Book Reviews

This article considers how recent French documentary filmmaking has engaged with the representation of masculinities in some of Paris’s most emblematic banlieues. Focusing on Alice Diop’s sixth film Vers la tendresse (2016), which brings to the screen testimonies of straight and gay men from La Co...

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Gorde:
Xehetasun bibliografikoak
Argitaratua izan da:French Politics, Culture & Society | 41 | 1 | 2023-10-07 | p. 117-128 | 1537-6370
Egile Nagusiak: Elsky, Julia, Keith, Charles, Shovlin, John, Williford, Daniel
Formatua: Article ou chapitre numérique
Hizkuntza:Français
Argitaratua: 2023
Sarrera elektronikoa:Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM
Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM
Deskribapena
Gaia:This article considers how recent French documentary filmmaking has engaged with the representation of masculinities in some of Paris’s most emblematic banlieues. Focusing on Alice Diop’s sixth film Vers la tendresse (2016), which brings to the screen testimonies of straight and gay men from La Courneuve, Aulnay-sous-Bois, and Montreuil, this article examines how the documentary form offers new ways to interrogate men’s experiences of love and relationships in the French peripheries. Drawing on an interview with the filmmaker, this article argues that Diop’s conversation-based performative documentary filmmaking, with its detaching of image from sound, destabilizes viewer assumptions and challenges cultural clichés about men and emotion. By emphasizing the universal characteristics of the men’s personal accounts, this article suggests that Diop’s film reclaims the banlieues from the stereotype of a marginal space of “otherness” and offers instead singular narratives, voicing poignant portraits of masculinities that resonate widely in twenty-first century France.