To be a woman is to be constantly on guard against threats of violence. The male gaze is often a perpetrator of such violence, whether physically or psychologically enacted, and such issues are often a topic of discourse in cinematic representation of the feminine identity. This spring’s film festival, “Women in Trouble: Love and Desire in Francophone Cinema Film Series” brings this discourse to the fore.
Brought by Bryn Mawr’s Film Studies, the festival is sponsored by a grant from the Albertine Cinémathèque, part of Albertine Foundation & Villa Albertine who provides a list of selected films from which the grantees choose at least five contemporary films and one classic film for their festival. It is also supported by Centre National du Cinema et de l’image animée and the Fonds Culturel Franco-Américain/SACEM.
Julien Suadeau, director of the festival, head of Bryn Mawr’s Film Studies, and a senior lecturer in French and Francophone Studies, mentions his love for the late filmmaker David Lynch for being behind the festival’s running theme. A “woman in trouble” is a phrase from Lynch used to describe the kind of movies he was interested in as a spectator and also a filmmaker. As a phrase that has always struck Suadeau, it says a lot about how film is constructed around the male gaze. He aims to explore how the films in the festival “deconstruct the male gaze and promote, describe the female gaze even while still featuring women in trouble” so that a trope conventionally deriving from male-gaze dominated cinema can be “reappropriated or reclaimed or transformed or deconstructed” with another angle.
So far in February, “Revoir Paris (Paris Memories)” was shown at the Screening Room in Haverford College’s Visual Culture, Arts, and Media facility and “Belle de Jour,” the classic film choice, was shown at Bryn Mawr Film Institute. The latter, directed by Luis Buñuel, follows a young housewife with repressed psychosexual fantasies who covertly works at a brothel during the day. Her occupation and the other life she lives separate from her husband start to threaten her normal life when one of her clients becomes possessive. The screening was followed by a talkback with hosts of the Mawrters at the Movies podcast, Hilde Nelson and Judie Johnson (‘25), who moderated discussion ranging from the surreal cinematography of Buñuel, blending of reality and fantasy, influence of religion, and more with audience members made up of locals, visitors, and current and former Bryn Mawr students.
Suadeau is also currently teaching a French course, Les métamorphoses du regard féminin dans le cinéma français (The metamorphosis of the female gaze in French cinema). While the students in the class hone their competency in the French language and the course primarily consists of film analysis and discussion, the course syllabus mentions exploring “five units corresponding to a number of faces and states of femininity”: sickness, resilience, fatality, madness, and love. The students are assigned to one of the festival’s films shown at Bryn Mawr Film Institute for which they’ll create promotional materials leading up to the screening and host a talkback post-screening.
Upcoming screenings will all be on Wednesday evenings at 7 p.m. at the BMFI and free to Bryn Mawr College community members which include “The Beast” on March 26, “The Five Devils” on April 2, “Banel & Adama” on April 16, as well as “Anatomy of a Fall” on April 23 at 7:30 p.m. at VCAM which is free to Bi-College community members.
