This article reads C & eacute;line Sciamma's Portrait de la jeune fille en feu (2019) through the lens of anarchitecture, a concept from art history recently elaborated by Jack Halberstam. It describes practices of creative destruction that work through negation and undoing, refusing to rebuild the world as long as heteropatriarchal structures of property, possession and creativity remain firmly in place. In this vein, the article argues that Portrait de la jeune fille en feu adopts an 'anti-anti-utopian' stance that stays with the debris of aesthetic, bodily and affective orders, rather than mobilising queerness as a means of repairing or redeeming the past, a move evident in some other forms of queer neo-historical cultural production. At the same time, the article goes beyond past approaches that have centred either the 'lesbian gaze' or lesbian desire, instead foregrounding the multiple ways in which the film's aesthetic-cum-political practices create a void of negation, thereby resisting reconciliation with a broken system.
Depuis les ann & eacute;es 2010, plusieurs films fran & ccedil;ais th & eacute;matisent l'adolescence avec une unit & eacute; temporelle et nocturne. L'auteur propose d'appeler ces longs-m & eacute;trages des & laquo; single-night teen movies & raquo; et il en analyse trois, Quand je ne dors pas (Tommy Weber 2015), Ma nuit (Antoinette Boulat 2021) et L'Acirc;ge atomique (H & eacute;l & eacute;na Klotz 2012), qui sont chacun le premier sorti en salle pour leur r & eacute;alisateur-rice. Moyennant une approche esth & eacute;tique, le pr & eacute;sent article interroge la part d'& eacute;mancipation, dans ces oe uvres, pour leur(s) personnage(s) (post-)adolescent-e-s. Dans un premier temps, c'est l'acception proprement politique qui est analys & eacute;e. Alors que Quand je ne dors pas pr & eacute;sente une dimension d & eacute;mocratique offerte par la nuit, L'Acirc;ge atomique est & agrave; ce sujet port & eacute; par un pli & eacute;litiste, tandis que Ma nuit finit par toucher & agrave; l'& eacute;mancipation de sa jeune protagoniste, notamment par des voies & eacute;cologiques. Le deuxi & egrave;me axe de l'article concerne une autre sorte d'& eacute;mancipation, moins politique qu'ontologique : l'acc & egrave;s au r & eacute;el, selon le concept de Cl & eacute;ment Rosset. En effet, les personnages principaux du corpus filmique suivent tou-te-s une trajectoire qui, d'une fa & ccedil;on ou d'une autre, marque une d & eacute;prise vis-& agrave;-vis d'une vision id & eacute;aliste refusant de voir le r & eacute;el sans double. Finalement, l'article montre que dans ce corpus, ces deux formes & eacute;mancipatrices sont coh & eacute;rentes.
This article argues that Robin Campillo's Eastern Boys (2013) queers both space and time by staging the Gare du Nord as a cinematic and political crucible. Drawing on queer theories of temporality and spatial deviance alongside historical and ethnographic accounts of rail infrastructure, this article examines how Campillo transforms the train station - long associated with mobility, surveillance and sexual regulation - into a site of erotic opacity, loitering and temporal drift. Situating Eastern Boys within a genealogy of French films that explore minoritarian movement and homosocial risk, this article traces how the film's spatial disorientation and non-linear time structure not only desire but also emergent if ambiguous forms of queer care. Through a comparative reading of L'Homme bless & eacute;/The Wounded Man (Patrice Ch & eacute;reau, 1983) and an analysis of Eastern Boys' own turn towards transfiliation, adoption and legal recognition, this article highlights Campillo's film's ambivalent negotiation between queer survival and state normalisation. Ultimately, this article posits that Eastern Boys offers a cinematic counter-map of urban life under late capitalism, revealing how intimacy, kinship and belonging are reconfigured across spaces of transit, containment and surveillance.
