Director Julia Ducournau has become
synonymous with the “feminist body horror” genre. By pioneering the idea of the
horrors of femininity, without the loss of agency and autonomy for her subjects,
has elevated Ducournau as a premiere auteur of indie filmmaking. Each of her
three films to date have pushed the boundaries of expectation, understanding
and taste. Boundary breaking, and at times, culturally caustic, Ducournau’s
filmography challenges cinephiles through a lack of narrative conventions and a
simultaneous allegorical richness, which requires repeat viewing. Whether her subjects
be a vegetarian vet with a penchant for cannibalism, a nonbinary, gender-fluid
serial killer with objectophilia for automobiles, or a self-destructive teen during
a postapocalyptic future brought on by a pandemic with statuesque virulence,
there is absurdity, and an unconventional construction of tone, plot and
character to Ducournau’s films that is as refreshing as it is grotesque. Therefore,
Julia Ducournau is the subject of my next director series that is sure to push
the boundaries of conventional cinematic language into something beyond.
BREIF BACKGROUND
Birthed
from a gynecologist mother and a dermatologist father, on November 18th
1983, it is unsurprising that Julia Ducournau’s filmmaking trajectory is both
within and guided by the body horror subgenre. While not “in her blood” as many
who would use a biologically deterministic argument to explain how the award-winning
director got her initial inspiration, it stands to sociologically reason that her
parent’s careers, through the process of socialization, would have an indelible
impact on their daughter. Given Ducournau’s films, the similarities between
what is often the film’s subject and the expertise of her parents, there is
little denying their influence. Ducournau cites their candid and direct
discussions about the body and death led her to be fascinated with the flesh, consciousness,
and the way that the body could be manipulated. This fascination became
crystalized when Ducournau went to film school.
Studying
film and screenwriting at the prestigious La Femis, Durcournau’s auteristic
tenure has been met with wide acclaim and critical success. The second female
(cis or trans) to win the directing Palme d’Or at the CANNES film festival
(behind Jane Campion for The Piano) her work has been described as
revelatory, uncompromising, thrillingly provocative, with visuals that many
find disturbingly erotic. Durcournau’s richly sparse trilogy of films has
always been something to watch. Given the general acceptance of her films by cinephile
critics, Durcournau’s latest venture, Alpha, has become one of the more anticipated films
screened at Cannes in 2025,
to the point of myths arising around the film that are akin to Freidkin’s The Exorcist. Yet, as of this writing, early
reviews out of the festival seem to be the harbinger of mediocrity for Ducournau;
the most scathing coming from artistically anarchic auteur apologist and cinephile
champion critic David Ehrlich of Indiewire calling the film both “dour and dismal”. Thus, with her most recent feature,
Ducournau may be beginning to experience the missteps and disparagement that inevitably
accompanies artistic expression.
Ducournau’s inspirations have been cited as Lynchingly
Cronenbergian with a sprinkling of Shelly and Poe. Ducournau uses both a
command of the camera, including an eclectic series of shots, techniques and
storyboards to crystalize this amalgamistic aesthetic of tone and style.The body horror aspects of Ducournau’s feature
length directorial triptych: Raw, Titane, and Alpha, can easily be
laid at the feet of early Cronenberg (VideoDrome, The Fly) while the twisting
reveals, and often radical shifts in composition, lighting, narrative and tone
are positively Lynchian; specifically, The Elephant Man. Because of these influences, Ducournau’s films
are difficult to describe, but easy to spot, given the audience reactions to
them out of context. “She ate him?” (Raw) “Did she just fuck a car?” (Titane) “Is
she turning to stone?” (Alpha). Allegorically artistic, Ducournau channels those
influences into a consistent expression of the horrors of the female body.
THEMES
In looking at Ducournau’s brief filmography there is a
level of thematic consistency in her work. Coming from a desire to make genre
films that blossom from reality, Ducournau understands that we draw from the
world around us for inspiration and to say something about our everyday lives.
However, she has also indicated that her films should not be pigeonholed into a
political
pamphlet.
This
apolitical stance of filmmakers is common. It is often born out of a desire to
maximize revenue and profit the most off of their art by a reluctance to produce
anything that would be perceived as politically polarizing, or more
artistically, allows the audience the freedom to interpret the filmmaker’s art
independently, in their own way. This is understandable, even refreshing, but
ultimately impossible, and often perceived as a cop out. Because film is a social
and cultural product, it reflects both the time-period and the individuals that
the film is telling stories about. This relatability is key. So, that even films
set in the most fantastical world can still say something about the world we live
in today.The personal is political, as
film is socio-cultural, regardless of the filmmaker’s economic or artistic
intensions. Thus, if a socio-cultural and political stance is going to be presumably
applied to the film anyway, filmmakers should make their intensions known, so
that they are not misconstrued and their art is not misinterpreted and used in
ways that do not align with the artist’s beliefs. However, intension is not a requirement
for thematic embodiment, as with Ducournau’s filmography, there is an audience
projection of themes that are present when consuming her art; specifically, those
of feminism and body autonomy.
Feminism and body autonomy
One of the many struggles that female
directors face, in addition to the consistent misogyny brought on by the
historical patriarchal exclusion and invisibility of women in such a creative
and authoritative position, is the assumption that everything that director produces
is perceived as feminist. A person’s genitalia, their sex assignment at birth,
or their gender identity should never assume a political ideology, even as one
as generalized and tepid as equity and equality for all women. Yet, unfortunately,
anything a female director produces, there are attempts to politically
commodify it and use their work to make a broader point[1], regardless of if it fits.
Ducournau’s trilogy of films,
carries with it a clear fascination and understanding of the female body. In an
interview with The
Independent, Ducournau has stated that women “… have to accept some parts of us that are hard
to watch, hard to acknowledge because it’s in us, because it’s scary.”. For her,
from the embrace of the monstrous can result in emancipatory liberation, whether
that be through cannibalism, objectophelic gender fluidity, or statuesque
virulence. This is because of the contrast of the female monstrous body in
comparison to its often-misogynistic sexualization, and a deification of the
female body through the process of childbirth often projects a reference for
the female body that has been mythologized. For Ducournau, by rejecting this understanding
of the female body is to also reject a heavenly invoked gilded cage of
patriarchy’s design. Instead, by embracing the utility and practicality of
female bodies we can see their central power that is often obfuscated by the soft
aesthetic that is applied to them. Ducournau’s films tear away at that façade
and embraces the grimy grotesqueries of girlhood as their emotional prism of empowerment
outside of the patriarchal structures that seek to control them.
