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Studies in French Cinema Volume 5 Number 1 (c) 2005 Intellect Ltd Article. English language. Jeune cinema francais has proved propitious for the construction of star images of the'vernacular' Jeanne Balibar is today the woman actor, par excellence, who best embodies the ambitions and difficulties experienced by this jeune cinema.
Studies in French Cinema Volume 5 Number 1 (c) 2005 Intellect Ltd Article. English language. Jeune cinema francais has proved propitious for the construction of star images of the'vernacular' Jeanne Balibar is today the woman actor, par excellence, who best embodies the ambitions and difficulties experienced by this jeune cinema.
Studies in French Cinema Volume 5 Number 1 (c) 2005 Intellect Ltd Article. English language. Jeune cinema francais has proved propitious for the construction of star images of the'vernacular' Jeanne Balibar is today the woman actor, par excellence, who best embodies the ambitions and difficulties experienced by this jeune cinema.
Studies in French Cinema Volume 5 Number 1 2005 Intellect Ltd
Article. English language. doi: 10.1386/sfci.5.1.49/1
Group portrait with a star: Jeanne Balibar and French jeune cinema Jacqueline Nacache Paris 7-Denis Diderot Abstract Even with a film industry as resistant as Frances to the American invader, its popular cinema is showing signs of exhaustion in the face of Hollywood competi- tion whilst auteur cinema is taking a lead. It is in this context that, at the begin- ning of the 1990s, a new movement emerged full of energy, the jeune cinma franais which is backed by a funding policy and supported by an auteur cinema audience that is already well established in France. This movement has proved propitious for the construction of star images of the vernacular, which have developed against the grain of the traditional values of the star system and which have more of a political than economic cachet. Jeanne Balibar is the most striking example of this. Her image incorporates, other than a strong affinity with the intellectual world, paradoxical elements that prevail in her film roles and which make of her a star in the sense that she is today the woman actor, par excellence, who best embodies the ambitions and difficulties experienced by this jeune cinma franais. She is a beautiful person, has read all the books, the air around her is always inhabited by an evanescent and enveloping mystery. She is an actor made of the stuff of dreams - is that what we call a star? (Darge 2003) Le jeune cinma: auteurs, audiences, actors If stars are becoming increasingly rare in French popular cinema (or at least less identifiable as such), then this is because in France, as elsewhere in Europe, the concept of the star can no longer function as a meaning solely within the confines of the cinema screen. Nowadays, cinema repre- sents only one sector of the entertainment industry amongst others - fashion, sport, music, television - from which stars emerge, even the most ephemeral ones, who can legitimately be studied as social constructions (take, for example, those fabricated by TV reality shows such as Star Academy). Not only has cinema lost its status as leader in the leisure indus- try for the masses, going to the cinema today has become, even in the most ordinary of circumstances, a marker of social distinction. As the sen- ators Michel Thiollire and Jack Ralite enquired in their 2002-03 report has the time when cinema was a popular spectacle finally come to an end?, leaving us to understand that cinema since the late 1960s may have joined the selective ranks of the other arts: Keywords Jeanne Balibar jeune cinma stars auteur cinema Jai horreur de lamour political commitment 49 SFC 5 (1) 4960 Intellect Ltd 2005 Individuals with high-ranking jobs are big consumers of cinema: more than 76% of those belonging to the higher socio-professional categories [...] have frequented the cinema at least once in 2001 whereas 60% of those with only primary education have not gone at all. (Thiollire and Ralite 2003) Beyond these statistics which affect globally all films distributed in France, we must recall that France has one great advantage in the film industry in that its productivity (on average 200 films per year) allows the nation to have a leading role in the resistance to American domina- tion. Even though this status is assailed on all sides - the drop in atten- dance numbers, the recent conflict about casualization, Canal Pluss uncoupling from its former commitment to fund French cinema, the current free-market climate which is putting the States policy of support for the industry, that dates back to the post-war period, at risk - what is really under threat in all of this is not (at least not yet) cinema itself, but the increasingly problematic future of a popular French cinema. Indeed, what emerges clearly from cinemas loss of influence as a com- modity of mass leisure and its status as a protected cultural artefact, is the constant rapprochement in France between the so-called auteur cinema and mainstream/popular cinema. The boundary between the two has always been a fluctuating one, but now it has become increasingly perme- able to the point that any French film can potentially be seen as an auteur film as opposed to contemporary American cinema which is globally per- ceived as entertainment, even in its most artistic form. This has occurred