From Booklist
French director Claire Denis has made a number of well-received films during the past two decades, including the critical favorite
Beau Travail (1999), but she remains best known for her first feature,
Chocolat (1988), the semiautobiographical story of a girl growing up in Africa. Rather than proceeding chronologically, like Brunette and Anderson, through her subject's work, feminist scholar Mayne discusses Denis' films thematically, examining the filmmaker's treatment of the legacies of colonialism in
Chocolat and
No Fear, No Die; of brother-sister relationships in U.S.
Go Home and
Nenette and Boni; and the concept of strangerhood in
I Can't Sleep and
Beau Travail. A 2003 interview with Denis is included. The creator of a body of uncompromising and personal work, Denis is one of France's most important post-New Wave directors, one who, like Wong and Yang, has attracted the devotion of hard-core cineastes, a tiny, dedicated, generally highly literate audience that will embrace Mayne's study as well as its series mates.
Gordon FlaggCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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Book Description
Widely regarded as one of the most innovative and passionate filmmakers working in France today, Claire Denis has continued to make beautiful and challenging films since the 1988 release of her first feature, "Chocolat". Judith Mayne's comprehensive study of these films traces Denis' career and discusses her major feature films in rich detail. Born in Paris but having grown up in Africa, Denis explores in her films the legacies of French colonialism and the complex relationships between sexuality, gender, and race. From the adult woman who observes her past as a child in Cameroon to the Lithuanian immigrant who arrives in Paris and watches a serial killer to the disgraced French Foreign Legionnaire attempting to make sense of his past, the subjects of Denis' films continually revisit themes of watching, bearing witness, and making contact, as well as displacement, masculinity, and the migratory subject.Judith Mayne, Professor of French and Women's Studies at the Ohio State University, is the author of six books: "Framed: Lesbians, Feminists, and Media Culture"; "Directed by Dorothy Arzner"; "Cinema and Spectatorship"; "The Woman at the Keyhole: Feminism and Women's Cinema"; "Kino and the Woman Question: Feminism and Soviet Silent Film"; and "Private Novels, Public Films". This is a volume in the "Contemporary Film Directors" series, edited by James Naremore.