French Film Directors Series Queer Cinema in Contemporary France

Comprehensive in scope, Queer cinema in contemporary France traces the development of the meaning of queer across five French directors’ careers, from their earliest, often unknown films to their later, major films with international release. What does queer signify in twenty-first-century French film? How are lesbian, gay, and trans* characters represented on screen?Queer cinema in contemporary France responds to these questions through an examination of the work of five directors: Jacques Martineau, Olivier Ducastel, Alain Guiraudie, Sébastien Lifshitz, and Céline Sciamma. Taking in award-winning films such as Stranger by the Lake and Portrait of a Lady on Fire and lesser-known productions such as Family Tree and Open Bodies, the book traces the development of queerness across the filmmakers’ careers. The films depict a wide range of scenarios – from gay sex at a nudist beach and lesbian love in a high school swimming pool to gay road trips and transgender journeys through time. They offer a fascinating exploration of the issues surrounding queerness in this century, while gesturing toward an optimistic future for LGBTQ characters and the world in which they live, love, and desire.Whether white, beur, or black, whether lesbian, gay, trans*, or queer, the characters in these films open up oppressive notions of hetero- and cisnormativity to something new, something unexpected, something oriented toward the future. Jacques Martineau, Olivier Ducastel, Alain Guiraudie, Sébastien Lifshitz and Céline Sciamma. The films of these five major French directors exemplify queer cinema in the twenty-first century. Comprehensive in scope, Queer cinema in contemporary France traces the development of the meaning of queer across these directors’ careers, from their earliest, often unknown films to their later, major films with wide international release. Whether having sex on the beach or kissing in the high school swimming pool, these cinematic characters create or embody forward-looking, open-ended and optimistic forms of queerness and modes of living, loving and desiring. Whether they are white, beur or black, whether they are lesbian, gay, trans* or queer, they open up hetero- and cisnormativity to new ways of being a gendered subject.