to such an extent that there is a sort of opposition written in stone which says French cinema boring and intellectual, versus American cinema exciting and full of emotion, as we can see in a revealing scene in De lamour/About Love (Faucon, 2001) where a group of young people going to the cinema decide a priori to exclude any French film because they want to see a love story. Without going into detail we can easily see the degree of overlap between auteur cinema and mainstream/popular cinema. Entertainment cinema has become increasingly diversified; genre cinema has progres- sively become the domain of film-makers whose cachet as auteurs is already established (such as Matthieu Kassovitz, Jacques Audiard, Cedric Klapisch, or Lucas Belvaux). Popular comedy has been transformed in the same way as it was in the 1980s, thanks to the caf-thtre generation; farce, as formerly embodied by Louis de Funs, Grard Oury, and Pierre Richard, has evolved into more marginal and off-beat forms: satirical comedy with a sociological tilt (Tanguy (Chatiliez, 2002)), Canal Plus-style humour of which Alain Chabat and Djamel Debbouze are exemplary, or humour in the vein of Taxi which plays on self-referentiality. Light-hearted boulevard comedy has become a space for personal expression, as seen in Les Sentiments (Lvovsky, 2003); conversely, consecrated auteurs reach out to the general public, as we saw recently with Franois Ozons Huit femmes/Eight Women (2002) and Swimming Pool (2003), or as is evidenced 50 Jacqueline Nacache by each new masterpiece by Alain Resnais whose Pas sur la bouche/Not on the Lips (2003) is a far cry from his early films. Concomitant with this extension of the auteurs domain is the fact that, henceforth, there is, in terms of consumers of this auteur cinema, a more singular and more solidly constituted audience than in the past. As Jean-Pierre Esqunazi reminds us, consumers of elite culture are, by defin- ition, both more homogenous and more easily identifiable (Esqunazi 2003: 3). In this context, the French auteur cinemas audience has the benefit of a long history, going back to the New Wave. In terms of political culture it is aligned with the Left, a position maintained (not without gaps) during the period 1981-2002 which witnessed the discontinuous but regular presence of a government of the Left. It can be located in symbolic communities, whether these be constituted by readers of Le Monde or Libration, or by viewers of the Franco-German cultural television channel Arte. This auteur cinema turned genre cinema (Serceau 1999: 39) has established a new cinephilic practice which no longer concerns the former audience of the Cinmathque Franaise (predominantly masculine and across all classes), but reaches cultivated middle classes of both sexes who enjoy auteur cinema as part of a more global consumption practice which includes literature, theatre and musical concerts. As opposed to a former, classical cinephilia, these audiences are well aware of how their cultural practices define them and are more readily committed to them; it is no longer a matter of spectators demonstrating the cultural goodwill of which Bourdieu speaks (Bourdieu 1979: 365), but of a consciously chosen cultural commitment. And, over the past decade, cinematic production has fed this commitment insofar as it has allowed the intellectual French middle classes to express clearly their hostility to American cultural impe- rialism and, concomitantly, their attachment to the famous French cul- tural exception (Sojcher 1996). The blurring of boundaries between auteur and popular cinema, the institutionalization of a public that is more aware of the social and cultural import of their practices - these are two reasons which can in part explain not just the consolidation of auteur cinema in France, but its most remarkable departure, namely the so-called jeune cinma franais which dates from the early 1990s. For nearly fifteen years now, a wave of first- time films has been shaking up Frances cinematic landscape to such a remarkable extent that several critics have been speaking in terms of the New New Wave (Nezick 1996: 37). Far from being an overnight wonder, this phenomenon has persisted and asserted itself. If nowadays it seems to be running out of steam this is due to the economic reasons we have already mentioned, and to the limited renewal of the generation of young auteurs. However, with hindsight, there can be no denying the existence of this movement whose artistic output has been uneven, but whose undeni- able vitality - assisted by favourable financing and a faithful and curious public - has contributed enormously to the image of French cinema. Above all what needs stressing here is that this movement has equally contributed to a muddling of the star image, even a significant slippage in the definition of this image. Indeed, as early as its recognition in the spe- cialized press (Jousse et al. 1993), this young cinema has shown how 51 Group portrait with a star: Jeanne Balibar and French jeune cinema remarkable it is, not just because of the film-makers it has produced, but the generation of excellent actors it has brought to the fore: Valeria Bruni- Tedeschi, Karin Viard, Sandrine Kiberlain, Sylvie Testud, Denis Podalyds, Jean-Pierre Darroussin and others have become familiar faces on the screen, and some have gained a reputation which has allowed them to go beyond the confines