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- Author: Martine Beugnet x
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Claire Denis' first film, Chocolat, was a deceptively gentle family chronicle set in colonial Africa. She focuses on ordinary people, men and women, black and white, homosexuals and heterosexuals, whom displacement and difference have set apart, relegated to the outskirts of society and to the margins of representation. In her films, the perception of the Other is always complex and ambiguous. This book outlines the multi-faceted, poetic vision of the contemporary world that emerges through Denis' filmmaking to date and to bring to light its main thematic, temporal, spatial and stylistic implications. The analysis presented focuses on her fictional feature films, which form the main body of her work and have generally become easily accessible in video or DVD format. In her first feature, Chocolat, the director's early experiences made her sensitive to oppression and misappropriation, exile and racism, alienation and transgression. Location and space emphasise a sense of displacement and function as metaphors for the process of potential exclusion of the individual (body) from society. But the metaphor also evokes an inner sense of exile and longing, a feeling of foreignness that is played out at the level of the individual and of the individual's body through relations of desire, fear and rejection. Denis' work stands apart from a tradition of screenplay and dialogue-based cinema that defines much of France's auteur as well as of its popular production. Denis' work has an echo of a wide range of contemporary thought and the traces of influential aesthetic and genre models.
This chapter focuses on the representation of cultural tensions, and the issues of colonialism, identity and difference. Issues relating to colonialism and postcolonialism, to exile and alienation, always at play in Claire Denis' work, are central to the films discussed in the chapter. Chocolat's lush natural and historical setting and Beau travail's stunning open landscapes on the one hand, and S'en fout la mort's claustrophobic atmosphere and spare mise en scène, and J'ai pas sommeil's unusual portrayal of a noir Paris on the other, seem like aesthetic antinomies. After Chocolat, the shooting of the documentary Man No Run brought Denis back to France. S'en fout la mort, like Chocolat, was selected to represent France, this time at the Venice Festival. J'ai pas sommeil is set almost solely in the eighteenth district of Paris, one of the oldest parts of the city and a hybrid space.
Love, desire and sexuality, as depicted in the world of Claire Denis' films, elude the conventional romantic framework that defines and binds them together in mainstream fiction. From Chocolat to Vendredi soir, the sexual and emotional dimension emerges with the contradictions and uncertainty inherent in its complexity. The representation of desire, explored in its emotional, sexual and subversive aspects, is indis sociable from the director's elaboration of a 'cinema of the senses.' In its mise en scene of desire, Denis' filmmaking not only creates correspondences between the senses, but also confuses the traditional process of identification and point of view. The exploration of the thematic of desire and sexuality initiated with US Go Home and Nenette et Boni and continued in Trouble Every Day. This kind of thematic drove Denis further away from conventional models, towards the reinvention of a cinema of the senses most explicitly celebrated in Vendredi soir.
In her first feature, Chocolat, the director's early experiences made her sensitive to certain issues and spurred her interest in themes that she continued to explore in subsequent films: oppression and misappropriation, exile and racism, alienation and transgression. This chapter summarises the principal aspects of the director's biographical and professional background, with reference to the wider historical context and to French cinema production in general. It proceeds with an outline of the director's thematic and aesthetic approach and highlights the recurrent features of her work. Location and space emphasise a sense of displacement and function as metaphors for the process of potential exclusion of the individual (body) from society. But the metaphor also evokes an inner sense of exile and longing, a feeling of foreignness that is played out at the level of the individual and of the individual's body through relations of desire, fear and rejection.
Claire Denis' first film, Chocolat, was a deceptively gentle family chronicle set in colonial Africa. Selected for the Cannes Festival, it was hailed by the critics and festival audiences as a remarkable first feature. This introduction presents the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book attempts to outline the multi-faceted, poetic vision of the contemporary world that emerges through Denis' filmmaking to date and to bring to light its main thematic, temporal, spatial and stylistic implications. The analysis focuses primarily on her fictional feature films, which form the main body of her work and have generally become easily accessible in video or DVD format. The book summarises the principal aspects of the director's biographical and professional background, with reference to the wider historical context and to French cinema production in general. It provides a detailed analysis of each of her feature films.
While most directors blessed by a successful début choose to follow the safe path and to attempt to meet their audiences' expectations, Claire Denis' work has remained in constant mutation. Her work offered, within a coherent thematic framework, a renewed exploration of film's less charted territories. The examination of the issues that are at the centre of her concerns, exile and alienation, desire and transgression, have become an intrinsic part of a specific stylistic approach, unrestricted by categorisations, genres and established conventions. As a result, Denis' work stands apart from a tradition of screenplay and dialogue-based cinema that defines much of France's auteur as well as of its popular production. Denis' work has an echo of a wide range of contemporary thought and the traces of influential aesthetic and genre models.