With joint bases in France and Germany and the Europe-wide platform arte.tv, Arte bills itself as the 'European Culture Channel'. Over the past decade Arte has reached an increasing audience across the continent through VOD (video-on-demand) and become an important if niche player in the French and European streaming markets. This article uses Arte's 'series that travel' to examine the approaches the platform has used to diversify the appeal of its series and expand its audience both within and beyond France. The 'series that travel' label refers to processes at work behind the scenes such as funding and creative collaboration across national boundaries, narrative elements of mobility and travel, and a particular strand of 'screen tourism' cultivated by Arte. Arte's series exemplify the cartographic function of series as they sketch out an evolving and expanding screen map of Europe. The article proposes travel as an optic through which to understand both the production strategies and the narrative and visual elements of these series. Even series that on the surface originate in one national industry are inflected with more nuanced creation and production backstories. Examples include Blackport (Arte/RUV, 2021), Countrymen (Arte/NRK, 2021), DNA/Kidnapping (Arte/TV2 Denmark, 2019-2023), Eden (Arte, 2019), Hierro (Arte/Moviestar+, 2019-2022) and No Man's Land (Arte/Hulu, 2020-).
Since the 2010s, comedy has been an important vector for the new visibility of senior citizens, exploring new situations ranging from retirement to living in nursing homes. A dozen or so films focus on old age and/or dependency, from Et si on vivait tous ensemble ?/All Together (St & eacute;phane Robelin, 2011) to Quand tu seras grand/Big Kids (Andr & eacute;a Bescond and & Eacute;ric M & eacute;tayer, 2023), as well as the series Septi & egrave;me ciel/Sex (Re)Education (OCS, 2022-). This article analyses these productions as offering novel ideas about old age: their often utopian narratives counter the marginalisation of the elderly, producing images that, if not desirable, are in any case less negative than those in auteur cinema. Unlike older films, they place the elderly in spaces of sociability through intergenerational plots or stories that grant agency to their elderly protagonists. These comedies thus renew stereotypes of old age rather than rehashing them and implement different, often euphemistic, strategies to integrate 'the worst' of old age into the genre. The corpus shows the persistence of a double standard in attitudes towards ageing, however, since these films feature old men much more frequently than old women, offering a second career to ageing actors rather than actresses.
This article historicises and assesses the localisation of the American model of showrunning to French television production in the age of streaming. The successes of showrunning in & Eacute;ric Rochant's Le Bureau des l & eacute;gendes/The Bureau (Canal+, 2015-2020) and Fanny Herrero's Dix pour cent/Call My Agent! (France 2, 2015-2020) have been widely recognised. However, other series in the years since have not uniformly adopted the model of a singular figure or team that blends creative and managerial responsibilities. This article takes a media industry studies approach to showrunning in France. Through analysis of press coverage and interviews, it argues that there are significant cultural and legal barriers to its implementation within French television production. While it might seem that a country whose film industry accords significant emphasis to the director as auteur would make localisation easy, in fact it is the status of the director as auteur that is one of the most significant barriers to the adoption of showrunning. Although creative vision and stylistic coherence are widely accepted as necessary for successful quality series, changing French production cultures and legal frameworks to localise the showrunning model requires a revaluation of the role of writing and writers in the television industry.
In women-centred rape-revenge, the protagonist's rage transforms her from violated woman-as-object to vigilante subject, the price of her agency her spectacularised rape. Genre criticism, with some exceptions, has not tended to engage anger as the vital and potentially deconstructive component of rape-revenge's aesthetic that recent post #MeToo films indicate it is. Two early 2000s marginal rape-revenge films cultivate anger's force, their creators fashioning sex as vengeful action. Virginie Despentes and Coralie Trinh Thi's 2000 Baise-moi and Talia Lugacy's 2007 Descent align character anger with their own, fuelled by their lived experience of sexual violence. Anger's 'againstness' shapes their films' carefully differentiated audience address, animating the uncommon grounds each film articulates pertaining to labour, race and sexuality: racialised sex work in Paris for Baise-moi, racialised assault in US academia for Descent. These films evidence the creative utility that anger affords feminist filmmakers: it underwrites agonistic perspectives and blurs lines between diegesis and lived experience. These tactics stir rage, differentially, in audiences. This essay reads and recontextualises that anger and the angry reception of both films by critics and audiences to track the creative force and dangers of a contemporary aesthetic whose method, expression and reach are shaped by feminist rage.
