Innocence and desire:

Contemporary French female directors and the coming of age

The final scene in Innocence, Lucile Hadzihalilovic, (2004), DVD Capture.

Christine Leang
French with Film Studies
FR3119 Undergraduate Dissertation
School of Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures
2014

Dissertation Supervisors: Professor James Williams and Professor

Eric Robertson

7th May 2014

Word Count: 4,669

Innocence and desire:

I hereby grant permission to the School of Modern Languages, Literatures, and Cultures
to allow future students to read this dissertation or extracts from it.
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Contemporary French female directors and the coming of age

The transition between adolescence and adulthood is a troublesome and

confusing period of limbo for its subjects where they experience a bubbling

concoction of feelings of displacement, desire and anxiety of the self. Just as

François Truffaut’s study of coming of age in Les Quatre Cents Coups (1959)

contemporary French cineastes continue to put into discourse this struggle. But

this time female directors hold the camera and turn the lens onto female sexual

awakening in their tales of transition into womanhood. The infamously

provocative Catherine Breillat’s À ma sœur! (2001) and the young up-and-

coming directors Lucile Hadzihalilovic’s Innocence (2004) and Céline Sciamma’s

Naissance des Pieuvres (2007) are three powerful films by three distinct female

voices in French cinema that bravely confront the issue of pre-teen female

emerging sexuality. These three directors place their virginal female

protagonists afloat or submerged by water from the still and pure to crashing,

uncontrollable waves. This creates a striking visual current that flows through

their depiction of the coming of age. By moving chronologically from one film to

the next and focusing on key scenes that include water, I will examine how this

recurring theme and image of water along with its symbolism, sonorous and

visual impact, may work in tandem with the issues of sexual development and

identity struggle these directors are addressing. I intend to unpick the different

messages these women create by addressing the psychology of pre-pubescent

girlhood in order to unravel the wider significance and reasons why these female

directors have chosen to focus on female coming of age.

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Figure 1 Anais: ‘n'est-ce pas que mes lèvres sont douces et que j'embrasse bien […] mais je
ne veux pas me marier tout de suite’, À ma sœur! ,Catherine Breillat, (2001), DVD Capture.

The protagonist in Catherine Breillat’s A ma sœur! (2001) is the plump

and sulky twelve year old Anaïs, a compelling character caught between

childhood and the age of maturity. Actress Anaïs Reboux plays a moody and

mouthy teenager akin to Peter Jackson’s portrayal of Pauline Parker in Heavenly

Creatures (1994) who seeks solace in the fantasies she conjures up in her head.

Anaïs is on summer vacation with her sister and parents when she reveals this

interior world to us in a scene where she goes for a solitary swim in the pool

(Figure 1). It seems that the water weightlessly floating her body allows the

weight on her shoulders to lift and her mind to be set free to dream. Through a

series of close-ups the viewer enters into her interior world where only we hear

her soft private whispers accompanied by the splashing water that surrounds

her. In this naturalistic and intimate scene we follow Anaïs as she enacts her first
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kiss and turns the step ladder of the pool into ‘celui à qui je donnerai tout’, the

man to take her virginity. She drifts from one imagined lover to the next,

becoming more sexually experienced and explains that ‘les femmes ne sont pas

comme des savonettes, ça ne s’use pas’, as for her the more sexually experienced

a woman the better. She is assertive, decisive, aware, a strong female in control

of her sexuality, with men at her mercy. Catherine Breillat mixes both child play

and adult ‘play’ with Anaïs singing, daydreaming and speaking to herself in the

pool alongside a sexual subject matter. These two realms are often seen as

separate in society but are inseparable in Anaïs’s teenage mind. As she emerges

from the pool Breillat uses an eye-line match from Fernando’s perspective, as the

chubby little girl in her luminous lime green one-piece rises out from the pool.

This shot significantly reminds us of how she is seen as a small child by the

outside world, who unlike the privileged spectator are ignorant to her mature

sexual thoughts and desires.