Because of Ducournau’s focus on depicting
the often-literal deconstruction of the female body, much of the forthcoming
analysis will be pulled from many post structural philosophers, feminists and sociological
scholars. The central works of Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, Julia Kristeva,
bell hooks, and Nancy Frasier may be used or make an appearance in the reference
list of each film’s criticism. The link between body and identity, their mutual
transformation and expression that Ducournau depicts on screen, shall be peered
through this academic lens.
CONCLUSION
The
modern body horror genre would not be as rich and vibrant without the work of Julia Ducournau. She challenges the way that we see and understand
the female form. Through the embrace of the grotesque and its application to
the female body, we can help to break out of the cultural misogyny of the near innate
sexualization that objectifies and strips girls from the transformative power
that they hold within themselves.
The fourth film in my analysis of The Films of Celine Sciamma is the sapphic period drama A
Portrait of a Lady on Fire. The first film of Sciamma’s career, which isn’t
placed in a modern context, is also the film with the most thematic depth and cinematic
nuance, where the command of her craft is on full display. Sciamma crystalizes in
celluloid the thought, themes, and philosophy that encapsulates her vision as
an auteur. Yet, when taking a critical sociological
perspective to Sciamma’s most celebrated work to date, we see the cracks in the
acrylic that are caked on the canvas. In fact, through this lens, some of the
noted and praiseworthy aspects of the film may be reevaluated; an unfortunate sociological
turpentine that dissolves the heavily lauded art on screen.
PLOT
Marianne
(Moemie Merlant) a 1770’s French painter is called to Brittany, France to paint
the portrait of a Noble woman’s daughter, Heloise (Adele Haenel). The portrait
is designed to entice a Noble man to marry her client’s progeny. However,
because Heloise is resistant to the chattel marriage that she has been thrust
into by the suicide of her older sister, the painting must be drawn in secret. As
Marianne and Heloise get closer, the objective artist’s gaze turns romantic and
is reciprocated. Every day, as the painting becomes closer to being finished,
so too is their precociously perennial passion endangered of being snuffed out
by time, class status and circumstance.
HISTORICAL
CONTEXT
In both the production of A Portrait of a Lady on
Fire and the period it is supposed to represent, there are liberties and
contrivances that allow for a more modern/postmodern interpretation outside of
the conventions of the context depicted. Granted, Sciamma and painting
consultant Helene Delmaire, mined history to construct the amalgamated backstory
of Marianne, giving her the blended narrative flavor of many female painters of
the 1770’s. Still, the whole conceit of the film is in and of itself a respite
from the patriarchy, which by design, allows for a more contemporary perspective.
Thus, in addition to deploying her pioneered “female gaze” in the picture,
Sciamma makes a period film feel contemporary, at the same time, giving
historical legitimacy to the anachronisms she adds.
Production
Principal Photography for A
Portrait of a Lady on Fire occurred in the Fall of 2018, taking only 38
days. Shot entirely on location at Saint-Pierre-Quiberon in Brittany and a
château in La Chapelle-Gauthier, Seine-et-Marne; the film embodies the
realities of aristocratic life of the time. In vacant hallways and empty rooms,
Sciamma and Cinematographer Claire Mathon tangibly render the differences
between class status and wealth.
In
most (improper) cinematic depictions of the aristocracy, be they English or
French, there is a level of opulence that was uncharacteristic of the time[1]. This specific anachronism
is more a product of illustrating class struggles, particularly the chasmic
gulf between the rich and the poor, almost by a one-to-one comparison. The rich
are lavishly dressed and well fed, with gluttonous amounts of food prepared in
an assortment of feasts for no actual occasion other than the whims of the ruling
royals. Sciamma dispenses with the glitz, glamour and lavishness of an irreconcilable
fantasy of familial nobility; indicating through the subtle barrenness of the
Chateau, and the sacredness of the green dress for the portrait, that while the
family (and their name) still holds esteem and social capital value,[2] they are also poor.Thus, they use chattel marriage as a necessary
way out of destitution.
In
the film, this distinction is vocalized in an argument between Marianne and
Heloise:
Heloise:
You blame me for what comes next…My Marriage. You don’t support me.
Marianne:
You are right.
Heloise:
Go on. Say what burdens your heart. I believed you braver.
Marianne: I believed you were braver, too.
Heloise:
That’s it then. You find me docile. Worse. You imagine me collusive. You
imagine my pleasure
Marianne:
It is a way of avoiding hope.
Heloise:
Imagine me Happy or Unhappy if that reassures you. But do not imagine me
guilty. You prefer I resist?
Marianne: Yes.
Heloise:
Are you asking me to? Answer Me!
Marianne:
No.
This conversation
is further punctuated by the freedom Marianne has as a painter because she inherited
her father’s business. It affords her the choice to be married or not;
something that Heloise points out is a luxury she does not have after her
sister’s suicide. It is this sense of and taste of freedom that Marianne both represents
and provides Heloise which she first finds attractive; a status that she cannot
achieve but through this brief respite.
Rather than shoot on film, Sciamma
and Mathon chose to photograph using 8k cameras, to give the film an
overexposed look. In an interview with The Criterion Collection, Sciamma states
that this hyperclarity was important to the intimacy of the film and the overall
tenderness between the actors. According to Sciamma, skin, and the capturing of
its shades and textures were so important to the film, that it needed to have a
bold sharpness that would accentuate the subtle nuances of light, shadow,
costume and movement. Mathon and Sciamma framed each shot to emulate Victorian
paintings; often having the actors in a wide shot with the camera locked off,
allowing the actors to move freely about the space, seemingly not worrying
about marks, or blocking. To complement the shot composition and the artistic
crispness of the images being captured, Mathon and Sciamma decided to only use
natural light, candlelight, or light from the cookfire to illuminate the scene.
This diegesis articulates the filmmakers desire to emulate literal artwork. The
combination of light and shadow drifting across the screen creates a mirrored
seductive dance that visually articulates the desires of Marianne and Heloise. With
the elements of the 8k cameras, the wide angle locked off camera shots, and use
of natural and diegetic lighting, each frame truly is a painting.
Sexual Prominence
As implied in the film, the period of the 1770’s in
France was indifferent but not openly hostile to those in the LGBTQAI+
community. While there wasn’t a public embrace of practices; there was an acceptance
of existence. Yet, comparatively, just a few years after the time the events of
the story take place, France would take some of the biggest and boldest steps
toward tolerance and eventual acceptance of the LGBTQ community by being the
first country in history to
decriminalize sodomy
after their Revolution in 1791. Additionally, like in other geographic
locations at the time, it would take generations for these practices to
coalesce and solidify into a particular identity that was not only accepted,
but welcomed and vigorously defended.
