Céline Sciamma goes to the front against French cinema. While her last film was released in English theaters at the end of the month, the director spoke in The Guardian about the French film industry. And she is not tender.
The filmmaker returned in particular to the reception given to her film by French critics, whom she considers unenthusiastic. “ In France, they don't find the film sexy. [They think] that it lacks flesh, that it's not erotic. It seems there are things they cannot perceive, ”she observes in the columns of the British daily.
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According to her, this reception of Portrait of the young girl on fire by the critics is due to the fact that it is " a very bourgeois industry". "There is resistance to radicalism, and also few young people in power, " she explains. Released in theaters in France in September, the feature film carried by Adèle Haenel and Noémie Merlant tells the romance between two young women, one painter, the other her model, at the end of the 18th century.
A committed director, placing women at the heart of her works ( Birth of octopuses , Band of girls ), Céline Sciamma also criticizes the absence of feminism in French cinema. " Can a film be feminist? They do not know this concept. [...] They do not even know that the male gauze exists ", she affirms. The notion of " male gaze " , theorized in 1973 by English critic Laura Mulvey, designates the male gaze that makes women an object of desire in films, series and all of the arts.
Mektoub my love: Canto Uno , by Abdellatif Kechiche, as well as his very controversial sequel, had both been singled out for their omnipresent "male gauze".
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More generally, it is the general climate that prevails in France that the director of Tomboy attacks. "We can say that it is a country where there is a lot of sexism, and a strong patriarchal culture ," she still explains to The Guardian . Céline Sciamma is part of the 50/50 collective created in 2017 which defends equality between women and men in the film industry. The charter on parity established by the collective has been signed by 123 festivals, including that of Cannes.
Co-president in 2015 of the Society of Film Directors (SRF), which organizes the Directors' Fortnight, Céline Sciamma signed the tribune of personalities of French cinema published in Le Monde in early February. They demanded a " thorough reform " of the Academy of Caesar.
Under pressure, the academy led by Alain Terzian finally announced his collective resignation two weeks before the 45th ceremony. The Polanski case and the critics of its mode of operation were right.