Her naïve fantasies of loss of virginity and control over the men she

chooses are soon to be dashed. Immediately after this scene she witnesses the

illicit sex act between her underage fifteen-year-old sister Elena and the

predatory Italian student Fernando. She is confronted with the harsh and

difficult realities of domination, deception, deceit and exploitation of her sister.

As Fernando exits we cut to Anaïs in the pool once again, with the two pool

scenes sandwiched between the paedophilic sex act. But this time Anaïs with

arms and legs spread open in a starfish position with her head barely above the

surface of the water. Visibly gloomy and tormented, she hoists herself out of the

cold swimming pool, with tears streaming down her face and stands shivering
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helplessly. This emotional scene implies that in witnessing her sister’s situation,

she too has become a victim. The empathy and strong bond with her sister, who

represents a possible older version of herself, implicates her in the sex act. Her

objectivity and distance from her sister’s situation through her role as observer,

leaves her to react to the harsh realities of the world in her sister’s place. On

account of the framework of lies Fernando has used to convince Elena to engage

with him sexually, the act between the pair becomes a rape scenario.

Figure 2 Anais lies on the seashore, À ma sœur! , Catherine Breillat, (2001), DVD Capture.

We are made aware of the depth of Anaïs’s troubled state of mind and

isolation as she is dragged along ‘comme un boulet’ to the seaside with her sister

and Italian lover. Breillat chooses to film Anaïs in a series of long shots with only

her in the frame: in the woods, in front of the lighthouse and finally sitting upon

by the seashore alone as the two lovers abandon her. This filmic choice

emphasises the lonely, isolated, contained and personal nature of her identity

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struggle. In a long take with her back to us, she sings to herself once more,

accompanied only by the diegetic noise of the waves lapping in and out, over and

onto her fully clothed body. Unlike the pure clear water of the swimming pool,

here the natural element of water splashes her from head to toe with frothy

water and mucky sand, revealed to us in a close-up of her speckled face. With

eyes lowered, from her small childish lips emerges a dark song displaying

feelings of anxiety and worthlessness:

- J’ai mis mon cœur à pourrir sur le bord de la fenêtre. J’ai confiance dans

l’avenir, les corbeaux viendront peut-être.

Desire and fear become intertwined in the lyrics of the song as she describes her

heart as a ‘bout de viande cru’ devoured by the beaks of men. Breillat follows

with a shot of Anaïs as she lies lifelessly like a beached whale on the seashore,

where one might imagine a small child building sandcastles (Figure 2). Breillat

cross-cuts to her sister similarly lying on the sand with Fernando embracing and

caressing her. Her red dress is rolled up just as her sister’s soaked dress is,

revealing her underwear. The similar framing and positioning of the characters

creates a comparison whereby the lapping seashore takes on the metaphorical

role of Anaïs’s lover, touching her and undressing her. It is often suggested that

what Anaïs feels towards her sister is rivalry and jealousy of her romantic

relationship. But as we can see, the water soaks her, muddying and tainting her

purity. This virginal child-woman desires sexuality but fears its destructive force

too. The sinister scene ends with Anaïs naked and crouched in a protective foetal

ball position like an animal as her wet dress dries upon driftwood. The lack of

point of view shots from her perspective leaves the viewer unable to identify

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with Anaïs’s struggle, as we observe and witness it from the outside. Breillat

reveals the importance and significance of her use of water in this scene when

she describes it as a feminine element: ‘C’est la femme océan. C’est très brutal […]

Il y a un rapport métaphysique à l’océan’1. This creates a connection between her

female protagonists’ psychology and the rough waves. The sea embodies and

accentuates Anaïs’s inner feelings and emotions of catastrophe and sexual desire.

