Maurice Pialat, Abdellatif Kechiche, Bruno Dumont: Cinema and the Challenge of the Body
Résumé
This paper was given when I was Visiting professor in Pittsburgh (fall 2014) in the context of the cooperation between the university of Pittsburgh and the university of Lyon. This conference focused on body’s representations in the cinema of Maurice Pialat, Abdellatif Kechiche and Bruno Dumont. Building on the writings of Jacques Rancière, I studied how these filmmakers reconfigure cinematic biographical representation through new variations, sensitivities, intensities, perceptions, denying psychology, dramatic events, grand narratives, false pretenses and sentimentalism for sensation, flesh, energy, behaviors and performance. Indeed, I took "Van Gogh" (1991), "Vénus noire" (2009) and "Camille Claudel 1915" (2013) as examples of alternative modes of narration, based on capacities of speech and body, of odd cinematic presences.