This article addresses areas of French Star Studies by looking at 'stars at home'. Its focus is on the affective aspects of this fascination, in relation to intimacy, longing and private worlds. The stakes of this are high at a moment when #MeToo is casting light on the French film industry. The article looks at Charlotte Gainsbourg's loving documentary about her mother, Jane Birkin, Jane par Charlotte/Jane by Charlotte (2021). The complex relation of Charlotte and Jane to the French film industry and its narratives of older men and younger women, fathers and daughters, is discussed. Charlotte's film is seen as, in various ways, a feminist work with fresh perspectives on fascination with stars and intimacy. Jane par Charlotte is read as a film about two houses, Kachalou, the last house of Jane Birkin, recently sold (2024), and Maison Gainsbourg, the house of Charlotte's father, Serge Gainsbourg, recently opened as a museum (2023). Charlotte Gainsbourg, as filmmaker, is shown to pay particular attention to the display of photographs in each house, creating in the film montages of these images through which to highlight questions of memory, voyeurism and vulnerability.
This article examines the rise of the actors from the Splendid troupe within French comic cinema at the juncture of the 1970s-1980s. Emerging from Parisian caf & eacute;-th & eacute;& acirc;tre, the Splendid team are one of the most successful manifestations of this innovative theatrical movement. The troupe's actors collectively transitioned into cinema, enabling the industry, critics and audiences to identify more clearly the 'caf & eacute;-th & eacute;& acirc;tre style'. Contemporary press articles analysing their films highlight a sense of renewal in comedy. While adapting to the demands of the film industry, the group cultivated its distinctiveness marked by avant-garde artistic roots and an association with marginality. This fostered the perception among audiences and critics that the situations depicted on screen were edgier and less consensual. Nevertheless, numerous commentators noted the reappropriation of traditional boulevard comedy formulas in these works. Without renouncing the caustic edge of their theatrical origins, the caf & eacute;-th & eacute;& acirc;tre actors softened the darker aspects of their style to align with a market involving greater economic risks than the caf & eacute;-th & eacute;& acirc;tre circuit. As a result, these caf & eacute;-th & eacute;& acirc;tre-inspired film comedies are defined more by their sense of balance than by radical innovation.
This article explores (de)localisation strategies employed in original Quebec series distributed on national streaming services ICI TOU.TV and Illico+. In a media landscape dominated by global streaming services such as Netflix and Disney+, local series face the challenge of attracting both national and international audiences. Based on a qualitative analysis of 34 original French-language series, this study identifies four main localisation strategies in Quebec series: broad delocalisation, cosmetic localisation, cultural localisation and integrated localisation. These strategies highlight how Quebec series navigate the balance between maintaining cultural specificity and potentially appealing to global markets. The article also examines the potential risks of reinforcing cultural stereotypes through a 'tourist gaze', as local creators may reproduce familiar, commodified images of Quebec to appeal to broader audiences. By analysing this spectrum of localisation practices, the study sheds light on the complex interplay between the local and the global in the streaming era and the implications for cultural representation in media.
