Transtitial Woman: New Representations of Women in Contemporary French Cinema

Transtitial Woman: New Representations of Women in Contemporary French Cinema Phil Powrie Introduction A PERCEPTIBLE CHANGE has been occurring in French cinema. While at one end of the spectrum the heroine remains as spectacular and spectacularized as ever, at the other end there are women on screen who seemingly escape spectacularity. An example of this polarization is the very different Joans in Luc Besson's and Jacques Rivette's versions of Joan of Arc: a big-budget spectacular with a top-model who overacts (and over-reacts) and a grueling art film with an art-house actress whose overwhelming concern according to the many interviews she gave was to be "human," for which read to be an "ordinary" woman (Besson, The Messenger : The Story of Joan of Arc, 1999; Rivette, Jeanne la Pucelle, 1994). A political reason for this shift could be the now welcome number of women directors, who wish to demythologize woman-as-spectacle. And indeed the shift is perhaps most perceptible in films by women directors, such as Romance (Catherine Breillat, 1999). But, as the example of Rivette suggests, it is by no means confined to them. A second, more general social reason for the shift would be the postmodern attraction to representations of the ordinary, establishing ties with the social cinema of the 1930s and the realist cinema of the 1970s; the aura of spectacle has become the ordinary of the everyday. Whatever the reasons, I am here more concerned with the effect. These women are clearly a spectacle—they are objects of the gaze—but they are not spectacular or spectacularized in the "to-be-looked-at-ness" sense. The gaze constructed by these films no longer seems clearly voyeuristic, or caught in the sadistic/fetishizing binary. I used the term "ordinary" above; but the women in question are not so much "unspectacular" as "unspectacularized." In what follows, I shall try to substantiate my perception of this shift, and then try to theorize it, one problem being, as the already too frequent quotations marks have no doubt suggested, semantic. New Representations—The new representation is clearest in films with little-known actresses, for example the mother in Sandrine Veysset's Y aurat -il de la neige à Noël? (1996). Dominique Reymond had worked principally Vol. XLII, No. 3 81 L'Esprit Créateur in the theatre with Antoine Vitez, with a few walk-on or small parts in seven films, followed by a more substantial part as Hélène in La Naissance de l'amour (Philippe Garrel, 1993). Rosetta, on the other hand, was Emilie Dequenne's first role (Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, 1999). Despite the difference in age between the actresses, the two films are similar in that the two women are presented as "ordinary women," locked in a brutalizing environment , unglamourized either by costume (they both wear Wellington boots, for example), or by cinematographic style, which, with its muted colors, locationbound soundtrack, and paucity of music, has the documentary feel of Maurice Pialat's films of the 1970s. Although there are significant differences between the way the two women are framed by the camera—Reymond is usually in medium or medium-long shots, Dequenne in close-ups or medium shots with a very mobile camera, "dans l'espoir d'apercevoir son vrai visage," as one reviewer put it1—nevertheless, comments made about Rosetta apply to both. Reviewers talk of a sense of the daily grind percolating through Rosetta's activities in the film, which is "dur comme le quotidien."2 Much is made of the character's expressionlessness: "si Ie visage de Rosetta est beau, c'est parce qu'il ne dit rien."3 The same reviewer goes on to praise Rosetta's "sensationnelle absence," while another explains how she is "incessamment menacée de disparition [...]. Rosetta [...] refuse en définitive qu'on la cadre, et, si le personnage fascine, on est bien prêt de ne pas pouvoir l'encadrer"— for him, Rosetta is "un signe indéchiffrable."4 The difference between indecipherability and enigma (fascination being predicated on both) lies in the unglamorized expressionlessness. It is not that the characters of these two films repel, far from it; it...