As with the differences of class and
wealth, the film depicts how class differences allow for greater obfuscation of
non-heterosexual identities, desires and behaviors. Prior to her sister’s death,
Heloise lived in the convent. This is presumably due to her sexual proclivities
and thus would have gained some measure of peace had her sister not trapped her
in the institution of the heterosexist patriarchy through her suicide. This personified
using the green dress in the titular ‘portrait’[3] and the portrait itself.
In
prerevolutionary France, as with many other cultures that use the corset (as
the green dress does in the film) it is a garment that both “lifts women up and
brings her down (Gibson 2020: 109). Both the green dress and the function of
the portrait is to entice men. Yet, as we see in the film, the production of
the portrait is one that is full of agency, as is the way and under what
conditions the corset is warn. Both corset and portrait manufacture a
patriarchally pleasing “womanly shape” and both are the product of male
fetishization. Yet, the production of these products is female controlled. In Portrait,
the women carve out space for themselves to have as much agency and choice they
can glean from the ubiquitous and ethereal patriarchy throughout the near
totality of the film’s runtime. Even though Marianne and Heloise know their
time together is ephemeral, the women still choose to have it. As Dr. Gibson is
fond of saying: “You always have a choice. It might be a choice with horrible
options, but it is still a choice…and you always have to make it.” (Brutlag
2023).
The
isolation of the characters in the film, not only allows them to escape the
latticed interlocking mechanisms of the patriarchy but allows them to build a queer
feminist commune; one that is built on mutual respect, friendship and
eventually passion. In her novel, Herland, Gilman (1991) illustrates the
female commune as a Utopian society that is unraveled by the presence and
intervention of men. Each man in Gilman’s story is a representation of
consistent masculine stereotypes which are found in the patriarchal society. It
is this combined effort which eradicates (through the slow and steady toxicity
of masculinity) the feminist commune utopia. A society that had no crime, war, or
political strife. A society that had a care model that engages in socialist
practices, not just its rhetoric. Yet, Gilman (1991) cannot conceive of women
having sex with each other. Instead, because motherhood is so important, children
are genetically engineered in “Herland”. Yet, while Gilman (1991) is
suspiciously quiet about homosexuality, Sciamma seems to be parroting Simone de
Beauvoir (2010) in acknowledging its naturalness; and the complex mechanism of
psychology, social circumstances and history that contributes to its self-discovery
and active choices. Women just need a chance and space to create this sapphic
feminist utopia for themselves.
During
the film’s production, French Government launched “The International Strategy for Gender
Equality”
France is enhancing the
coherence and effectiveness of gender actions in its development assistance
policies and external action. The 3rd International Strategy for Gender
Equality (2018-2022) is a steering tool designed to coordinate France’s efforts
to improve the situation of women around the world. The strategy is the
international embodiment of the President’s commitment to make gender equality
the great national cause of his term.
This
strategy acknowledges that women and girls are disproportionally affected by poverty,
violent conflict and climate change, causing them to experience and face
unequal and undo hardships, barriers and a constant threat of sexual violence
around the world. Therefore, this strategy “enable survivors of
conflict-related sexual violence to access compensation and reparations to help
them reintegrate to society” …through a Global Survivors’ Fund. Additionally, this
strategy bolstered political support for gender issues, financial equity issues,
and made them more visible to the public. During that same time, the Ministry
for Europe and Foreign Affairs and the AFD, provided €120 million over three
years (2020-2022) to finance the activities of feminist organizations worldwide.
“What began as
freeing women up to speak has today turned into the opposite – we intimidate
people into speaking ‘correctly’, shout down those who don’t fall into line,
and those women who refused to bend [to the new realities] are regarded as
complicit and traitors”
The
article cited perceives a populist puritanism that fails to see nuance in a
complicated subject. While these activists are right in principle, their
consistent protection of men and their use of the shield of sexual positivity minimizes,
deflects, and ignores the ways that sexual assault and the sexual violence of
“The Rape culture” is polymorphous.
‘A Portrait’of Sciamma
and Haenel: A Revisionist history?
This was the first film I watched from Celine Sciamma;
and it was the brilliance, masterwork and love of this film that made me want
to include Sciamma in this director series. As readers can tell from previous
essays, as I began to go back into Sciamma’s filmography beginning with her loose
“Coming of Age” trilogy, I was troubled by what I found. I had expected to see
shades or echoes of the technical mastery that is found here in ‘Portrait’ from
a filmmaker who compassionately shows women’s burgeoning love through agency,
autonomy and choice. A filmmaking style that was a much-needed relief from the objectifying
patriarchal male gaze that propagates in any (moving) picture directed by any cisgendered
man with a fragile ego that sees the camera as an extension of his genitals. Instead,
I perceived Sciamma’s films to expose predatory sexual behavior, faux trans allyship and racism. So, when I rewatched this film as
background and context for this review, I was worried that my perspective would
shift and my love for this film would diminish. Surprisingly, even though I
revisit this film annually, I still found it to be a feminist, passionately
erotic, longingly heart wrenching masterpiece. Yet, I could not reconcile my
perceived incongruity between this film and Sciamma’s earlier work[4]. Was I not seeing
something darker in Portrait that I had seen in the previous trilogy,
because of my affinity for the film? Did I need to give the coming-of-age
trilogy another shot? As I was mulling over this inconsistency while I was rewatching
Portrait, perplexed by my take of her previous films stating: “I like
that this one [Portrait] is about choice and agency from two women of
similar ages that have equal power and control in the relationship.” And this
was what Adelle Haenel did not have when she entered into a romantic relationship
with Sciamma after Water Lillies. Then, taking a broader analytical look,
I remembered that the part of Heloise was written for Haenel, and it all
clicked into place.
When you look at Portrait through
the lens of Sciamma’s and Haenel’s relationship, coupled with the knowledge
that Heloise was written for Haenel; the relationship between Marianne and
Heloise becomes both autobiographical and revisionist. Sciamma seems bent on
reconceptualizing her relationship with Haenel without the imbalance of power
that existed when they met through their roles in the film production of Water
Lillies, and their considerable age difference. Marianne, the painter, is
Sciamma’s surrogate observing Haenel’s Heloise. The framing and shooting of Haenel
betray the intimacy that was once between the director and actor; just as
Marianne in the film can capture Heloise with a loving grace that is unmatched.
