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Stranded: stardom and the free-fall movie in French cinema, 1985?2003

2004; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 4; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1386/sfci.4.2.103/0

1758-9517

John Orr,

French Literature and Critical Theory

AbstractOver the last two decades, French cinema has produced four outstanding female actors—Emmanuelle Beart, Juliette Binoche, Sandrine Bonnaire and Isabelle Huppert—who all share common characteristics. In many of their performances they are neither conventional heroines nor, morally speaking, fallen women who redeem themselves, but figures in a quasi-genre that can be called the ‘free-fall movie’. This form of narrative stresses ontological descent and nausea and is close to Julie Kristeva's vision of abjection, which she elaborates in Powers of Horror. The form can be found in many other films of the period, but in the career trajectory of these four actors it creates a consistent pattern that enables us to speak of a perverse stardom in contemporary French film. The free-fall narrative is as indicative of their acting as it is of directorial vision, so that theories of authorship or genre are deficient in explaining the phenomenon. This essay tries to answer questions about the genesis of this narra...