Joe Hardwick

The vague nouvelle and the Nouvelle Vague: The Critical Construction of le jeune cinéma français

One of the commonplaces in critical writing on the 1990s movement known as le jeune cinéma français is the idea that it constituted a new ‘New Wave’. At the same time, the critical reception of the 1990s and 1960s ‘new waves’ could not be more different, with le jeune cinéma français being seen invariably as aesthetically inferior to its 1960s ‘antecedent’. This article examines the two key discursive mechanisms used to link le jeune cinéma français to the Nouvelle Vague, those of political commitment and ‘auteur’ cinema. It is argued that the mechanisms used to construct le jeune cinéma français as a distinct cinematic category become increasingly divorced from the kinds of films actually being made and that it is this discursive disjuncture which is, in part, responsible for its negative critical reception.

Fallen angels and flawed saviours: marginality and exclusion in La Vie de Jésus and La Vie rêvée des anges

Abstract The recurrence of wandering characters in le jeune cinéma raises the question as to whether they might be considered the cinematic counterparts of the literary protagonists that narrative theorist Ross Chambers examines in his book Loiterature. Chamberss study includes a discussion of Agnès Vardas Sans toit ni loi, revealing the potential applicability of his theories to the cinema as well. Loiterature, drawing on Michel Serress theory of parasitism, examines the relationship between wandering protagonists and marginality and exclusion, two terms which recur consistently in critical writing on le jeune cinéma yet which tend to be used interchangeably. In this article, I will take seriously the distinction between marginality and exclusion in Chamberss theories, using them as the starting point for a discussion of the relationship between space, narrative and marginality in two key films of le jeune cinéma, Erick Zoncas 1998 feature La Vie rêvée des anges/The Dreamlife of Angels and Bruno Dumonts 1997 film La Vie de Jesus/The Life of Jesus. It will be argued that, although marginality and exclusion are very much unstable and shifting concepts, there remains an important distinction between them which is particularly evident in these two films.

Rules of engagement: Cross-cultural glances in critical writing on recent French and Australian 'youth' films

In 1994, the prestigious French film journal Cahiers du cinéma featured a six-page article written by journalist Serge Grünberg on the state of the Australian film industry, a relatively rare extended cross-cultural examination of Australian cinema and cinematic culture by a French film critic (Grünberg, 1994, pp. 72–77). The article in Cahiers was seen to be of such significance that an English translation of it in its entirety was published by Australia’s Metro magazine shortly after (Grünberg, 1994/1995, pp. 27–31). Several months later, Metro also published an essay by Australian French studies academic Amanda Macdonald entitled ‘French film-crit takes a holiday: Les Cahiers do desert-island discourse’. Macdonald’s article offered a very persuasive and detailed critique of both Grünberg’s examination of the Australian film industry and its translation of the ways in which they ‘participate[d] in a longstanding French discursive habit of mythologising Australia as the vast desert island of the South Pacific’ (Macdonald, 1995, p. 57). Grünberg’s article is nonetheless noteworthy in that it underlines the potential benefits to be derived from closer cultural exchange between the French and Australian film industries, not only because of the reliance of both on government subsidies but significantly because of the artistic potential evident in the films of emerging young Australian directors which Grünberg believed would be of interest to French cinemagoers (Grünberg, 1994, p. 77). It is perhaps no coincidence that he was particularly interested in the work of young Australian filmmakers at the time, because up and coming directors in France had similarly become responsible for a considerable slice of

The Transnational and the Transformative: Haim Tabakman's Tu N'aimeras Point and the Shifting Profile of French Cinema in the Twenty-First Century

The transnational in French cinema has largely been examined in terms of the industry’s relation to Hollywood. This article, through a reading of the French-Israeli coproduction Tu n’aimeras point (2009) by Haim Tabakman, will ask what the transnational means when Hollywood is not in the frame. Three kinds of “trans” will be discussed. The first is how the transnational is read in writing on French cinema. The second is translation: how the film travels to reach a wider audience. The third is the transformative. Eyes Wide Open recounts several months in the life of Aaron, a kosher butcher whose life in transformed when he welcomes the outsider Ezri as his apprentice. In reading Tabakman’s film in relation to transnational genres, it will be argued that the film can teach us something about the French transnational through the themes it explores: stagnation and mobility, hospitality and hostility.

Transports prives: Claire Denis's Vendredi soir and the mobile urban woman in French cinema

If one of the recurrent figures of recent French cinema has been that of the wanderer, what counts as a minor genre within this category are films featuring mobile women. Whereas movies starring males offer a variety of journeys for their displaced heroes, recurrent motifs in the lives of the mobile woman include prostitution, madness and violence. Presenting a different perspective is Claire Denis’s 2002 feature Vendredi soir, which recounts the story of Laure, a 30-something woman who gets caught in a traffic jam the night before she is to move in with her partner. On a freezing Parisian night, Laure offers a lift to the mysterious Jean with whom she has a one-night stand. With reference to the writing of Ross Chambers, this paper will read Laure in the tradition of the flâneuse, one who traces a significantly different path from that of her French cinematic forebears.