France on Film: Reflections on Popular French Cinema (review)

L'Esprit Créateur which French cinema functions"), and, finally, film technique and theory. The Editors also plan an annual review article of books published on French cinema and another on key conferences on French cinema. The articles range over cinema history from "Magic and Illusion in early cinema" to "Apocalypse then: French Disaster films of the 1920s," through a carefully nuanced assessment of the anti-modernism of the "Parisian popular" of the classic cinema of die 30s that emphasized its regressive, nostalgic idealization of small, rooted communities. An article on Sembène Ousmane 's first full-length film, La Noire de..., focuses on techniques used to portray the structures of colonialism. Theory is represented by three articles: an examination of the relationship between film and hypnosis in Benoît Jacquot's Le Septième Ciel; a very topical article on the place of "Cinematic Bodies: The Blind Spot in Contemporary French Theory on Corporeal Cinema," that situates film studies at the center of postmodern theory; and "Jouissance at the Margins," an analysis of Philippe Harel's adaptation of Michel Houellebecq's "Extension du domaine de la luttelWhatever " that moves smoothly and perceptively between history and theory, situating its subject in relation to "May 68 and middle management" before reexamining Kristeva's notion of the "abject" in order to apply it to the "masculine." The majority of the articles fit into the category of film genre and film trends, and, reflecting the review's concern to publish work in new areas, focus less on works by canonical auteurs (Truffaut's Fahrenheit 451 and Godard's A bout de souffle are the exceptions) than on films from the 90s and beyond—Brigitte Rouän's Outremer, Dominique Cabrera's Demain et encore demain, Agnès Varda's Les Glaneurs et la glaneuse, Jacques Rivette's Haut bas fragile, and Claude Berri's Lucie Aubrac—placing them in Ãœie context of history and film history, genre theory and gender studies. Marja Warehime The University of South Carolina Lucy Mazdon, ed. France on Film: Reflections on Popular French Cinema. London: Wallflower Press, 2001.Pp. 180. This is a collection of articles on individual French films, all made in the 1990s, with the exception oÃ- Jean de Florette (1986). Mazdon's aim, through these case studies, is to examine the construction of French cinema, especially in its popular dimension. This is a welcome idea, though Mazdon overstates her case in saying mat "The French cinema articulated in this book might be quite different to that described in other works on the subject," given that an important feature of books and articles on French and European cinema in the last ten years or so has been to consider popular film. It should also be pointed out mat France on Film examines films that have received ample treatment elsewhere (Jean de Florette, Gazon maudit, Nikita, Romancé), though this is not to say that the chapters on these films are to be dismissed for mis reason. My criticism would be rather mat the selection reflects the current slant within UK academic film studies towards contemporary cinema, sadly to the detriment of history. As in all edited collections, contributions are uneven, though each chapter is informative. I personally found Maria Esposito on Jean de Florette, Howard Seal on Vn héros très discret and Phil Powrie on Marius et Jeannette particularly engaging. In the first case Esposito brings a new, detailed attention to this famous film, and the other two cogently contextualise two of the most interesting films of me 1990s. But then each reader will bring different questions to different films. On a more general level, it is a pity that Mazdon did not pursue her own questions about what "popular" means in French cinema. For instance, the issue of quantitative vs qualitative popularity runs through the book but box-office figures are used by some contributors, ignored by others, or interpreted according to different criteria. Similarly, issues of methodology (how to relate the "France" and "film" terms of me title) are left underexplored. 94 Fall 2002 Book Reviews A quality of this collection is to bring in some young scholars, reflecting the widening of interest...