Art imitates life in Portrait as Marianne’s existence (as a free Queer
woman) entices Heloise, and it is through Marianne’s guidance that Heloise’s (sexual)
world opens. Through this critique, every aspect of erotic passion and intimacy
seems like an abuser in their contrition stage gaslighting their victim into
believing their version of events. This cinematic gaslighting allows Sciamma to
attempt to reframe her past relationship with Haenel as less predatory. But
this practice also recontextualizes the female gaze, one of this film’s most
lauded strengths.
SOCIAL
ANALYSIS
A Portrait of a Lady on Fire has
a forward-facing feminism at every level. Writer/director Celine Sciamma is a
self-identified feminist
that cites French Feminist literature and art,95% of the cast and 65% of the crew
that worked on the project are women,
the overarching themes are feminist, collectively dealing with contemporary
women’s issues, and many journalist and scholars have written about the film
regarding: The feminist politics of love, female solidarity, erotic entanglements of ambition, and of course the female gaze. The film also won the Screenplay
award at Cannes and even won that year’s Queer Palm; marking the first time the prize
has been given to a female director. The praise for this film is exceptional,
because this is an exceptional film. On every technical and narrative level,
this film is perfect; allowing a richness of commentary that is widely diverse,
extending well into the cultural zeitgeist. Genovese and Paige (2024) update Adrianne
Rich’s landmark “Compulsory Heterosexuality and the
Lesbian Existence”
through the prism of ‘A Portrait’, discussing the way that queerness can
be a freedom within a heteropatriarchal society that continue to plague these
relationships, lurking around the corner like some horror movie villain. Meanwhile,
they see the use of the Orpheus and Euridice myth both romanticizes and gives
agency to the tragedy of Marianne and Heloise’s fleeting relationship (Genovese
and Paige 2024).
In
the face of such excellent analysis and work on the subject, much of what
follows may seem both shallow and derivative, as the power and excellence of
this film is well documented. Yet, the splinter that continues
to dig its way into my brain throughout all my reviews of Sciamma’s work thus
far, is the incongruity between what the films say they represent, and aspects
of the film’s production that contradict that messaging. As stated earlier, Sciamma’s
predatory shot composition in Water Lilies, her disingenuous trans allyship
without taking a stance on Trans politics in Tomboy, the white savor-y way that
Sciamma looks at Black girls in Girlhood, and the revisionist gaslighting
of Sciamma’s previous relationship with Haenel in Portrait speak to a hypocrisy
that is difficult to ignore. Thus, this section will both echo the film’s
acclaim and interrogate the unresolved criticism I have with Sciamma as a
filmmaker.
The
Female Gaze
Sciamma
is credited with articulating “the female gaze” in cinema. “The female gaze” is
often framed against the typically cinephilic “male gaze” that genders the
perspective of the camera as being heterosexually male. This is due to the historical
sexism of the industry and the longevity of female exclusion behind the camera,
especially as writers, cinematographers and directors. The longitudinal result
of this is a film culture with established filmmaking techniques that objectify
women. Since camera movement and angles, shot structures, and compositions all
assume a male perspective, many of those movie methods are inherently sexist,
often without the awareness of those that participate in its re-creation…especially
if those people identify as men. Unfortunately, this also led to a shallow
understanding of “the female gaze” to only mean: “when the camera is gendered
heterosexually female”, which resulted in the increasing practice of men being
objectified by the camera in a similar way. It is important to note that this
can never be an equal one-to-one comparison due to the patriarchal power
dynamics that are still in the industry. Sexualizing men in a similar way as
the sexualization of women does not have the same level of impact. Conversely
to this popular opinion, “the female gaze” is a point of view of the camera
that respects the subjectivity of the person being looked at by seeing them as
an individual and indelible to the person who is looking (Genovese and Paige
2024).
Sciamma illustrates this definition beautifully in
this conversation between Marianne and Heloise:
Marianne: I did not mean to hurt you.
Heloise: You haven’t hurt me.
Marianne: I have, I can tell. When you are
moved you do this thing with your hand.
Heloise: Really?
Marianne: Yes. And when you’re embarrassed,
you bite your lips. And when you are annoyed, you don’t blink.
Heloise: You know it all.
Marianne: Forgive me. I’d hate to be in your
place.
Heloise: We are in the same place. Exactly in the same place. Come here. Come.
Marianne
approaches and stands next to Heloise
Step
Closer. Look. If you look at me, who do
I look at? When you don’t know what to say you touch your forehead. When you
lose control, you raise your eyebrows. And when you are troubled, you breathe
through your mouth
When
viewing this scene through a feminist lens, the audience is witnessing the building
of a sapphic romance with a melancholic tragedy at its core; but one that is based
on equal power, as Heloise states “They are exactly in the same place.”
Objectively, this is as Sciamma describes in interviews, “the manifesto of the
female gaze.” However, when you frame this same scene in the context of Haenel’s
and Sciamma’s past relationship, the motivation seems more nefarious. Sciamma,
the writer director, having Heloise say, “They are in the exact same place.” is
a line spoken by her former lover, Haenel, to the character of Marianne, the
Sciamma surrogate in the narrative. This can be taken as an attempt at providing
Sciamma with absolution. Through this dialogue, Sciamma recontextualizes her
past relationship with Haenel as being more egalitarian by proxy than it was in
reality. By eliminating the power imbalance of both age and occupation when
their relationship began, Sciamma revises her relationship with Haenel without
taking any of the responsibility. Additionally,
through this critique, every single instance of positive, informed and active
consent between Heloise and Marianne depicted in the film, cast doubt on how
much active and informed consent there actually was in the relationship between
Haenel and Sciamma themselves.
Abortion
and Access to reproductive care
A
major subplot of A Portrait of a Lady on Fire is the solidarity that
Heloise and Marianne have with Sophie as they create a temporary feminine
collective (Genovese and Paige 2024). Together, Marianne and Heloise assist
Sophie in ending her pregnancy once Sophie expresses that she wishes not to
remain so. As the first few attempts prove to be unsuccessful, Marianne and
Heloise accompany Sophie to a female commune where she undergoes a procedure to
terminate the pregnancy. Genovese and Paige (2024) along with many other
scholars and journalist reviewing this film, focused on the symbolic importance
of the male coded infant in the bed with Sophie as the representation of
masculine fragility and the social construction of toxic masculinity that eliminates
the natural compassion all humans possess when witnessing the pain and anguish
of another person.