For Breillat adolescence is a fascinating stage: ‘C’est un être qui se suicide […]

c’est un être qui ne veut plus être une jeune fille, elle est dans un état d’invention

d’un nouveau monde’2. Anaïs is on the threshold of a new identity of

womanhood, one that she is compelled towards but also revokes. Poignantly

close to the end of the film she exclaims, ‘C’est déguelasse d’être vierge!’ but also

expresses that she would prefer if no-one could be her ‘première fois’. Two

conflicting and contradictory emotions born from her realisation that there is a

relinquishing of power towards males in offering up her virginity, the danger of

this epitomised by her sister’s experience. The torment and inner battle she feels

are also rooted in the taboo nature of her sexual struggle: her parents and

society reject and dismiss her interior feelings. In this we can see how ‘Breillat

expérimente la virginité des jeunnes filles sous l’angle d’une réelle confrontation

avec la honte et l’obscénité’3, shame becomes the ingredient that brews her

emotions. Her age and body is that of a child according to the world she lives in,

but her feelings do not match the expectation. Breillat is raising issues to do with

1
L’abécédaire de Catherine Breillat in Claire Clouzot, Catherine Breillat: Indécence et pureté, (Italy:
Cahiers du cinema, 2004), p.173.
2
L’abécédaire de Catherine Breillat in Claire Clouzot, Catherine Breillat: Indécence et pureté, (Italy:
Cahiers du cinema, 2004), p.173.
3
Claire Clouzot in Fin du cycle de la virginité in Claire Clouzot, Catherine Breillat: Indécence et
pureté, (Italy: Cahiers du cinema, 2004).
p.104.
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female sexuality in A ma sœur!, her art is dedicated to questioning, representing

and reinventing female sexuality for her spectators.

Figure 3 The girls teach Iris how to swim, Innocence, Lucile Hadzihalilovic, (2004), DVD
Capture.

Before the very opening title of Lucile Hadzihalilovic’s first feature film

Innocence (2004), the viewer is plunged into agitated bubbling water with an

underwater shot. This is a disorientating start where the frame is filled with an

extreme macro close up of rapidly moving green water, with a sonorous

accompaniment of diegetic muffled bubbling sounds. This is a strong mixture of

sonority and image that Hadzihalilovic describes as her ‘playing on sound and

sensorial perception’4. Next, hundreds of slower moving white circular bubbles

4
Lucile Hadzihalilovic quoted in Davina Quinlivan, Material hauntings: The kinaesthesia of sound
in Innocence in Studies in French Cinema, 9.3, intellect journals, (Bristol: Intellect Ltd Editorial,
2009), p. 218.

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of air dance across the screen like spermatozoids in a long take which lasts over

a minute. We then emerge from the depths to find the source of this water, a

cascade. A relentless use of water continues throughout Innocence where it is

presented in its various forms. This filmic treatment of water is reminiscent of

the avant-gardist Ralph Steiner’s exploration of water in H20 (1929). Poignant

moments of the film are accompanied by images of water, creating a myriad of

effects and possible meanings left for the viewer to deconstruct. Our fluidic

entrance into the film is followed by a new arrival to the compound; by signalling

an arrival, the watery images create connotations of birth and beginning. Young

Iris arriving in a closed wooden coffin is the newest arrival to the strange

matriarchally-led school for pre-teen girls hidden within the forest. With her

coffin bed it seems that what we witness is the death of Iris’s childhood and her

entry into a stage between girlhood and womanhood, surrounded by girls from

six and above, yet to have reached puberty.

We will return numerous times to this river throughout the film. In a

warm golden sunlit scene the boarding school girls will teach the new arrivals to

swim (Figure 3). The camera keeps close, like a head just holding above the

water, as it follows this joyous naturalistic moment as the girls frolic in the

water, giggling playfully in their white undergarments as their plaited pig-tails

trail behind them. As Davina Quinlivan explains, Hadzihalilovic along with her

cinematographer Benoît Debie employed ‘CinemaScope […] photographing them

using Super-16 which was then digitally enhanced to deepen the colour

saturation of the film stock’5. This makes for the vivid colours that burst from the
5
Davina Quinlivan, Material hauntings: The kinaesthesia of sound in Innocence in Studies in French
Cinema, 9.3, intellect journals, (Bristol: Intellect Ltd Editorial, 2009), p. 217.
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images in this scene further emphasising a representation of childish fun. Nature

