associated with regressive ‘postfeminist’ elements in French as opposed to American culture. It thus demonstrates that postfeminism bears a specific relationship to the distinctive past history comprised by local feminist movements and intersects with other Gallic customs and ideologies – notably nationalistic ones – in particular ways.