Just
as important, but less frequently mentioned, is Sophie and Heloise’s re-creation
of the procedure for Marianne to paint for posterity. The depiction of these
abortions is not only a way to catalog history, but provides those looking for
similar procedures with hope that such a thing is possible. This is the
feminist power of female solidarity and the strength of women as a collective
when they are not socialized through the patriarchy to “bargain” away their
power; causing the alienation and vilification of each other for the benefit of
men. It is this unity that truly scares the patriarchal power, because men are
socialized to not be complete human beings without women. Instead, they are
socialized to outsource emotional labor and compassion to women. This is in
addition to the lack of life skills that keep men in conditional dependency to
the structure of patriarchy. Thus, female solidarity, a feminine collective or
a matriarchal society is a principled threat to the patriarchy and therefore
must be eradicated. Gilman (1991) illustrated this over a century ago in Herland
where the insecurity of men attempts to dismantle the matriarchy of a
feminist utopia. It is this very same fear and insecurity that has played out
in US politics over the last 50 years.
In
1969, prior to the ratification of Roe v. Wade, the Abortion Counseling
Service, code named “Jane”, referred women to abortion providers who set both
prices and conditions (Kaplan 2019). This was an underground effort by a group
of women to provide necessary life saving and changing services to women at a
time when unwanted pregnancies increased the mortality rate of women through
botched abortions with coat hangers in “back alleys”[5]. These remarkable women
curbed the dangers of non-state sanctioned abortions until the process was governmentally
regulated; the Abortion Counseling Service being one of the first legal
abortion clinics established in 1973 after Roe. With Roe being
repealed in June of 2022, and the 18 state trigger bans on the procedure, that
were enacted once the federal law was eliminated, the US saw a 2.3 % increase in maternal deaths
in the near three years hence.
Thus, as predicted by women’s health advocates and scholars, the total number
of abortions have not decreased; only the number of safe abortions where
the lives of women are in less jeopardy. Therefore, like Sophie, many of today’s
US women are leaning on female community solidarity to provide a service that
was once determined to be an autonomous body right for women for nearly 50
years.
CONCLUSION
The much-deserved accolades for Sciamma’s fourth film
in her filmography, A Portrait of a Lady on Fire, position it to be the writer/director’s
Magnum Opus, and the work she will be most associated with in perpetuity. It is
a masterpiece of filmmaking in both technical skill and feminist thematic ideology.
A miraculous cinematic achievement: a period piece that both centers itself on
the realities of the past, while allegorically connecting to the same struggles
of the present. Yet, it cannot be ignored that the development of the story and
the overarching narrative seems retroactively self-serving; allowing Sciamma to
absolve herself of criticism and guilt by using the language of film to recontextualize
past relationships and abdicate blame.
de Beauvior,
Simone 2010. The Second Sex new
York: Vintage books
Genovese,
Emma and Tamsin Phillipa Paige 2024. “Life as Distinct from Patriarchal
Influence: Exploring Queerness and Freedom through A Portrait of a Lady on
Fire.” In Australian Feminist Law Journal 50: 1 pp. 91-112.
Gibson,
Rebecca 2020. The Corseted Skeleton: A Bioarcheology of Binding New
York: Palgrave Macmillian
Gilman,
Charolette Perkins 1991. Herland and Selected Stories Barbara Soloman
eds. New York: Signet Classic.
Kaplan,
Laura 2019. The Legendary Underground Abortion Service New York: Vintage
Books.
Sciamma,
Celine 2019. A Portrait of a Lady on Fire Lillie Films/Neon France
[1]
Especially in the late 1770’s France where the seeds of revolution were being
planted for a harvest that bore fruit in 1789.
[2]
Social Capital is a Bourdieuian term to mean the value of a person’s social relationships within a particular
society. The value of those relationship have the ability to change depending
on the changing context and dynamics of a particular social situation.
[3] I
am aware that the actual “Portrait of a lady on fire” is not the portrait we
see Marianne creating through the film but the picture she paints afterword of
the image of Heloise by a bonfire with a streak of flame climbing up her dress.
[4]
Granted, many directors lack consistency, many of them play with genre and tone
that make them eclectic and well rounded. Plus, the inconsistent criticism is
also unfairly lobbed at non-male directors as a not-so-subtle jab at their
competence
[5]It should be mentioned that many of these
clinics also provide general reproductive healthcare but because they are also
tied to abortion access all of those other services like pap smears,
mammograms, and breast cancer screenings are also lost.
The first film in my
analysis of the
films of Celine Sciamma, is the coming-of-age drama, Water
Lilies. In this debut, Sciamma’s shot composition weaves a cinematic
tapestry that heralds her as an up-and-coming auteur. Inter-stitched with a
gender and sexually fluid color palette, Sciamma constructs a female gaze that
captures the tumultuously turbulent acrimony of adolescence, where bourgeoning
desire threatens to unravel fragile friendships. Water Lilies is the
first in a loose trilogy about the slow transition out of childhood (along with
Tomboy, and Girlhood). The production of this freshman film
supports the consistent albeit mixed feminist messaging the director will be
known for; however, upon greater reflection, some of the film’s specific
sequences and overall choices may not have aged well in hindsight.
PLOT
When young Marie goes to
a synchronized swim meet to support her best friend, she unexpectedly becomes
enthralled with Floriane (Adele Haenel). As Marie gets more and more drawn in
by Floriane’s charm and attention, she begins to question her sexuality,
straining the relationship she has with her best friend who is also on a
journey of sexual discovery. This film reminds us that regardless of the
romantic path one takes, no matter how many twists and turns it makes, all
roads lead to heartache.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT
To
understand the historical impact of Water Lilies, both the production
and the film’s setting need to be interrogated. Due to films being a human
cultural product, movies become infused with the time period in which they are
created. This can be seen in the technology that is used on screen, filming
techniques, pop cultural references used, all the way down to the film grain
and sound mixing. Each of these aspects of the industry, perceptibly or
imperceptibly, leave a trace as to the film’s historical affect, like a smudgy
fingerprint on glass.Depending on the
type of film being made, this can either be an avenue or a barrier to the story
being told. Sciamma’s first film taking place contemporaneously with the time
period of the film’s production, allows it to avoid any complicated temporal
anachronisms that are possible in period pieces or future (set) films. Thus, Water
Lilies production and the film’s setting represent French Independent
cinema, and the sexual politics of the late 2000’s
Gay
and sexual politics of the late 2000’s
During the writing and
the development of Water Lilies there were transformative events in the
LGBTQAI+ community. Sciamma, herself a lesbian GenXer, understands the
difficulty in navigating the sexual politics of an identity that, during the
time that she was a teenager, was not only less accepted, but abhorred. Thus,
given this context, Water Lilies is both subversive for the time, and a
beacon for the rights, representation and acceptance that was to come.