is all important in Innocence with close ups of ladybirds, butterflies cracking out

of cocoons, plants, snakes and animals and of course water. As Hadzihalilovic

explains, such moments are ‘about the vitality of life […] they suggest the wonder

of nature’6, a beauty and wonder that she sees in these young girls but that the

establishment they find themselves in is trying predominantly to contain and

control. The link between the girls and nature is set up throughout the film, in

such a way that their dance instructor, Mademoiselle Eva, describes them as

‘vilaines petites chenilles’ that are then given butterfly wing costumes once they

are of age, and furthermore when Mademoiselle Edith is seen to be pinning down

butterflies into a collection box. The natural elements from the movement of

water to the butterfly emerging from the cocoon, are symbolic signifiers, that

Lucile Hadzihalilovic is setting up to mirror the metamorphosis these young girls

are going through, as they blossom from mini innocent beings into sexual female

adults.

We plunge once again into this very same river when a young girl sees

this waterway as a means to escape the entrapment of the school. En route to

find her family and a free life, we understand that her journey has failed when

presented with the same underwater images of the troubled and agitated water

we witnessed at the beginning of the film. A thunderstorm strikes and a

downpour of rain falls from the skies in a dramatic, emotional and tragic scene

which expresses an adieu to a girl we will never see again. This opens up a

6
Lucile Hadzihalilovic quoted in Davina Quinlivan, Material hauntings: The kinaesthesia of sound
in Innocence in Studies in French Cinema, 9.3, intellect journals, (Bristol: Intellect Ltd Editorial,
2009), p. 219.
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darker usage of water in Innocence. The thematic of water even infiltrates the

very education and formation of these girls, as in a Natural Science lesson ‘the

source’ of their existence is explained as being the sea. Here a diagram with only

a female anatomy presented upon it, illustrates an evolution from a variety of sea

creatures, to animal species towards the final creation of the woman. In this we

can once again draw links, as in A ma sœur!, of a metaphysical connection being

made between the female gender and water, which due to the double meaning of

the homonym ‘la mère/mer’ in French holds its symbolism of the female power

of creation. With such lessons of science, alongside dancing lessons and strict

behavioural rules and regulations, an apprenticeship of femininity is being

imposed upon the young female protagonists. They must follow the rules of

these lessons in appropriate gender behaviour in order to one day, if they have

adhered to the rules, their ‘dents de lait’ have fallen out and their first period has

started, they may be released into the real world as women. Though the

narrative is strongly enigmatic, a constant sense of unease is felt throughout this

strange fable. Their teachers, trapped in this place due to their failure to follow

the protocol, stand as a warning to the girls pushing them to comply through

obedience. This finishing school, with its ideologies, fixed rules and ideals of

femininity, present what Judith Butler would define as ‘gender coherence’ 7. The

removal of the familiar parent/society framework makes the process of gender

construction seem twisted and strange. It is as if Lucile Hadzihalilovic takes a

microscope to the rules deemed normal in the outside world but here, with the

mechanisms, phases and methods of taught femininity laid bare, the audience

7
Judith Butler, Gender trouble: feminism and the subversion of identity, (New York;London:
Routledge, 1999).

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perceives that it is a forced and unnatural process. Throughout the film we

witness the taming of these girls which limits the vitality of their individual

personalities, strength, power and emerging sexual essence. This is all in favour

of an idealised notion of innocence seen as a strict prescriptive notion which in

itself is a social construct. Though this land of females omits men entirely,

instead of an absence of men the spectator feels a masculine omnipresence

throughout the film. Elements hint at a male control from the lights that flicker

on as the girls walk through the forest, creating a sense of supervision, to a male

shadow seemingly injecting a female, to the faceless voice of a male spectator at

the ballet show. Might Hadzihalilovic, with the absence of men lead us into a

sense that men are at the root of this charm school. Might be seen as a comment

on patriarchal society and male fear of female sexuality perhaps and a need to

repress and control these individuals? The enigmatic film leaves this open, it is

for the viewer in their own personal subjectivity to make their own

interpretation.

