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Flaubert, Femininity, and Free-Fall Stardom: A Reading of Madame Bovary (Chabrol, 1991) and Un Cœur simple (Laine, 2008)

2013; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 21; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/09639489.2013.795137

1469-9869

Lara Cox,

French Literature and Criticism

AbstractThis article reflects on the feminist potential of a contemporary form of French female cinema stardom that John Orr (2004) names 'free-fall'. According to Orr, free-fall is a genre of female stardom that has come to prominence in French cinema at the end of the twentieth century and the start of the twenty-first. The free-fall star embarks on a journey of 'ontological descent', self-destruction and Kristevan abjection, but we cannot know her reasons for such actions. This article considers the gendered implications of the free-fall star with reference to her portrayal and modification of past French literary heroines in the genre of heritage cinema. It considers her presence in two film adaptations of Gustave Flaubert's literary œuvre: Madame Bovary (Chabrol, 1991) with Isabelle Huppert, and Un Cœur simple (Laine, 2008) with Sandrine Bonnaire. The mystique of the free-fall star-text potentially challenges a modernist construction of femininity as the lowbrow Other of highbrow pioneering, but its feminist credentials cannot simply be taken for granted. Notes[1] Indeed, this trope can be traced further back in French cinema to, for instance, Jeanne Moreau's role as the suicidal and destructive apex of the love triangle in Jules et Jim (Truffaut, 1962). Feminine star-destruction can be contrasted with star roles in more popular contemporary French cinema. The stars of popular French comedies, such as Karin Viard (for instance, Tatie Danielle), Sandrine Kiberlain, and Mathilde Seigner stand apart from free-fall stardom, thereby suggesting the highbrow, auteurist nature of free-fall cinema and stardom. Whilst I do not suggest that highbrow culture is more useful to feminism, my analysis centres on the feminist resonances of the highbrow owing to Orr's definition of the free-fall as opaque and unreadable which may be compared with highbrow modernism.[2] Orr's category could feasibly be expanded to include other female stars of French cinema. A sizeable proportion of Catherine Deneuve's star roles could be aligned with abject self-destruction, from her early roles in films such as Repulsion (Polanski, 1965)—in which she plays Carol, a woman plagued by torturous hallucination after her sister leaves her alone in their shared flat to go on holiday—to her latter-day characters such as Marie in Les Voleurs (Téchiné, 1996) and her role in Dancer in the Dark (Von Trier, 2000). Moreover, Orr is not the only commentator on this trend of feminine star self-destruction in contemporary French cinema. Tony McKibbin similarly relates Isabelle Huppert's roles, such as that of the masochistic Erika in La Pianiste (Haneke, 2001), to self-abjection. He observes that: 'what is central to Huppert is boredom accumulated out of years of frustration, and frustration unleashed as a gesture towards self-expression but without enough of a self to justify the self-revelation' (Citation2005, 25).[3] Parallels may be drawn, however, between the feminine free-fall and the tropes of death and decay in male French stars' roles. The film career of Gérard Depardieu reveals a progressive erosion of male potency and advancement towards death (from Les Valseuses to Mammuth and La Tête en friche).[4] Indeed, as Huppert herself stated in a special edition of Cahiers du cinéma dedicated to her career in 1994, her self-absenting performance style is a trope that she deploys repeatedly, consciously, and with agentic resistance in mind: '[j]e peux créer cette altérité, ce lieu de résistance où je vais pouvoir m'absenter' (Huppert, Baudrillard, and Jousse Citation1994, 120).[5] In particular, contemporary French female film stars such as Juliette Binoche, a exponent of free-fall, was the face of beauty giant Lancôme's campaign to market the perfume 'Poême', returning us to the image of romanticised beauty that Orr sidelines in his notion of abject stardom (Vincendeau 2000, 37).[6] Both Huppert and Bonnaire have defined their star careers principally through their work in their films. In Huppert's case, Guardian journalist Catherine Shoard describes the star in strikingly similar terms to Orr's free-fall paradigm: 'Isabelle Huppert has form with the damaged. The self-mutilating masochist in The Piano Teacher. The incestuous mum in Ma Mère' (Citation2009). See also, Isabelle Huppert: Woman of Many Faces (Chammah and Fouchet Citation2005), a biographical work of the star composed of photographs and commentary by those she has worked with in cinema (e.g. Patrice Chéreau) and admirers of her performance style (e.g. Susan Sontag). In Bonnaire's case, the star is mainly known for her acting work and, in recent years, the documentary she made on her autistic sister Sabine. See Marriott (Citation2008).[7] For a particularly impassioned critique of the Anglophone reduction of French feminism, see Delphy (Citation1995).[8] There is evidence to suggest this extension of the impact of 'French feminism' to non-academic Anglophone circles. Fraser argues that '"bridge" media' like Sojourner Off Our Backs and The Women's Review of Books played a large part in this (1992, 2). Gail Pheterson identifies a broad cultural 'compatibility between American and French essentialist views but, at the same time, the incompatibility of US social constructionist and French materialist views' (Citation1994, 262–263).[9] For more on how a broader version of Huppert's star-text relates to this fruitful questioning in her embodiment of the 'féminologie' of 'French feminism', see Cox (Citation2012).