Intimate Spaces in François Ozon's Swimming Pool
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ABSTRACT INTIMATE SPACES IN FRANÇOIS OZON‘S SWIMMING POOL by Tamara Tasevska This study examines the construction of intimate spaces in François Ozon‘s cinema and how transgressions in those spaces cause unsettling ruptures in the distinction we normally make between private and public space. Ozon plays with the voyeuristic privilege of the cinema through different means, such as increased proximity of the camera gaze, close-ups of the body and the look as well as abrupt transgressions from one space to another. His characters often collaborate with the camera gaze by looking at it, thus breaking the fourth wall and performing, or by making us feel its gaze present within the visual field. The camera gaze, one of the most powerful chronicles for capturing reality, proves through his films how looking too closely can change what we see and can blur the lines that divide public life from private life. INTIMATE SPACES IN FRANÇOIS OZON‘S SWIMMING POOL A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of Miami University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Department of French & Italian by Tamara Tasevska Miami University Oxford, Ohio 2014 Advisor :___________________________________________ Dr. Elisabeth Hodges Reader :____________________________________________ Dr. Jonathan Strauss Reader :____________________________________________ Dr. Anna Klosowska Contents 1 Introduction………………………………………………………..................................1 2 Framing Intimacy ……………………………………...................................................11 2.1 Transformation Spaces……………………………………………........................11 2.2 The Home in London……………………………………………………………..17 2.3 The Vacation Retreat in Luberon………………………………………................20 3 Framing Desire: The Intimate Look and the Gaze …………………………………..22 3.1 Pleasure from Looking ………………………………………………………………22 3.2 Body Space …………………………………………………………………………..28 3.3 Intimate faces / Intimate Stories ……………………………………………………..31 4 Conclusion ………………………………………………………………………………39 ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to make a few statements with respect to those individuals who have been of great importance to not only my research, but also the very completion and support of this thesis. My first thanks goes to my advisor Dr. Elisabeth Hodges, for her precious guidance and for her constant encouragement, time and patience. My thanks also goes to Dr. Jonathan Strauss and Dr. Anna Klosowska, for being part of my defense committee, and also for the wonderful discussion that we had during the thesis defense. I would like to thank all the members of the French and Italian Department in particular and Miami University in general, for providing me with a supportive and stimulating learning environment. Finally, I would like to thank my family and friends, here at Miami and at home in Macedonia for all the support and love they have given me. iii Chapter 1 Introduction François Ozon‘s films seek to construct intimate spaces, very often through the representation of characters‘ non-normative desire in an odd domestic-like setting. Ozon is fascinated with human bodies and the private, intimate spaces they occupy, such as the home or the bedroom. His films often cinematographically interrogate the distinction between these intimate spaces and the public representation, not only to trace the contours of a distinct visual poetics, but also to call into question the inwardness of others into those spaces, including the inwardness of camera‘s gaze itself. Images where the camera gaze collaborates with the character‘s look into intimacy are at the core of Ozon‘s cinema. Consider the sequence early in Swimming Pool (2003) where the middle aged female writer glimpses a young naked blonde girl through a window who looks back and smiles while having sex with a man. The young Julie seems to enjoy when the camera captures her look towards Sarah and the camera, in a close-up thus breaking the fourth wall; whereas the older Sarah, her look captured in a close-up, is both fascinated and disturbed by Julie‘s reciprocal look. Her figure, in the reflection of the window glass, is literary absorbed into the image of the couple‘s sexual activity. Like in Swimming Pool, intimacy is, in Ozon‘s cinema, a visual sensation, a concept revealed through the representation of desire in relation with space and proximity of the camera with the body and the look. This concept should not necessarily be associated with representation of sexual activity on screen, and sometimes it can be an incarnation of isolated static images of a sole character in a close-up of faces and body parts in a private setting. Characteristically about Ozon‘s films is that these images preoccupy nearly as much as other absorbing images of clothes, water and food, and form intimate connections with his characters‘ personal cosmos. Swimming Pool is the film I have chosen to for my analysis of Ozon‘s representation of these family-oriented and intimacy-disrupting spaces on screen. In addition, this sixth Ozonian film, is not only revelatory for the filmmaker‘s expression of intimacy on screen, it is also, as 1 he has said in one interview, his personally ―most intimate film‖ . 