of the jeune cinma. Has the strong presence of jeune cinma on French screens allowed for the emergence of what we could call stars, however? There are two reasons to say no. On the one hand, this new cinema, just like the New Wave before it, but in an even more self-conscious way, is collective by nature, working as a group, which rather excludes the possibility of the superb solitude of the star. On the other hand, these new actors do not have the same economic cachet that the Depardieus, Deneuves, Barts and Bonnaires possessed and continue to command. However, as Ginette Vincendeau has pointed out, the criteria for using the term star where French and European cinema is concerned differs from the Hollywood norm in that it follows a rough division between the box-office on the one hand and cinephilia on the other (Vincendeau 2000: 24). Notably, Vincendeau has used this criterion to study Jeanne Moreau as a star, par excellence, of auteur cinema. In this regard Vincendeau has made it possi- ble for us to talk in terms of stars without having to refer constantly to their economic value. In any case, auteur cinema and its public have pro- duced stars who, whilst they neither invade the sociocultural field nor function as myths, but can walk about in the city streets without being accosted by passers-by, are nonetheless complex structured polysemies such as those described by Richard Dyer and his followers. But, as far as the jeune cinma of the 1990s is concerned, it is not just a simple case of reactivating the already well-established concept of the auteur cinema star (see Sellier 2001). For this new cinema, despite the convenient parallels, is not the New Wave. It is not a revolt against an institutionalized and crusty old cinema, but rather a remarkable conjunc- tion of circumstances: the ideological and political climate, the economic means of production, the motivation of certain film producers (committed to an art cinema and a cinema of protest), the expectations of critics who were ready (by the end of the 1980s) to welcome (if not appreciate) a small revolution within the confines of their national cinema, and, finally, as we have already mentioned, the coming of age of a potential audience. Arguably something like this kind of conjunction of circumstances is necessary for stars to emerge as part of a clear system. There needs to be a harmonious interface between cinema and society to enable the construc- tion of a star image from the various texts and intertexts that basically create them (be it promotional or publicity material, critical reviews, or the film industry journals). The number of films produced also has to be of sufficient number that the star persona can emerge, and that it can facili- tate a diversity of promotional strategies. Finally, the symbolic impact of the cinema in the sociocultural field has to be sufficiently strong, critical reception sufficiently alive and responsive, and the coverage afforded cinema in the media be adequate. If all this falls into place, then star studies as a methodology can be adapted to analyse actors working in a 52 Jacqueline Nacache small and liminal terrain such as the French jeune cinma. Viewed in this way, these actors become vernacular stars (as opposed to national or international stars, just as vernacular languages are usually opposed to national or universal languages), even though their star image is con- structed in very much the same way as those produced by the star system in dominant cinemas. We could even go so far as to say that, if the concept of star has theo- retical value in the field of French cinema studies, it is easier to see how it could be applied within the context of the jeune cinma than in the popular cinema where it appears to be more difficult to use. Texts that presently surround popular French stars are lacklustre, full of holes, rather superfi- cial, whereas the jeune cinma, for its part, generates star texts that are far more coherent because they are based in the complete reversal of earlier models. Of course, this reversal does not necessarily produce spectacular results: not all the jeune cinma actors are stars. Moreover, we note that especially where female actors are concerned, there is a redefinition and reconceptualization of the star image which is made up of a mixture of former elements (such as those developed in relation to Jeanne Moreau and Anna Karina) and new ones, thanks to the particular configuration of French society in the 2000s. When this combination of elements is embodied at its most extreme it produces a social phenomenon, which in terms of magnitude may not be that grandiose, but which nonetheless conforms in all ways to the concept of a star image. And it is precisely this phenomenon that I would like to consider in the following case study of Jeanne Balibar. A star of the jeune cinma: the case of Jeanne Balibar Jeanne Balibar epitomizes many of the traits associated with the 1980s generation of actors, and as such is at the core of this cohort. Born in 1968, she began her film career in 1992 with Arnaud Despleschins La Sentinelle/The Sentinel, and, henceforth, has never strayed very far away from the most exacting of auteur cinema: Despleschin again with Comment je me suis disput ... ma vie sexuelle/My Sex Life ... or How I Got Into an Argument (1996), Jacques Rivette (Va savoir/Va Savoir (Who Knows?) (2002)), Olivier Assayas (Fin