Women in Audiard movies
From 21 Feb to 30 March, Jacques Audiard steals the screen at the Institut français!
For this occasion and to launch our monthly theme ‘Women in Culture’ we have chosen to analyse ‘Women in Audiard movies’. Harsh task, eh?... and you’re right! Audiard is known for what we call his “cinéma de mecs”, where violence is omnipresent and men are very much linked with bestiality. Audiard sharply differentiates between female roles by stereotyping them as aestheticians, secretaries or cleaners. Women in his movie are often placed secondary or linked with sexuality. The best example is the award-winning A Prophet (Un Prophète) where women only appear as mother, wife or sexual object. But let’s check out his other movies:
Rust and Bone (De rouille et d’os) is the meeting between an outsider unable to take care of his son and a killer whale trainer. Even if the encounter begins with a sexist reflexion from Ali towards Stephanie, she has an individual job which makes her different. She’s fighting for freedom, and after her accident she will fight to live again through the rediscovery of love and sexuality. Ali helps her in her quest, ignoring her handicap as she helps him to structure his life. Audiard builds the portrait of a character who is admired for her strongness. But she is hidden away in the story; Audiard tends to focus on Ali’s character… which is a shame!
Read my lips (Sur mes lèvres): Brings us back into the assumed stereotype of the secretary. Clara is a deaf woman, working all the time without recognition from her male colleagues. She starts to assert herself due to her new male intern Paul - a former prisoner - who teaches her the “gangster way” whilst she is trying to educate him. Here again, Audiard introduces the male character as a violent person, an animal who needs to be educated. Again the woman is an outsider because of her handicap and it allows the couple to evolve. In fact, the only remaining touch of animality is the desire they have for one another, and it is well represented by Audiard’s use of the nightclub (in Rust and Bone also) which is introduced like a kind a bestial area where people degenerate to the natural state.
Venus Beauty (Institute) (Venus Beaute (Institut)) In this Tonie Marshall movie, Audiard’s pattern is really present, as we recognise the same relationship scheme between two outsiders: a quite savage young guy and a woman whose handicap is her former love failures and other people’s opinion about her age. One day, after being dumped, Angele is accosted by a stranger (Antoine) who falls in love with her. Protective and no longer confident in love she tries to reject him, but falls in love step by step with Antoine’s attempts to seduce her. In this feminine environnement - an Institute - female characters are stereotyped in an assumed theatrical way, but we plunge deeply into their characters, in a female hero’s point of view.. at last!
Dheepan: We have seen Audiard’s questioning about the fact to be fulfilled through couple and family relations. But in Dheepan, this is a fake family. And it makes a huge difference. Men are linked with violence. Sivadhasan, an ex Tamil Tiger soldier, flees to France, with a woman Yalini and a girl Illayaal pretending they are his wife and daughter. Arriving in the French suburbs he tries to bury his warrior instincts with family, but he quickly plunges into it again. Here the Yalini character is really interesting, as she decides to build her story by her own and even is teased by a gang leader nephew. So the reversal is important, as violence and freedom are the end unlike former analysed movies that show love and family at a final point. Maybe we have found our female heroine at last.
We can’t deny that Audiard’s movies are quite violent and male focused. But actually his real individuality is that he shoots men through women’s eyes and women through men’s eyes. Women and men are imperfect people, but the crossing between male and female outsiders and the exchange of lessons allows the building of the self.