The Films of Claire Denis: Intimacy on the Border ed. by Marjorie Vecchio (review)

The volume edited by Marjorie Vecchio is a useful addition to the long list of scholarly articles on Denis’s works since she directed her first feature film, Chocolat, in 1988. Chocolat is used by a great number of French teachers and it brought attention to the director, not only from film critics and cinephiles, but also from scholars (of cinema, post colonial and women’s and gender studies). Denis has since established herself as a well-known filmmaker, with at least twelve remarkable films, and several international retrospectives of her work. The book is engaging, and will no doubt serve as a major reference for anyone working on Denis’s film, on women filmmakers, or on contemporary French cinema.

The book includes interviews of people who have worked with Denis. The lovely introduction by Vecchio and a poetic forward by Wim Wenders, whom Denis assisted on two major films at the very beginning of her career (Paris, Texas and Wings of Desire), set the tone for the book: inclusive, reflexive and open.

The interviews concern different elements necessary to produce a film, such as music for instance. Martine Beugnet’s interviews with musicians Dickon Hinchliffe and Stuart Staples shed light on the musical aspect of films made by Denis throughout her career, such as Nénette et Boni, Trouble Every Day, Vendredi Soir, L’intrus, 35 Rhums and White Material. The musicians explain how they work on the score to define the mood and tone of the stories as they develop, with the filmmaker, and the significance of sound for Denis. From Kirsten Johnson’s interview with Denis’s film editor, Nelly Quettier, we learn a ton of facts about movies in general, about Denis’s unique approach to filming humanity, and about Beau Travail, a film made for TV in 2001, loosely based on Melville’s Billy Budd. Shot partially in Djibouti and in Marseille, it is edited digitally on Avid, a “non linear digital editing” process new at the time. The film is put together in a manner typical of Denis’s creative method, everything falling perfectly into place, with specific practical aspects, such as the voice-over that finds its way into the movie when Denis Lavant writes/speaks his memories as a Légionnaire. Kirsten Johnson also interviewed actor Alex Descas, who acted in six of Denis’s films, starting with S’en fout la mort and starring as well in 35 Rhums. In the interview, Descas talks about meeting Denis, his acting and his professional relationship with Denis and her photographer Agnès Godard. Jean-Luc Nancy’s interview of Denis reveals many aspects of Denis’s childhood. In particular, he mentions the influence of her mother, who had seen films by Alain Resnais and Jean-Luc Godard and would tell the stories to little Claire.

The second part of the book is dedicated to the critical investigation of relationships within Denis’s films. Catherine Wheatley takes a new perspective on the representations of family relations in Denis’s cinema, seeing them as central rather than marginal; Sam Ishii-Gonzales explores Denis’s use of parallel editing to create new communities of meaning and relations in Can’t Sleep Tonight, inspired by the notorious French serial killer Thierry Paulin. James S. Williams craftily explores the specificity of White Material while reviewing Denis’s career. He identifies the film as alone of its kind in her corpus for lacking intertextuality with other films. The chapter shows how all of Denis’s other films are in dialogue with other filmmakers, other films, novels, texts, and sometimes each other. However, rather than viewing it as a failure, Williams examines this lack as a political acknowledgment on the part of Denis that colonialism has to be treated as extreme and he puts the film in dialogue with 35 Rhums, a film that also signals the need for...