The
gender and sexual politics of the late 00’s was a period of growing pains. The white
heterosexualhegemony was weaning slightly. Thus, fearful of losing that
power, there was an attempt at the clawing rollback of gay rights in the states
(California passing Proposition 8 making Gay marriage illegal) and abroad. In
France, civil partnerships had been made legal in 1999 which, at the time, felt
like a segregationist tactic of “separate but equal.” On the surface, these
bills would give those that filed for domestic partnerships the same rights as
a heterosexual couple outside of the name. However, these exclusionary policies
were not only used as a social buffer between gays, lesbian and “the straights”-
it outwardly misrepresented a cultural tacit rejection of anything that was non
heterosexual.
In
Sociology, there is a term called cultural lag. This is the understanding that
when a behavior, object or idea is introduced or implemented into a society or
culture, there is an unspecified amount of time during which cultural
acceptance is developed before it is implemented into the Bureaucratic
processes of the social structure.Technology is usually the easiest example of this: the internet existed before
it became a cultural necessity. Yet, because of the power imbalance between
those who hold high status positions in valued social institutions (military
Governments and Economy) and the people whom they are supposed to serve, there
is an extra barrier to the implementation of change regardless of its cultural
acceptance. This is the impasse that sexual politics found itself in during the
late 2000’s.
Even in 2007, most of the world’s population was
either supportive of or neutral towards another person’s sexuality. Yet, those in
power were resistant to the will of their people and consistently pushed back against
the efforts of sexual equality. This pushback was usually couched in the same
rhetoric of neutrality using it to keep individuals in the proverbial “closet”
or “on the DL" to limit public presentations of their identity; effectively
using the rhetoric of ambivalence as a shield from criticism. Though, it is hard
to accept that anyone who goes out of their way to deny the personhood of
another group is uncaring. Therefore, the 2007-2008 resistance to gay rights
was the product of the powerful’s persnickety perniciousness to shore up their
worldview in the levees of institutional authority, indicating not only their discrimination
but admitting to the fragility of their own values.
This tug of war against the
people and the powerful over sexual politics has caused a “seesawing” effect on
the validation of Non heterosexual identities and everything under the LGBTQAI+
banner. In addition to the 2008 California law mentioned above, the US federal
government was also under the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), signed into law
back in 1997 that defined marriage as only between one man and one woman. This
was later attempted to be codified by the Bush administration in 2004 with the
Marriage protection Amendment that died in congress. Later, the Obama
Administration supported bills in congress that would weaken DOMA, eventually being
reversed through the US Supreme Court decision in Obergefell V. Hodges
that saw Gay marriage legalized in 2015. It was with this landmark decision
that there was finally an alignment between the law and the cultural acceptance
of sexual identities outside of the vanilla hetero/cis normativity.
Being of French nationality,
it is reasonable to assume that Sciamma wasn’t impacted by these contradictions
in the States. Although, historically France has been far more progressive than
the US when it comes to issues of sexuality and gender, still, between 2012 and
2013 the battle between the conservative and socialist parties in France were
ambivalent about same sex marriage; ultimately solidifying France as a liberal
nation with the passage of the Gay marriage bill in 2013, 6 years after the
release of the film.
As mentioned at the
beginning of this section, because Water Lilies drew upon the director’s
own experiences, the revelation of attraction and expression is inherently
framed from a Gen X perspective during a far more conservative time, even in
France. Thus, a lot of the film, especially the intimacy between Marie and
Floriane, happens behind closed doors, in locker rooms, and secret places in
public parks. While this is typical of youthful sexual transgressions regardless
of identity (in part because young adults do not have access to many private spaces
without parental or adult supervision) these practices were necessary in the
gay and lesbian subculture during times when expression of such an identity was
met with criminal prosecution, violence and even death. Sciamma deftly
illustrates not only the confusion of an emerging unbridled sexuality, but the
added vexation of navigating the underground codes of sexual identities and
behaviors that are not accepted by the cisgendered vanilla sex breeders.
Production
The
inspiration for Water Lilies came from Sciamma’s experiences with the
sport of synchronized swimming. The original French title, which translates
into “birth of the octopus” was later changed for an international release.
Sciamma felt that the term ‘water lilies’ was an insightful analogy to the way
that female synchronized swimmers need to present themselves: athletic and
strong but with a performative femininity. Water lilies being both of the soil
and water, thriving in the silt of rivers and lakes, with resiliency hardy
enough to break the surface tension of the water to flower above. In either
case, with water lilies or French synchronized swimmers, the real labor underwater
is never seen.
Being
an independent and a considerably low budget film, not much else is known about
the production of the film, beyond the knowledge that, sometime after this film
wrapped, Sciamma and Haenel began a romantic relationship. In hindsight, considering
that Sciamma and Haenel met on the set of Water Lilies, and the age gap
between them (Sciamma was between 29-30 and Haenel was 17-18 years old at the
time they met), calls for a reexamination of the film through the framing of
power.
Regardless of when the romantic
relationship between Sciamma and Haenel began, the initial cultivation of their
relationship was not one of equal power. And while these power dynamics are
indeed fluid and can change, a relationship that has a foundation of an
imbalance of power is hard to disrupt, especially when that imbalance of power
in a professional relationship is reinforced by the imbalance of the age gap
between them. Consider the difficulties in the shift in power dynamics between
parents and children, and how even adult children kowtow to parents and their
desires when that subjugation is no longer required, nor beneficial. This
imbalance became foundational in the initial relationship between Sciamma and
Haenel that complicates a feminist reading of the film. An example of this is
Sciamma’s thoughts on the sex and nudity of the characters that are supposed to
be below the age of consent (even though all of the actors portraying the teens
were over the age of 18):
"In
the casting, I told each girl the whole scenario, including that scene in which
one girl deflowers the other. You can't just say to a girl, 'if you're naked,
that's your character.' No, it's her body. So I was always honest. I said that
I would not betray them, that I would not take anything from them, that they
should give me something. By itself. If they wanted to participate, they knew
how far they had to go. I was surprised that they were immediately excited. But
the story was really about them, they felt connected to it. And those parents
were just as excited. They even helped me to lie to the government because I
had given them a clean version of the script to convince them. The parents
supported that story," Sciamma recalled.[1]
On the surface this is very inclusive and provides the
girls with the agency and autonomy to collaboratively create the story that
Sciamma wanted to tell. However, reframe this statement with the knowledge of Sciamma’s
and Haenel’s subsequent relationship, and through this lens, these statements seem
predatory.