1François Ozon for an interview with Thibaut Schilt; Schilt,Thibaut. François Ozon. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2011, p.103 1 Recently, a number of significant film journals, notably Cahiers du cinema2 and Positif3 in France as well as the Screen4, Film Quarterly5 and The New Yorker6have paid a great deal of attention to Ozon‘s filmic oeuvre. Despite this recent critic interest in Ozon‘s films, his work garnered little academic criticism until 2008. Since 2008, a cluster of work on Ozon has been published, culminating in two monographs on the director by Andrew Asibong (2008)7 and Thibaut Schilt (2011)8. Moreover, with the newest articles dedicated on Ozon‘s work from May 5, 2014 in The New Yorker9and December 2013 in the academic journal Cineforum10 interest in the director, both in the media and in academia, appears to be at its peak. According to critics Asibong and Schilt, François Ozon is considered one of a new generation of French filmmakers whose cinematic imagery is audacious and candid when tackling issues of gender, sexuality and identity. Celebrated as ―the first French queer mainstream filmmaker‖11, throughout his career, Ozon has received mixed critical reviews. Some accuse him of banality and consider his films as ―utterly lacking in inventiveness‖12, while others, such as Anthony Lane who writes for The New Yorker, proclaim him as the one of the brightest French filmmakers whose ―story dances along at a rattling rate‖13. For The New York Times online film database, Rebecca Flint Marx portrays Ozon as ―one of the most provocative and vibrant filmmakers to emerge during the 1990s, who has distinguished himself with dark, mordantly psychological films that draw their impact from his frank and often disturbing explorations of transgression and sexuality‖14. Most critics agree that, if nothing else, Ozon is a prolific filmmaker (Asibong, 1). Since his first feature film, he has directed at least one film a year, all of which have been distributed internationally. Sous le sable (2000), 8 femmes (2002), Swimming Pool (2003), 5x2(2004), and his most recent films, Dans la maison (2012) and Jeune et jolie (2013), were popular successes both in France and abroad and have made Ozon one of the most internationally recognizable contemporary 2Cahiers du cinéma, recent issues : 692, 682, 662, 661, 653, 642, 621, 607 3Positif, recent issues: 629-631, 620, 603, 597, 588, 576 4Screen, LIII:1 (Spring 2012), XLVIII:3 (Autumn 2007) 5Film Quarterly, issues XXXVI:4 (2008), XXIV:3 (2007), LX:2 (2006-2007), XXXIII:3 (2005) 6Anthony Lane in The New Yorker, May 5, 2014 7Asibong, Andrew. François Ozon. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008. 8Schilt, Thibaut. François Ozon. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2011. 9Lane, Anthony, Trouble Calls, in The New Yorker, May 5, 2004: 84 10Rossello, Nicola. Cineforum, December 2013, 53(10):45-47 11Ince, Kate.―François Ozon‘s Cinema of Desire‖ in Ince, ed., Five Directors: Auteurism from Assayas to Ozon (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008), pp. 112-134. 12http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/movies/2013/04/in-the-house-francois-ozon-movie-review- education.html 13http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/cinema/2013/04/29/130429crci_cinema_lane?currentPage=all 14http://www.nytimes.com/movies/person/534072/Fran-ois-Ozon/biography 2 French directors. His 2013 film Jeune et Jolie was nominated for the Palme d'Or at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival and Ozon was elected as best screenwriter at the 2013 European Film Awards for his 2012 film Dans la maison15. Born and raised in Paris, Ozon had a fascination with cinema from an early age. ―I am a cinephilic director,‖ he said in an interview with Schilt published in the same author‘s book on Ozon(160). He earned his master's degree in film from the Université de Paris 1 Panthéon- Sorbonne and began studying filmmaking in 1990 at the famous French cinema school, La FEMIS. Since then, he has shot many films in Super-8, video, 16mm and 35mm formats and many of his first short films have been in competition in various international festivals16. In 1998, he made a number of short features (courts métrages), for example Une robe d'été (1996) and Scènes de lit (1998), films that brought him success among the cinephile circles. The same year, 1998, the French film historian Michel Marie grouped him together with directors of ―le jeune cinema français‖ with directors like Olivier Assayas, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Gaspar Noé, Mathieu Kassovitz and Cédric Klapish17. In 1996, the fifteen-minute Une robe d’été was warmly received by critics and won a number of awards at festivals such as the Locarno Film festival, Geneva, Los Angeles, thus Ozon gained international recognition. In the first chapter of his book on the director Asibong asks if Ozons hould be considered in the light of a specifically French history and culture of transgression and therefore compared with a handful of French literary precursors rather than with his cinematic contemporaries (13).