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A crowd-pleasing directorial team, Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau have to date made nine full-length films. To be discussed first because it is their first film, Jeanne et le garçon formidable ( Jeanne and the Perfect Guy ) (1998) sets the scene for their later films with its musical numbers and its narrative about a victim of HIV-AIDS. Drôle de
"What does queer signify in twenty-first-century French film? How are lesbian, gay, and trans* characters represented on screen? The book responds to these questions via the cinema of five emblematic directors: Jacques Martineau, Olivier Ducastel, Alain Guiraudie, Sébastien Lifshitz, and Céline Sciamma. From gay sex at a nudist beach to lesbian love at a high school swimming pool, from gay road trips across France to transgender journeys through time, the films treated in this study raise a host of key questions about queerness in this century. From award-winners such as Stranger by the Lake and Portrait of a Lady on Fire to the lesser-known Family Tree and Open Bodies, these productions gesture toward an optimistic future for LGBTQ characters and for the world in which they live, love, and desire. Comprehensive in scope, Queer cinema in contemporary France traces the development of queerness across the directors’ careers, from their earliest, often unknown works to their later, major films. Whether they are white, beur, or black, whether they are lesbian, gay, trans*, or queer, the characters open up oppressive notions of hetero- and cisnormativity to something new, something unexpected, and something oriented towards the future.
Vincent engages with a multi-ethnic group of marginalised men and women; and Drôle de Félix by Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau introduces a different perspective on ethnicity by centring on a young mixed-race, gay man with AIDS. The representation of immigrants of Maghrebi origin in places other than the more conventional cinematic spaces of the city centre or rundown working-class banlieues raises the question as to whether alternative
example, several contemporary French musicals – such as On connaît la chanson, Jeanne et le garçon formidable (Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau, 1998), 8 Femmes/8 Women (François Ozon, 2002) – reprise the country’s popular musical history, so deeply rooted in their French culture, and therefore the films do not have the same effect on international audiences as they do on French audiences. Songs
the tracks through the countryside. The movement of light over the trio emblematizes transformations in and by the cinematic narrative, all three now open to whatever may happen after the narrative ends. Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau’s Théo et Hugo dans le même bateau (literally, ‘Théo and Hugo in the Same Boat’, translated as Paris 05:59 ) (2016) ends as the two titular young lovers
anticipation. By bucking the trends of his time through his passion for the musical and fairytale, Demy is one of French cinema’s most unique filmmakers. Waldron_Demy_Revision.indd 1 26/06/2014 14:30 2 jacques demy Although he died in October 1990, Demy’s legacy as an iconic director for generations of admirers and filmmakers endures. His films attracted renewed interest from the mid-1990s, evoked by directors including François Ozon, Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau, and Christophe Honoré. If these filmmakers are associated with a wave of queer cinema, the link is
how his depictions of them evolve over time. Attention will then turn to a film that similarly shows ethnicity playing a pivotal role in contemporary France: Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau’s Drôle de Félix (2000). Its eponymous hero – the highly unusual choice in French cinema of a Frenchman of Maghrebi heritage who is also gay and HIVpositive – travels the length of the mainland in search of his father and, by avoiding many major cities, allows the film to showcase less urban landscapes in French provinces. The film provides an absorbing portrait of France
’s myth that is invoked and pursued further in the many films by directors beyond his wife. Reconfiguring the Demy-myth: intertextual tributes and revisions According to Rosalie Varda-Demy, a number of established directors – including John Woo, Hou Hsiao Hsien, Benoît Jacquot and André Téchiné – have affirmed their admiration for her father’s cinema, while others describe themselves as Demy’s children, including Olivier Ducastel, Jacques Martineau and Christophe Honoré (in Rabourdin, 2010a: 71). In an article initially conceived to examine the affinities and
’ of French gay filmmakers that might include Jean Cocteau ( Orphée , 1950), Jean Genet, (Un Chant d’amour, 1950) André Téchiné (J’embrasse pas, 1991) and the team of Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau (Ma vraie vie à Rouen, 2002), with the possible inclusion of Cyril Collard (Les Nuits fauves, 1993) as a token bisexual. Ozon’s films, like those of the aforementioned, are shown as a matter of course at
and being in contemporary French cinema.indd 187 11/01/2013 15:18:41 188 Space and being in contemporary French cinema now fallen on hard times (Kechiche is himself a second-generation Tunisian immigrant who grew up in the Nice banlieue). Like Jacques Martineau and Olivier Ducastel’s groundbreaking Drôle de Félix/ Adventures of Felix (2000), which took its beur protagonist (played by Sami Bouajila) on a journey into the unfamiliar spaces of la France profonde, the priority in each of these films is on telling new and as yet untold stories of the everyday drama