Wandering Women in French Film and Literature: A Study of Narrative Drift par Mariah Devereux Herbeck (review)

Reviews 205 ouvrage important pour les spécialistes des questions africaines et éclairant pour les amateurs des cinémas d’Afrique. Davidson College (NC) Caroline Beschea-Fache Herbeck, Mariah Devereux. Wandering Women in French Film and Literature: A Study of Narrative Drift. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. ISBN 978-1-13733998 -0. Pp. 198. $85. The adage“Moving targets are difficult to hit”would make an appropriate epithet for this work. Women who wander, free of acceptable social moorings and therefore suggestive of deviant,subversive,and even dangerous behavior,have endlessly tantalized storytellers with the challenge of trying to explain their enigmatic, elusive movement. Wandering Women examines the storytelling strategies used by fictional narrators who have attempted this feat—a complex, multi-layered project. Using Mérimée’s Carmen as a touchstone to the traditional omniscient male who claims he “knows it all” (and thus controls his wanderer), Herbeck concentrates on twentieth-century narrators who find their task problematic precisely because they cannot know everything about a woman who moves beyond their narrative sight (i.e., control). With particular attention to the role gender plays at the textual level, the author examines a range of works, two literary (Breton’s Nadja; Duras’s Le ravissement de Lol V. Stein) and three cinematic (Godard’s Vivre sa vie; Masson’s À vendre;Varda’s Sans toit ni loi). Initiating her analyses by defining the type of narrator present (impersonal, personalized, or pluralized), she then identifies instances of “narrative drift”—occasions when the narrator or narrative voice admits lacking knowledge about the female subject and drifts to another topic or concocts missing details. Herbeck sees such occurrences as key to the narrative transformations that have occurred and therefore scrutinizes their causes as well as the resulting consequences for narrator, for wanderer, and ultimately for the reader/viewer. She has meticulously prepared her argument and its presentation , identifying her theoretical orientation (feminist narrativity); defining her terminology; and situating her investigation vis-à-vis literary, narratological, and film studies,noting both agreement and differences of opinion.Herbeck wishes to maintain her discussions within the confines of the fictional works.Nonetheless,her demarcation between fiction and reality becomes several times muddled, with mixed results. Trying to avoid referring to either “author” or “filmmaker” and assign story-creating power to fictional characters or disembodied voices proves especially challenging, when, for example, the actual voices of Godard and Varda enter their films. Minimally classifying both as external impersonal narrative voices, as Herbeck does, undervalues the innuendo conveyed by the filmmaker’s presence, especially Varda’s. Herbeck more notably muddles her demarcation in the concluding chapter by seemingly suggesting a parallel between her unreliable narrators and the real-life French politicians struggling with the presence of transient populations—a distractingly miscalculated gesture of sympathy towards these non-fictional rovers. Wandering Women offers an intriguing discussion of how the telling of narrator/wanderer stories has evolved from the traditionally linear/chronological arrangement to a form that is interrupted, frequently uncompleted, and no longer necessarily subject to the control of a single narrator. The freshest aspect of this succinct study, however, is the adroit recasting of the female wanderer’s negatively charged subversive personality. Herbeck argues convincingly that the character’s movement in and out of the narrative gaze transforms her from a passive, socially disruptive presence into an active, narrative-interrupting force that ultimately enriches both the story and the reader/viewer’s experience. University of Idaho, emerita Joan M. West Messeeh, Namir Abdel, réal. La Vierge, les coptes et moi… Int. Siham Abdel Messeeh, Namir Abdel Messeeh. Oweda, 2012. En Égypte, les coptes (chrétiens) et les musulmans ont des divisions fermement ancrées. Il semblerait que le réalisateur essaie de démentir cette division en centrant le film sur la Vierge, que les Égyptiens voient comme une femme parfaite. Le film est présenté sous forme de documentaire, suivant le jeune réalisateur Namir (élevé en France mais d’origine égyptienne) qui, après avoir vu une vidéo d’information égyptienne, décide de trouver des témoignages sur les apparitions de la Vierge en Égypte. Namir met en doute ces apparitions, mais la derni...