Alice Guy-Blach & eacute;, premi & egrave;re femme r & eacute;alisatrice, productrice et directrice de studios de l'histoire du cin & eacute;ma, continue de susciter fascination et d & eacute;bats. Cet article explore la mani & egrave;re dont la presse & eacute;tatsunienne a fa & ccedil;onn & eacute; son image publique entre 1910 et 1920, mettant en & eacute;vidence les tensions entre son r & ocirc;le d'entrepreneuse novatrice et les attentes genr & eacute;es de l'& eacute;poque. En s'appuyant sur un album de presse rare compil & eacute; par Guy-Blach & eacute;, compl & eacute;t & eacute; par des recherches archivistiques, cette & eacute;tude analyse comment les journalistes ont construit son image - valorisant ses succ & egrave;s tout en les inscrivant dans des cadres st & eacute;r & eacute;otyp & eacute;s. Pr & eacute;sent & eacute;e tant & ocirc;t comme une pionni & egrave;re du cin & eacute;ma, tant & ocirc;t comme une figure maternelle, elle est & eacute;galement per & ccedil;ue & agrave; travers les prismes de la nationalit & eacute; et du genre, sa francit & eacute; & eacute;tant souvent & eacute;voqu & eacute;e pour renforcer sa l & eacute;gitimit & eacute; artistique. Cet article souligne ainsi le r & ocirc;le central de la presse dans la r & eacute;ception de Guy-Blach & eacute; et son impact sur la post & eacute;rit & eacute; de son oe uvre cin & eacute;matographique. Il met & eacute;galement en perspective son cas avec Lois Weber et ses collaborations avec des actrices, en interrogeant la mani & egrave;re dont l'identit & eacute; nationale et les repr & eacute;sentations m & eacute;diatiques ont fa & ccedil;onn & eacute; la reconnaissance des femmes dans l'industrie du cin & eacute;ma muet.
A confronting French film which condemns the influence of sexualised media on pre-teen girls, Ma & iuml;mouna Doucour & eacute;'s Mignonnes/Cuties premiered to acclaim at the Sundance International Film Festival in 2020, where Doucour & eacute; won the Directing Prize and the film was purchased for international distribution by Netflix. Yet when Mignonnes reached the US-based streaming platform in September that year, advertised with a misguided poster that failed to convey the film's critical gaze, it became the target of the #CancelNetflix boycott, spearheaded by US politicians and co-opted by the QAnon movement, who accused Netflix of endorsing child sexual exploitation. This article considers both the experience of the protagonist Amy (Fathia Youssouf) in Mignonnes, and the reaction of the US groups who boycotted Netflix following its release, through Bourdieu's habitus and field. Both Amy and the boycotters lack the embodied, contextual, cultural competency to truly understand the field they occupy, to interpret the sexualised imagery they are consuming and to take it up in productive ways, leading in both cases to disastrous results. Thus, the authors contend that both inside the film (in its plot) and around it (in its reception), Mignonnes teaches us a lesson in the dangers of media illiteracy.
The last decade has seen American streaming platforms become some of the biggest players in the production and circulation of French cinema, with scholarship attempting to make sense of the changes that they have wrought. Up to now, that attention has focused almost exclusively on Netflix. This article breaks from this tendency by chronicling and analysing the production activities of Amazon Prime Video (APV) in France. This begins with an overview of APV's time in the country and 'original' production of series and films. The article then turns to close analysis of APV's original French content. The article goes on, providing case studies of three of the platform's original French films - Medell & iacute;n (Franck Gastambide, 2023), Sentinelle (David Caviglioli and Hugo Benamozig, 2023) and Un stup & eacute;fiant No & euml;l!/Dealing with Christmas (Arthur Sanigou, 2023) - and one of its original French series Salade grecque/Greek Salad (Amazon Prime Video, 2023). Each of these are shown to typify different aspects of French cinema during the streaming era, but the case studies also focus on the balance that each work attempts to strike between APV's 'hyper-local' ambitions and the desire to make films and series that are attractive to international audiences.
In their film Guernica of 1950, Alain Resnais and Robert Hessens re-work the genre of the documentary film about art to develop a powerful and expressive address to both historical and contemporary political events, in what becomes an extraordinary anticipatory register. Re-examining the film's imagery, this article proposes that it should be understood not only in relation to the bombing of 1937 which it depicts, but also in relation to contemporary Cold War anxieties. Furthermore, it argues that the purchase on reality which the film begins to construct with its departure from a purportedly documentary genre helps to deepen and extend our understanding of Andr & eacute; Bazin's theory of cinematic realism in ways which may be situated in relation to wider period debates between social realism and more expressive forms, and which offer new potential today.
