Francois Ozon

Preface and Acknowledgments

preface and acknowledgements This monograph represents the culmination of an ongoing personal and academic interest in the work of François Ozon. For the past decade, Ozon’s unique position within French-language filmmaking has stimulated my enthusiasm for both cinema studies and theories of gender and sexuality. The present study provides an overview of François Ozon’s career to date, highlighting his unrestrained, voracious cinephilia; his recurrent collaborations with women screenwriters (Marina de Van, Emmanuèle Bernheim) and actresses (Charlotte Rampling, Ludivine Sagnier, Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi); and the trademarks of his cinema. I also perform a detailed reading of nine feature films, organized thematically into three segments, in order to reveal the continuity of his cinematic endeavors. The introductory section discusses all of Ozon’s available short films from 1988 to 1998, his work following his formal training at the Fémis film school (with special emphasis on Une robe d’été [1996]), his unique status within the French film industry, and the ways transgression and desire pervade his cinema. The second section, “Paternal Monsters,” focuses on the ambiguous position of the father figure and on Ozon’s inclination for genre b(l)ending and artificiality in Sitcom (1998), Les amants criminels (1999), and 8 femmes (2002). In the third section, “Mourning Sickness,” I examine how various forms of mourning (a returning obsession in Ozon’s output) affect the lonesome, self-absorbed characters in the more naturalistic Sous le sable (2000), Swimming Pool (2003) and Le temps qui reste (2005). The final section, “Foreign Affairs,” focuses on couples and the difficulties of conjugal life. It also underscores the director’s taste for foreign actors and locations and his passion for adaptation—or, more accurately, reinterpretation—in Gouttes d’eau sur pierres brûlantes (2000), adapted from an early play by Rainer Werner Fassbinder; 5x2 (2004), inspired by two films from x | preface and acknowledgments directors Ingmar Bergman and Jane Campion; and Ricky (2009), based on British writer Rose Tremain’s short story “Moth.” Most short films and all feature films discussed in this study are available on DVD in the United States, except Angel (2007), an Englishlanguage film that has not yet been distributed in North America (except in French-speaking Canada) and that I chose not to treat in detail here. Ricky is still playing in American theaters as I write, but is soon to be available on DVD with IFC Films. When I met François Ozon in Paris for an interview in October 2009, he provided crucial insight on the short films that regularly appear in his filmography but have never been widely available to the public—notably, his only documentary, Jospin s’éclaire (1995), and the unreleased, Fémis-produced Une goutte de sang (1991) and Peau contre peau (1991). Ozon also spoke candidly about the recurring themes and obsessions in his cinema, the collaborative process of his craft, and his latest film, Le refuge (2009), which is scheduled for release in the United States in late 2010. I thank him for his kindness and am grateful for his flexibility and responsiveness in setting up our interview. For their invaluable feedback and encouragement at various stages of the writing process, I thank Judith Mayne, Elena Past, Jumi Hayaki, Vinay Swamy, Julian Bourg, Caroline Yezer, Nathalie Dupont, and Philippe Dubois. I thank Joan Catapano and James Naremore of the University of Illinois Press for their support. I am grateful to the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures at the College of the Holy Cross, to Francisco Gago-Jover, Laurence Enjolras, the Holy Cross Grants Office and Committee on Faculty Scholarship, as well as Charles Weiss and Steve Vineberg for helping me fund both research trips to Paris that were needed for the completion of this book. I also thank the staff members at the Bibliothèque du film and at the Inathèque in Paris for assisting me in accessing printed and multimedia materials on Ozon’s cinema. A special thanks to Michael Gott for his translation into English of my interview with François Ozon and, for their moral support, Sara May Plourde, Kathy Lanning, Heather Skowood, Jerome Anderson, Adele Parker, Will Edwards, Jessie Yamas, Kerri Galloway, Charles Gillilan , Dan Berglund, Andy Lang, and Randi Polk. Unless followed by a parenthetical reference, all information about the films’ admissions and box office profits come from the Internet Movie Database website. Unless otherwise noted, all translations from the French are my own. ...