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Diane Kurys' first film, Diabolo menthe (Peppermint Soda), made in 1977, depicts the lives of two schoolgirl sisters growing up in the early 1960s, a period which coincides with Kurys' own adolescence. Kurys' films are of interest not just as projections of individual preoccupations but also because their focus on girls and women of the baby-boomer generation produces a symptomatic text for analysing wider issues relating to female identity. Her work needs to be understood within the specific context of French cinema and French culture, in which the concept of the auteur, if ostensibly ungendered, remains resolutely masculine. The commercial and critical successes of Diabolo menthe and Coup de foudre, Kurys' two most incontrovertibly women-centred films, coincide with the period when the women's movement in France had its greatest impact on social and political life. In the light of recent gender theory which insists on the fluidity and constructedness of gender positions, Kurys' signalling of 'femininity' in François Truffaut's films might be considered progressive. Diabolo menthe was a huge success, well received by the majority of critics and the highest grossing French film of 1977, at one point coming second only to Star Wars. Cocktail Molotov focuses on a trio of teenagers who miss out on what was going on. Un homme amoureux, Après l'amour and A la folie are some other films that are discussed in this book.
Debates about (and resistances to) France's changing identity as a plural, multi-ethnic society are thus at the forefront of public preoccupations. This book aims to assess the ways in which filmmaking in France might contribute to such debates by foregrounding the voices and subjectivities of ethnic others and thereby reframing the way in which difference is conceptualized. The core focus is the appearance and after-effects of two related phenomena in the history of French cinema, cinéma beur and cinéma de banlieue. The book traces the history of beur filmmaking practices from the margins to the mainstream, from low-budget autobiographically inspired features to commercial filmmaking, and assesses their effectiveness in addressing questions of identity and difference. It attempts to gauge the significance of place in the construction of identity through an analysis of films set in the multi-ethnic banlieue. The book also assesses the extent to which the inscription of displacement and identity in films by emigre Algerian filmmakers overlaps with or differentiates itself from that found in beur cinema. For filmmakers of Maghrebi descent, filmmaking is more than just a question of representation, it is also a way of negotiating their own position within French society. Bensalah's Le Raïd demonstrates how the themes of beur filmmaking can be recuperated by beur filmmakers as well as by white filmmakers. Ameur-Zaifmeche's difficulties in making Wesh wesh illustrate how beur filmmaking may still take place in the interstices of the French film industry.
Diane Kurys herself has equivocated about the autobiographical dimension of her films, alternately denying their basis in fact and affirming her personal investment in what they represent. Given that Kurys' films interweave fictional elements with material drawn from the author-director's personal life, a synopsis of Kurys' life history is an important intertextual reference for an appreciation of their ambivalent status as autobiographical fictions. The contradictions and compromises of her films raise both the question of Kurys' problematic relationship to feminism and of the extent to which a woman's voice can be expressed and heard within mainstream cinema in France. Clearly, the ways in which films articulate thematic preoccupations linked to women's experiences are important in any consideration of female authorship. The chapter also presents an overview of this book.
Diane Kurys' entry into mainstream cinema as a successful twenty-eight-year-old film director is like a fairy story in which the princess herself overcomes the obstacles in the way of her success. The title Diabolo menthe was intended to evoke the image of young French teenage girls, who drank peppermint soda because they did not know what they wanted and indeed, according to Kurys, did not know much about anything. Diabolo menthe was a huge success, well received by the majority of critics and the highest grossing French film of 1977, at one point coming second only to Star Wars. Diabolo menthe's opening dedication to Kurys' sister establishes Kurys' authorial presence and an autobiographical perspective on the events of the film. This perspective invites the spectator to understand that thirteen-year-old Anne Weber will grow up to be Diane, the filmmaker.
Cocktail Molotov was funded in part by the television channel Antenne 2, but Diane Kurys produced the film herself, both to retain her independence and because of delays in receiving payment for Diabolo menthe. Cocktail Molotov has a more desultory plot than Diabolo menthe. The young protagonists of Cocktail Molotov, who benefit from the climate of May 1968 without themselves making a political commitment, become the objects of a distanced critical authorial gaze. Cocktail Molotov's ambivalent take on May 1968 is determined by the fact that the film is used to explore problematic relationships within the family, particularly between the daughter and her mother and father. As with Diabolo menthe, Cocktail Molotov's study of adolescence can be seen to be giving a female-centred inflection to the subject matter of François Truffaut's films.
In the course of a series of interviews with her mother, intended as the basis for a film about her own childhood, Diane Kurys became fascinated instead by her mother's past. Coup de foudre was the first of Kurys' films to enjoy a relatively large budget. It is also the first to be shot in Cinemascope, with star actors Isabelle Huppert, Miou-Miou and Guy Marchand in the lead roles, alongside the lesser known Jean-Pierre Bacri. The plot of Coup de foudre proceeds through short, succinct scenes which are not linked as tightly as in classic narrative but succeeded one another affectively or chronologically. Coup de foudre breaks with 'tales of martyrdom and malice' by reclaiming the agency and vision of a relatively ordinary woman, who is nevertheless 'an active participant in the socio-historic universe'.
Un homme amoureux is of particular interest in Diane Kurys' œuvre as a self-reflexive film which, in addition to its significance as a modern romance, tackles, albeit obliquely and ambivalently, the position of women within the cinema industry. Signs of Kury's authorial signature are also to be found in the structural and thematic continuities between Un homme amoureux and the earlier films. The narrative structure of Un homme amoureux is the most ambitious of all Kurys' films. Un homme amoureux plays with a three-layered plot which is further complicated by the implication of the title of Jane Steiner's manuscript, 'Un homme amoureux', that the whole film can be read retrospectively as the representation of her screenplay. Un homme amoureux ended up as a Franco-Italian co-production with an international cast, set amid sumptuous decors in Rome, Tuscany and Paris and shot in Cinemascope and Dolby sound with an American artistic director.
La Baule Les Pins reproduces the splitting of sympathy and identification between the adult woman's need for independence and the husband and children's insecurity and loss. Like Un homme amoureux, La Baule Les Pins does not use a dedication or afterword to signal Diane Kurys' authorial presence, but instead develops the use of the subjective female voice-over. La Baule Les Pins is set at the time of the Cold War, in the year in which de Gaulle was re-elected to power in order to restore order in Algeria, an election which brought the Fourth Republic to an end. If the theme of friendship between girls, central to Diabolo menthe, gives way to relationships with boys in La Baule Les Pins, so the theme of friendship between women, central to Coup de foudre, is relegated to a less prominent place.
Après l'amour, co-written with Antoine Lacomblez, was triggered by observations of life around Diane Kurys' in the early 1990s, specifically the apparently arbitrary break-ups of relationships in her circle of friends and acquaintances. Après l'amour focuses on the central character of Lola, an unmarried novelist with no children and no apparent desire for children. The narrative structure of Après l'amour is articulated through a year in the life of Lola and David, beginning and ending with David's party for Lola's birthday, complete with cake, candles and champagne. The interest of Après l'amour lies in how Kurys' privileged 'modern woman' handles the tensions produced by her complicated relationships. On a formal level, however, Après l'amour shows evidence of research into the aesthetic possibilities of the image. Après l'amour betrays a lingering uneasiness with women's sexuality and the notion of women as the sexual equals of men.