INTERVIEW
Revelations by Adèle Haenel, Polanski controversy, resignation of the members of the steering committee of the Académie des Césars ... If there was a time when French cinema was criticized for its "shyness" faced with the wind of revolt which shook the United States during the Harvey Weinstein affair, it seems that the well-established patriarchal foundations of French seventh art are also beginning to tremble.
This is the whole purpose of the book by Iris Brey, film critic and historian. In her work, entitled The female gaze - A revolution on the screen (Éditions de l'Olivier), the specialist expresses the need to make "a collective effort so that the feminine becomes less 'invisible', and that women take a little more space in the public space ", she explains to the microphone of Europe 1.
"Everything works like systems of oppression"
The latest cases, the recent scandals indicate according to her "a moment of awareness" which may precede "the real revolution". As she affirms, what happens within the works also happens in society. "It is important to look at how everything works like systems of oppression and domination that are in our institutions, on our sets, in our films," she adds.
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Even today, the figures are glaring. Of the 4,000 members of the Caesar Academy, only 35% are women. In the cinema, only 19% of directors are directors; on television, they are only 10%. "If we don't take radical measures, nothing will change," insists Iris Brey. Radical measures which, according to them, begin with the way in which women are filmed.
Views "like passive things"
"The camera looks at women as objects of desire, not as subjects of desire." If we had to take a sentence to sum up the problem raised by Iris Brey, it would be this. The film historian then calls into question, prompting a detailed inventory of all the films in which women are seen "from afar", "as passive things". The inventory will not be long: the majority of films are filmed as well. The observation of a problem which obviously has solutions. According to Iris Brey, the filmmaker's gaze, whether produced by a woman or a man, must focus on the female experience and place us from the point of view of the female character.
" Instead of looking at them, we are with them, we are in their experience, in their trajectory: which would make it possible to see women as subjects and not as objects: we would start to desire with them, and not to look at them without their knowledge. "The author, however, mentions a corpus of films that know how, or have known, to put the female experience first. Sometimes popular movies, Wonder Woman, Titanic , she cites. But often "badly watched" films.
Highlight works that celebrate the feminine
"We are not born in a certain way, it is the images and the cinema which are part of the way in which we learn to desire", she explains, easing the consciousness of a spectator who could easily feel guilty for remaining conditioned to see the images only through a male prism, where the woman is only an object of desire. "Most of the films show us that the way to desire is done through the domination of the female body," adds Iris Brey, who believes that, to question and change things collectively, "you have to be aware of the the way women are filmed. "
Drawing on directors who could not be more contemporary, the historian distinguishes two looks. That of Abdellatif Kechiche, and that of Céline Sciamma. "Kechiche's gaze would be a voyeur's gaze: we look at women without their knowledge, we film them 'like big asses', in his own words"; Sciamma, she "films the bodies of women in action, like subjects who desire, and who are active in their desires".
The first is a man, the second is a woman. "The two film women with love, but one films women as objects, the other films them as subjects". Iris Brey notes however the arrival of new directors "who show us other stories". According to the historian, "it is a virtuous circle that can be established, but it is absolutely necessary to highlight the works that celebrate the feminine."