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Figure 4 The final frame of the film before the water submerges the screen, Innocence,
Lucile Hadzihalilovic, (2004), DVD Capture.

The climatic end scene of Innocence is that of the liberation of the girls

who have attained puberty and are set free into the world of men and women

outside. A rickety train leads these girls to an urban setting of high-rise buildings

and metallic modern structures unfamiliar to their eyes and they are at once

drawn to a grandiose fountain. Just as the girls had so often splashed about in the

river within the woodland, here too they immediately feel compelled to enter the

familiar water and play. Bianca unlaces her boots, strips off her over garments

and jumps in. The camera draws closer, entering the site from which the central

jet of water bursts out. The sounds of the water as it trickles and gushes out

overtakes the sounds of the surround people, creating a moment out of time. The

water opaquely obscures the young girls soft smiling expression, but hides the

person to whom it is directed. Peering through the froth we see a young man, we

quickly adopt his gaze in a point of view shot as the camera circles the fountain
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and looks at Bianca. The camera rises to a birds eye view shot of the two (Figure

4). An elevated shot that finally frees us from the otherwise claustrophobic

images in the film. In this frame the fountain takes on phallic significance, as

Bianca touches this jet of water and the pair playfully splash each other. Is

Hadzihalilovic perhaps creating a metaphor for intercourse and the loss of

virginity? Bianca, dressed in the ‘iconography of girlhood’8, with her little pleated

skirt in a symbolically pure white colour with plaits, giggles as the water soaks

her clothes. The water then spurts out ejaculating frothing water that crashes

into the camera, creating a parallel to the bubbling water at the start of the film.

The powerful sonorous element of this agitated water was an attempt for

Hadzihalilovic to create ‘‘reassuring’ sense of water in the film, and its aural

signification presents a counterpoint to the claustrophobic composition and

constraint of much of the images’ 9. The water takes on plural significance in this

scene: phallic metaphor, freeing element but also a structural device due to the

beginning of the film opening up in the same way, signalling this time a

departure for the film, or perhaps a second birth for Bianca as she sets upon a

new stage of her life.

8
Romney quoted in Dominique Mehl, Minature lives, intrusion and ‘Innocence’: Women filming
children, French cultural studies, Vol.18(2), (2007), p. 172.

9
Lucile Hadzihalilovic quoted in Davina Quinlivan, Material hauntings: The kinaesthesia of sound
in Innocence in Studies in French Cinema, 9.3, intellect journals, (Bristol: Intellect Ltd Editorial,
2009), p. 219.
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Figure 5 A point of view shot as Marie watches the synchronized swimmers underwater,
Naissance des Pieuvres, Céline Sciamma, (2007), DVD Capture.

Céline Sciamma’s Naissance des Pieuvres, (2007) opens to a synchronised

swimming school show performance. The young schoolgirls show a glittery girly

display of femininity in their luminous pink, orange, yellow and green swimsuits

and neon makeup. These images are accompanied by non-diegetic electronic and

orchestral music tinkling in the background, Sciamma’s attempt to ‘synchronise

the music with the swimming’ 10. It is here that we meet teenage tomboy Marie

(Pauline Acquart) who becomes captivated by blonde beauty Floriane (Adèle

Haenel), the star of the group. Marie’s eyes remain glued to the show and her

attraction towards Floriane is made clear through point of view shots, showing

the direction of her fascinated gaze. Marie looks but rarely speaks, and thanks to
10
Céline Sciamma quoted in Joan Dupont, A new director’s portrait of teenage passion,
International Harald Tribune, 2008, p. 8.

