Alain Robbe-Grillet (review)

This timely and extremely well-researched study persuasively contends that Alain Robbe-Grillet's somewhat neglected filmic oeuvre has made a much more substantial contribution to the evolution of French cinema than has hitherto been acknowledged, and attempts to rehabilitate his reputation as an innovative avant-gardist film-maker who has expanded the language of contemporary cinema. The volume makes ample use of the most recent archival sources, in addition to the fruits of Deleuzean analysis in film theory, among other critical approaches. There is a highly detailed and informative account of the history of Robbe-Grillet's involvement with film (including his last ciné-roman entitled C'est Gradiva qui vous appelle), maintaining that the script for L'Année dernière à Marienbad constitutes the 'template' for all his subsequent work (the question of this film's 'authorship' is addressed in a very pertinent way). Inevitably, a great deal of space is taken with the difficult question of the critical reception of Robbe-Grillet's films, in the light of their highly erotic (some would say pornographic) content, which, arguably, hampered their acceptance by successive generations of viewers and scholars, and has undoubtedly affected their incorporation into the canon — a subversive position that Robbe-Grillet would, of course, have welcomed. There is a sustained discussion of both the ludic organization and the recourse to sado-erotic stereotypes in Robbe-Grillet's films, and it is pleasing to see an appreciation of his work within a properly international context of film-making. In addressing specifically how the erotic discourse operates, the study is to be praised for its skilful navigation around the topic of the problematic functioning of the spectator's gaze, a fundamental feature of Robbe-Grillet's cinema and one that has continued to provoke controversy for this very reason. Understandably, in the light of the aims of this series, the volume concentrates on the workings of filmic representation; however, it is regrettable that insufficient attention is paid to the actual narrative structures of the films discussed, as it is in this respect above all that Robbe-Grillet's cinema is especially potent in the way it challenges and disrupts the spectator's preconceptions. There is also a tendency to overplay the 'autobiographical' resonances of his filmic imagery, as this accords too much significance to the veracity of his (three not four) Romanesques volumes, in which the textual status of such 'revelations' is subject to constant transformation and fictional reinterpretation. Nevertheless, this study should succeed in introducing and defending Robbe-Grillet's cinema to new (and existing) audiences. It also contains a helpful filmography.