Additionally,
using the framing of Sciamma’s and Haenel’s relationship, the praise for the
film becoming the template for a feminist female gaze in filmmaking is also
tainted. Throughout the film, Floriane (Haenel) is the subject of Marie’s
desire, often illustrated through the lens of the camera. Yet, because it is
Sciamma behind the camera, and she is the person whom inevitably chooses which
shots to use from hours of footage, any image that presents Floriane’s
sexuality, regardless of the presumed agency that is presented, again seems predatory.
It is difficult to believe, given both the final product and the history of filmmaking,
that Sciamma wasn’t sexualizing Haenel well-before they became a couple. Thus,
it is odd for a film to be praised for its depiction of girls, women and the
agency afforded to them to express their sexuality, when the person who was
ultimately responsible for constructing that narrative was objectifying one of
them at the same time.
If I can be afforded some
latitude for speculation, one of the reasons that this framing isn’t more
commonly lauded at this film is due to the same sex nature of the relationship.
Currently, as of this writing, allegations of sexual misconduct have been
leveed against author Neil Gaiman. Gaiman (similar to Sciamma and Haenel) began
a relationship with a 20-year-old victim after meeting them at a book signing 2
years prior. Almost instantaneously, Gaiman is “being canceled.”, and
rightfully so. Yet, Sciamma remains a pillar of feminist filmmaking. A partial
explanation for this could be the simplicity of popularity. Gaiman is more
popular than Sciamma and thus garners more public attention. Additionally, the
relationship between Sciamma and Haenel began and ended without attention or
fanfare before social media became a factor in a majority of celebrity lives. Finally,
one cannot discount the additional factor of the common
age gaps and complicated entanglement of same sex relationships; many of which
are based in a foundation of sexual mentorship.
In this context, we can understand how Sciamma’s possible transgressions are
made invisible, but no less problematic.
SOCIAL ANALYSIS
Water
Lilies is a story about the blossoming of sexuality in
teenage girls and the emotional torrent that accompanies its revelation. Many
of the sociological themes that this film encircles are ones of learning, self-discovery
and introspection. Each of the three protagonists have to navigate this new (to
them) gender and sexual landscape, coming to different solutions, conclusions
and revelations between them, themselves and the rest of the world. To understand
this further, the concepts of gender socialization, the eroticization of youth
and the intersections of love and sex need to be examined.
Gender
Socialization
Socialization is rudimentally defined as a
social learning process, begins before birth and contains multitudes: the
learning of both the self, and society; its rules, regulations and ways of acceptable
behavior. This process needs to be engrossingly all-encompassing because it is
used as a mechanism of social control. The internalization of its process and
learned socially acceptable behavior(s) maintains the social order by
constructing a law-abiding productive member of society. Yet, since most
societies value patriarchal and white supremacist rule, the social order that
emerges, and the learning process that is developed to ensure its reproduction,
becomes inherently racist and misogynistic.
Gender
Socialization: the process by which individuals understand what it means to be
male, female, and trans, along the gender spectrum within a particular society.
Some societies see and expand upon the gendered spectrum, while others, most
others, organize around a traditional, exclusionary binary.Through the gender binary, gender stereotypes
and assumptions emerge as concrete facts: boys are boys and girls are girls, to
eventually become men and women. Girls
get the message that their value is chiefly located in their body and their
relationship with boys and men; learning to cultivate their bodies, dreams and
desires around the needs of others. It is from this that they are convinced
they only find worth. If they dare to dream for themselves, they are
consistently sanctioned and pressured to return to behaviors of subservience.
Under such surveillance women lose their
identity, becoming strangers to themselves (de Beauvoir 2011). Any identity
outside of the roles of being wives and mothers is an identity which is
perceived as one that a girl/woman steals for themselves. However, if these two
identity conditions are mandatory and must be fulfilled prior to anything else,
what is then framed as stealing, is instead a conditional perk of incarceration.
Female childhood and adolescence are seething with the rage against their
imprisonment in these roles, often thrashing themselves against the bars of
their social prison, inflicting self-harm (de Beauvoir 2011).
Because girls and women
are valued in their bodies through the binary, the detention of society’s
daughters begins around the subject of sex. Beyond the simple objectification of women as
sex objects or vessels for the next generation (through reproduction) this
valuation frames women’s existence as being in service to others, typically
men. Therefore, all these mechanisms by which girls and women are policed, are for
the benefit of men. Laura Carpenter (2005) discusses this through the prism of
virginity loss.
According to Carpenter
(2005), girls and boys are socialized to perceive virginity differently. While
boys are socialized to see their virginity as a stigma, something that needs to
be gotten rid of as soon as possible, girls are socialized to see their
virginity as a gift. However, it is not a gift that the girls give to
themselves, to indicate body autonomy and agency, but a gift to their
(presumed) heterosexual partner. This places undo attention and value on female
virginity to the point that the perception of a girl/women’s morality is tied
to whether or not they have had sex (Valenti 2009).
Sciamma inverts this
importance of virginity in the film through Floriane, who is a virgin but has a
slutty reputation among boys. When she is no longer able to delay the advances
of one of her many male suitors, and to avoid the humiliation of being discovered
as a virgin, she convinces Marie to deflower her through digital
stimulation/penetration. This non heterosexual act is done in the service of men,
specifically to give Floriane access to male power. Floriane does this without
any reluctance or consideration for Marie’s feelings, which end up being hurt
through Floriane’s emotional manipulation and lack of compassion.
Since women get the
message that their value is in their bodies, girls and women often conclude that
one way to glean power, autonomy and authority is through the patriarchal
bargain- when women lean into patriarchal, and ultimately unequal systems of power
for the stability and security that behavior will provide. This is done in part
through girls and women recognizing their body as currency. Yet, while girls
and women can wrestle away power from men and the patriarchy in general, this
behavior, even though it is framed as a subversion, or a rebellion, it is still
in the service of men. The control that women assert over their heterosexual
partners and the general domestic sphere is purposefully designed to provide
men with women to support them. The patriarchal system conditions men to not be
socialized to a variety of basic domestic duties while sanctioning women more
harshly for those same behaviors. Thus, to avoid being sanctioned by others
(and perceived as a “bad” wife and “mother” the roles from which Society draws
girls and women’s value) many women feel pressure to exhibit control over the home
and participate in this patriarchal bargain; convincing themselves that it is
the only way to access power. This is contrary to the truth that the patriarchal
structure conditions boys and men into a state of arrested development (often framing
girlfriends and wives as “mothers they can fuck”) which then conditions women
to fill/exploit that weakness to gain power that they were denied by virtue of
being girls/women. Then, because this system is also misogynistic, even when
women do the very things society tells them they need to do to gain value, they
are still sanctioned for it. This is typically done through slut shaming or
framing their behavior as manipulative and controlling.
