Claire Denis

1. Claire Denis

2. Foreignness and exile • Born in 1948, Denis grew up in French colonies in West Africa – at home neither in France or Africa • ‘Denis’s stories are tales of foreignness – a foreignness that is simultaneously physical and mental, geographical and existential’ (Beugnet 2004: 2) • films continue to interrogate the legacy of colonialism in France… ... in contrast to heritage films like Indochine (1992)

3. Influences and collaborators • Worked as assistant director for Wim Wenders, Jim Jarmusch, Costa-Gavras, Jacques Rivette • Influence of New German Cinema in treatment of the past, theme of exile, experimentation with space and time? • Regular team of collaborators includes director of photography, Agnès Godard, screenwriter Jean-Pol Fargeau, actors Isaak de Bankolé, Grégoire Colin, Béatrice Dalle, Alex Descas, Vincent Gallo, Michel Subor, Denis Lavant, the music of Tindersticks

4. Denis as auteur • ‘a remarkable aesthetic and thematic consistency’ (Beugnet 2004: 2) • ‘Denis’s is a cinema of observation, but one that reconstructs its own reality, focusing and lingering on the darker zones, the cracks that belie the existence of a coherent, unified reality’ (Beugnet 2004: 14)

5. Denis as auteur cont. • A cinema of ‘abjection’? (cf. Dumont, Noé, Grandrieux, Breillat) • An ‘underground’ tradition Irréversible (Noé, 2009)

6. Denis and narrative • Elliptical, fragmentary narratives, marked by repressed memories - ‘the tales told in her feature fiction films appear haunted by the ghost of another, buried story’ (Beugnet 2004: 20) • Cinema not literature; montage not psychology; dreams not thought • People, places, sensations linked through montage creating a ‘porous’ reality • Use of the same actors creates links across fictions

7. Sound and image • Image divorced from narrative progression • Little dialogue – preference for silence and music • ‘Quand j’ai commencé à faire du cinéma, je penchais vraiment pour la famille des cinéastes qui font confiance à l’image… Le dialogue devient un son, au même titre qu’une musique… Il faut utiliser les dialogues presque pour détourner l’image. Des choses non-dites peuvent se passer pendant ce temps-là.’ (in Beugnet 2004: 28) • Counterpoint between sound and image

8. Bodies • Bodies filmed in close-up and extreme close-up as textures • ‘décadrages’: ‘les champs vides, les angles insolites, les corps parcellisés en amorce ou en gros plan’ (Pascal Bonitzer, in Beugnet 2003: 31) – decentres and disorientates the gaze • Characters are bodies rather than psychologically rounded individuals – renders identification problematic

9. Early career • Chocolat (1988): semi-autobiographical film about growing up in colonial West Africa – avoids psychology, morality, nostalgia – suggests a lack of closure to the colonial experience • S’en fout la mort (1990) set in underground world of cockfighting • J’ai pas sommeil (1993): based on the true case of a serial killer in Paris – stresses anonymity of urban experience, avoids voyeurism and facile moral judgements • (35 Rhums [2008] also about French-African immigrant in Parisian suburbs.)

10. Beau travail and the French Foreign Legion • Commissioned as part of ARTE series Terres étrangères on the idea of foreignness • Authorities in France and Djibouti refused to assist production • Legion symbolises French Republic’s willingness to welcome outsiders who adhere to its ‘universal’ values • Romantic myth of the Legion as a place where identities are erased • Mystery and opacity of the Legionnaire, and of Djibouti ‘a piece of lava and salt in the Red Sea… a place where human history hasn’t really begun yet’ (in Brault 2004: 295)

11. Abstraction, homoeroticism and intertextuality • Increased abstraction and new focus on men’s bodies (influence of Jean Genet?) • Intertextuality: ‘ça ne raconte rien, et pourtant entre ces petits blocs d’images et de sons si précis, si poignants, se faufilent mille histoires. Des histoires qui viennent des légendes, de l’histoire, de la littérature, de la peinture, du théâtre, de la musique, de la danse, du cinéma. Et voilà que cet assemblage ‘non-narratif’ bruisse de récits murmurés, aux marges de l’écran et de la mémoire’ (Frodon in Beugnet 2004: 120) • Refers to Herman Melville’s BillyBudd plus Benjamin Britten’s opera

12. Michel Subor/Bruno Forrestier • In Le Petit Soldat (Godard, 1960), plays a deserter involved with the OAS – tortured by FLN, his girlfriend is murdered • In L’Intrus (Denis, 2004) plays a man paying for a black-market heart transplant

14. Bibliography • Beugnet, M. (2004), Claire Denis, Manchester: Manchester University Press. • Brault, P.-A. (2004), ‘Claire Denis et le corps à corps masculin dans Beau Travail’, The French Review, 78, 2, pp. 288-99. • Del Rio, E. (2003), ‘Body Transformations in the Films of Claire Denis: From Ritual to Play’, Studies in French Cinema, 3, 3, pp. 185-97. • Hayward, S. (2001), ‘Claire Denis’ Films and the Post-Colonial Body – with special reference to Beau travail (1999)’, Studies in FrenchCinema, 1, 3, pp. 159-65. • Mayne, J. (2005), Claire Denis, Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press. • Neale, S. (1983), ‘Masculinity as Spectacle: Reflections on Men and Mainstream Cinema.’ Screen 24: 6, pp. 2-17.