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Pauline Acquart ‘s physical acting she is presented as a fidgety skinny girl

uncomfortable in her own body, filmed by Sciamma in a variety of close ups of

her lip biting, fidgeting and fumbling hands. This becomes a filmic and visual

representation of her confused interior feelings. Sciamma defines the focus of

her film ‘La naissance des pieuvres, c’est la naissance d’un monstre en soi, dans

son ventre […] qui grandit très vite. C’est le désir, c’est la jalousie, qui déploie son

encre, ses tentacules…’11 Describing her female protagonists as underwater

creatures that battle with strong burdensome feelings of desire. The

synchronised swimming of these confused female teenage bodies continues to be

represented on screen as Marie attends a practice class. Here thanks to the

technique of underwater filming, like in Innocence, we follow Marie as she enters

the pool and looks through the water to watch the girls from below (Figure 5).

Here we witness the female creatures harness the strength of their bodies,

creating angular arches and shapes with their legs and arms. This focus on their

bodies is a show of power and control but also of conformity as they articulate

their limbs to mirror one another. This collective aquatic gymnastic sport creates

a metaphor for the social group of girls from which out three main protagonists

Marie, Floriane and Anne are outsiders due to their individual differences and

sexual struggles.

Céline Sciamma is no stranger to the representation of lesbian subjects on

screen, the same issue of difficulty with emerging homosexual desires is the

focus of many of her films including her film short Pauline (2009). One could

equally draw parallels between this work and Abdellatif Kechiche’s La Vie

11
Céline Sciamma interview in “A cet âge-la, tous les désirs sont invivables”, Les Inrocks, (2007).
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d’Adele, (2013) due to the homosexual thematic, but to view Naissance des

Pieuvres simply as a coming-out film is to ignore the dynamics at play. The

perpetually shy Marine is drawn to the most sexual and promiscuous girl of the

group, in this it can be seen that she is not merely attracted to her because she

has emerging homosexual desires but rather she is in awe of the girl. A girl that

has already started to use her sexuality and equally knows how to manipulate

and use her body both in swimming and in the game of seduction. Through this

optic Floriane becomes a figure symbolic of sexuality itself, but also becomes a

messenger of the dangers of confused budding sexuality in its extremes, that can

be taken advantage of by men, echoing Catherine Breillat’s character of Elena in

A ma sœur!

Figure 6 Marie and Anne float together, Naissance des Pieuvres, Céline Sciamma, (2007),
DVD Capture.

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The final scene of Naissance des Pieuvres, sees Anne and Marie return to

the swimming pool by night. Marie hastily washes her lipstick stained lips in the

chlorinated water, in a purifying act attempting to wash away the mark of her

unrequited love Floriane. With a splash she jumps into the pool traversing the

screen vertically creating an explosion of bubbles in her path. Cross-cutting

editing links this scene to Floriane who dances flirtatiously at a party in a glow of

blue lighting that aesthetically creates an association between the scenes and

explains Marie’s action. Best friends Marie and Anne filmed in a bird’s-eye-view

shot (Figure 6) float upon the surface threshold of the aqua coloured water,

forming eight tentacles with their arms and legs, creating the image of an

octopus. This suggests the ‘pieuvre’ in question, the psychological monster of

their desires. This climatic scene comes after one has lost her virginity and the

other has taken the virginity of another (as Marie assisted to the defloration of

Floriane). No longer are they the children they used to be as they both face

troubles of the heart in their violent discovery of self and of others. As Sciamma

explains ‘à cet â ge-là tous les désirs sont invivables’12 but by keeping her

protagonists afloat a message of hope emanates. The camera moves in closer and

in a medium shot shows Marie’s smiling face with her friend by her side, who

proceeds to break the fourth wall by looking directly at the camera visually

acknowledging the audience, spectators who have now begun to understand and

empathise with the plight of these teenage individuals.

An affinity can be seen between the three réalisatrices: Catherine Breillat,

Lucile Hadzihalilovic and Céline Sciamma in their shared subject matter and
12
Céline Sciamma interview in “A cet âge-la, tous les désirs sont invivables”, Les Inrocks, (2007).
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subsequent treatment of female youth on screen. Water is adopted by these

cinéastes for its visual, aural, structural, metaphorical and symbolic properties.

