The Subversive Potential of Ghostly Girlhood in Anne Claire Poirier’s La fin des étés

This article examines spectrality and girlhood in Anne Claire Poirier’s 1964 short film La fin des étés, situating the narrative within the larger context of Québec’s Révolution tranquille. It argues that Poirier’s film highlights the subversive qualities of girlhood itself, and spectralizes the girl in order to criticize the repression of that subversiveness. This film documents the occulted truth of exiting feminine adolescence: that the only way for the girl to overcome her ghostly alienation from the present is for her to put her girlhood self to death, becoming the film’s ultimate ghost: woman.