Water Lilies shows
Floriane as beginning to understand the patriarchal bargain and her body as
currency. Not only does she understand the value of a sexual reputation in
getting interest and attention from men, from which she can gain status, but
the way that she uses access to her body as “payment” for services rendered
(Giving Marie a kiss after she deflowers Floriane for the purpose of male
attention). Also, by framing this as a transaction, she keeps an emotional
distance from these behaviors and unfortunately does not recognize or care
about the emotional fallout of her actions; for Marie, or anyone around her. Floriane’s use of erotic
capital is the mechanism by which these misogynistic traps of
false consciousness, learned through the process of gender socialization, hurt
everyone around her, regardless of gender or sexual identity.
Uses of the Erotic and
The Lesbian Existence
Because
women have been taught to use their erotic capital and their bodies as currency
for the support of men, this strips the inherit power of the erotic that women
can use to validate themselves. According to Audre Lorde (2007) part of the
social control of women in a misogynistic patriarchal system is the suppression
and appropriation of the erotic, ignoring it as a source of information and
power in women’s lives. (p 53-54)
[Women] have been warned against [the
erotic] all [their] lives by the male world, which values this depth of feeling
enough to keep women around in order to exercise it in the service of men, but
which fears this same depth too much to examine the possibilities of it within
themselves
This is especially true when looking at the way the
patriarchal systemdiscourages
female friendships, often framing each other as competition for male attention.
This is born out of the fragility of masculinity at the core of any
misogynistic patriarchy. Because the culture has organized the value of women
to be in the service of men, the latent fear that underlines this domination
and oppression is the lack of value and importance men have in women’s lives.
Women become instrumental to men’s lives and their livelihood (part of the
mechanism to control men too) especially in heterosexual relationships to their
benefit; men who are married with children report higher rates of happiness and
wellness. Yet, cis/het women consistently report higher
levels of health, happiness and wellness when they are unmarried and childless.
This not only shows that men and women are socialized into norms and behaviors
in opposition to their overall happiness, but it also consciously separates
women from the source of their power; each other. The alienation and
competition of women is a socially constructed mechanism of social control, because
empowered women are a danger to the patriarchal social order. Their erotic
power is a lifeforce that can be cultivated through girls and women’s
relationship to each other (Lorde 2007).
The erotic empowerment of women through their
relationships was coined by Adrianne Rich as “The lesbian Existence.” As
I explained in a previous essay:
Rich exclaims:
“The Lesbian
existence comprises both the breaking of a taboo and the rejection of a
compulsory way of life. It is also a direct or indirect attack on male right of
access to women. But it is more than these, although we may first begin to
perceive it as a form of nay-saying to patriarchy, an act of resistance. It has
of course included role playing, self-hatred, breakdown, alcoholism, suicide,
and intrawoman violence; we romanticize at our peril what it means to love and
act against the grain, and under heavy penalties; and lesbian existence has
been lived (unlike, say, Jewish or Catholic existence) without access to any
knowledge of a tradition, a continuity, a social underpinning. The destruction
of records and memorabilia and letters documenting the realities of lesbian
existence must be taken very seriously as a means of keeping heterosexuality
compulsory for women, since what has been kept from our knowledge is joy,
sensuality, courage, and community, as well as guilt, self-betrayal, and pain”
As the term "lesbian" has been held to
limiting, clinical associations in its patriarchal definition, female
friendship and comradeship have been set apart from the erotic, thus limiting
the erotic itself. But as we deepen and broaden the range of what we define as
lesbian existence, as we delineate a lesbian continuum, we begin to discover
the erotic in female terms: as that which is unconfined to any single part of
the body or solely to the body itself, as an energy not only diffuse but, as Audre
Lorde (2007) has described it, omnipresent in "the sharing of joy, whether
physical, emotional, psychic," and in the sharing of work; as the
empowering joy which "makes us less willing to accept powerlessness, or
those other supplied states of being which are not native to me, such as
resignation, despair, self-effacement, depression, and self-denial.” (p54)[2]
In Water
Lilies, it is heavily implied through genre conventions (of the
coming-of-age story tropes) that Floriane, like Marie, is trying to understand
and navigate her own sexuality; her eroticization by cis/het boys and men allowing
her to experiment. This “freedom” is afforded to her because she is a cis/het fem
presenting female. An identity whose sexuality, and its exploration, has been
co-opted and appropriated by both cis/het men and the porn industry. Because of
this, girls and women can more easily experiment with non-heterosexual
behaviors openly and in public without much sanction, as long as it is framed
as being performative for male attention. This causes many gay and bisexual
girls to go through a period of trying to pass as straight (Orenstein 2016). It
is possible that this is what Floriane is contemplating and working through in
the film, without an understanding of how her actions are affecting others
around her. It comesdown to whether the audience interprets her actions
as being with calculated malicious intent, or as confusion, ignorance and oblivion
to her own charisma.
CONCLUSION
Celine
Sciamma’s debut film, Water Lilies, is the opening volley in a coming-of-age
trilogy that investigates social, gender and sexual development through an
attempted feminist lens using the female gaze. Sciamma mostly achieves this
with dialogue, genuine reactions from actors and shot compositions that try to
get inside the mind of teenage Parisian girls as they navigate the trials of
gender socialization and tribulations of their “flowering” sexual identity.
Yet, Sciamma’s later relationship with one of the film’s stars, reveals that
like the history of the male gaze in cinema, the female gaze can also be predatory.
REFERENCES
de
Beauvior, Simone 2011. The Second Sex New York: Vintage Books.
Carpenter,
Laura M. 2005. Virginity Lost An Intimate Portrait of First Sexual
Experiences. New York: New York University Press.
Lorde,
Audre 2007. Sister Outsider Essays
and Speeches by Audre Lorde Berkely: Crossing Press
Orenstein,
Peggy 2016. Girls and Sex: Navigating the Complicated New Landscape. New
York: Harper Press
Valenti,
Jessica 2009. The Purity Myth: How
America’s Obsession with Virginity is Hurting Young Women Berkely: Seal
Press.