This presence of water becoming as important as a main protagonist which acts

as a mediator allowing the inner emotions and psychology of our heroines, their

confusions, fears and desires, to be materialised visually. All three directors

create a microcosm of pubescent girls in their films, with other characters being

superfluous, isolating and focusing on their female protagonists during these

years of change and offering ‘a subjective, child-motored space of

representation’13. Céline Sciamma condenses a desire which is equally shared by

the other filmmakers, to create ‘un regard féminin sur ce que c’est d’être une

fille.’ She continues: ‘Je pense bien sû r qu’on ne naît pas fille, on le devient […]

donc ce moment précis de la naissance du désir, de la problématique amoureuse,

c’est aussi la naissance de la problématique de la fémininité.’14 By echoing the

words of Simone de Beauvoir we can see how all three are engagé filmmakers

that take on feminist issues in their ontological approach to young female

sexuality. The myth of childhood innocence and naivety is deconstructed through

their studies of childhood that confront the decisive moment when desire begins

to materialise. Each director with their personal creative vision and approach to

the topic enters the territory of auteur cinema with their brave films that tackle

one of societie’s most taboo and problematic subjects. Proof of which being that

all three of the films were scrutinised by censorship regulations when released,

with versions of Innocence and À ma sœur ! suffering the removal of key scenes

that included nudity or sexual scenes involving minors. These marginal sexual
13
Jenkins quoted in Dominique Mehl, Minature lives, intrusion and ‘Innocence’: Women filming
children, French cultural studies, Vol.18(2), (2007), p. 170.

14
Céline Sciamma interview in “A cet âge-la, tous les désirs sont invivables”, Les Inrocks, (2007).
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identities are more than just a subject matter, they become a stance of reworking

and questioning our preconceived ideas and enlighten and awaken their

audiences by putting into discourse the confusions, implications, dangers and

social dynamics at play within the blossoming of female sexuality.

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Powrie, Phil and Keith Reader, French cinema: A student’s Guide, (London:
Arnold, 2002).

Quinlivan, Davina, Material hauntings: The kinaesthesia of sound in Innocence in

Studies in French Cinema, 9.3, intellect journals, (Bristol: Intellect Ltd Editorial,
2009).

Reeth, Adèle Van reçoit Claudine Le Pallec-Marand , Le sexe sous tous ses rapports
2/4: Filmer la sexualité (France Culture, 29 may 2012), accessed electronically:
http://www.franceculture.fr/emission-les-nouveaux-chemins-de-la-
connaissance-le-sexe-sous-tous-ses-rapports-24-filmer-la-sexuali
(Accessed: 10th March 2014)

Sciamma, Céline interview, “A cet âge-la, tous les désirs sont invivables”, (2007),
accessed electronically: http://www.lesinrocks.com/artiste/celine-sciamma/
(Accessed: 5th May 2014).
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Vasse, David, Catherine Breillat: Un cinema du rite et de la transgression, (Issy-les-

Moulineaux, France: Arté editions, 2004).

Films

À ma sœur ! , Catherine Breillat, (Tartan, 2002).

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Heavenly Creatures, Peter Jackson, (Touchstone, 1996).

H20, Ralph Steiner, (1929).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4muinY8Q9M (Accessed: 5th May 2014).

Innocence, Lucile Hadzihalilovic,(Artificial Eye, 2004).

La Vie d’Adèle, Abdellatif Kechiche, (2013)

Les Quatre Cents Coups, François Truffaut, (Tartan, 2002).

Naissance des pieuvres, Céline Sciamma, (Slingshot Studios, 2008).

Pauline, Céline Sciamma, (2009)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUHyJjiouUw (Accessed: 5th May 2014).

Sex is Comedy, Catherine Breillat (Artificial Eye, 2002).

Tomboy, Céline Sciamma, (2011).

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