aot, dbut septembre/Late August, Early September (1999); Clean (2004)), Jean-Claude Biette (Trois ponts sur la rivire/Three Bridges on the River (1999); Saltimbank (2003)), Raoul Ruiz (La Comdie de linnocence/Comedy of Innocence (2000)). Nor do first-time films scare her; she seems rather to be attracted to the adventure they might bring. This is the case, for example, with those of Mathieu Almaric, her one-time partner and also an actor (Mange ta soupe/Eat Your Soup (1997); Le Stade de Wimbledon/Wimbledon Stage (2001)), or Christophe Honor, a former writer and critic (Dix-sept fois Ccile Cassard/Seventeen Times Cecile Cassard (2002)). Balibars refusal to appear in mainstream cinema contributes in an ideal way to the status of absence/presence that is so readily linked with auteur cinema stars. Indeed, it gives her film image that elusive quality which was formerly associated with that other Jeanne (Moreau, with 53 Group portrait with a star: Jeanne Balibar and French jeune cinema whom she is so readily compared, as is evidenced by a website dedicated to the two actors). But these high standards, coupled with an ambiguity poised between gravity and humour, do not prevent her from taking on lighter roles (Dieu seul me voit/Only God Sees Me (Podalyds, 1998); or Jeanne Labrunes fantasy a ira mieux demain/Tomorrows Another Day (2000)); and when she gets close to genre cinema, it is only to play sec- ondary roles, even though her persona radiates symbolically, whether it is the philosophical/historical fresco Sade (Jacquot, 2000), or the neo-thriller Une affaire prive/A Private Affair (Nicloux, 2002). However, these films are not the whole story: small in number, seen by a restricted audience, they represent an important, but not exclusive, aspect of her output. Balibars image - built up, during the 2000s, along the lines described above that are typical of the jeune cinma - is known by a wider public than that of her film-going audience, and is buttressed by the persona that has arisen out of her different spheres of activity which have been covered by a press that is artistically and politically aligned with her own positions. First there is her exotic-sounding surname. As Balibar explains, it is a Jewish-Ukrainian name (Palmiri 2001). It is both unusual and famous. It belongs to a family of renowned intellectuals and scientists: her father is the philosopher Etienne Balibar and her mother Franoise Balibar, a well- known physicist. This remarkable family environment allows Jeanne to satisfy an essential criterion in terms of stardom. If traditional star images are organized around the principles of success, consumption and seduc- tion, then the women actors of the jeune cinma are, conversely, recogniz- able through the multiple signs that point to their intellectual maturity. Although this does not necessarily mean that they have a university degree, it does mean that they can talk intelligently about their craft - this explains why they contribute so heavily to the construction of their own image via interviews (which in themselves act as vital evidence of their competence) - and this is further confirmed by their (more or less) close association with the arts and intellectual life. What distinguishes Jeanne Balibar from her other contemporaries, such as Sophie Marceau (born 1966) or Sandrine Bonnaire (born 1967), is that, although she was an avid spectator, she was not thrown into the world of cinema in her early youth. Her aura of wisdom and maturity was first achieved through her experience outside of cinema and most notably through her student life; she was a former student at the prestigious Lyce Henri IV, then at the cole Normale Suprieure, and she also took the exams for the Paris Conservatoire. This past has left its mark, first in her theatre career (she has played Kleist, Chekov, and Claudel). Several other aspects of her life confirm this artistic and intellectual commitment. A member of the association Textes et voix, she gives readings of literary and philosophical texts. Invited in March 2003 to a conference on Maurice Blanchot, she gave readings from this author in an afternoon session dedicated to the theme of the voice in Blanchots work. She has taken part in a documentary on Marguerite Duras (Marguerite telle quen elle-mme (Auvray, 2002)), done a voice-over in a documentary on Kafka, been a member of the jury at the Venice festival in 2001. There are many 54 Jacqueline Nacache factors that create the intellectual radiance that surrounds Balibars persona - not least of which is that at her very young age she has already been embodied on screen by one of her peers from the jeune cinma (who also has a prestigious theatrical career), Anne Alvaro in Mathieu Amalrics TV film La Chose publique/Public Affairs (2003) where he relates, in fictional form, the story of the break-up of his relationship with Balibar. This aura could explain why, in 2002, the image of this young star illustrates the cover of the first academic book dedicated to a study of the jeune cinma (Prdal 2002). The portrait is in profile, in very tight close-up, her eyes wide open and concentrating, she is holding the stem of her glasses in her mouth, which makes her look more student-like than actorly. Jeanne thus embodies a certain idea of this cinema: artist, outsider, modern. Whether she likes it or not, she has been given the role of intel- lectual muse. The Cahiers du Cinma are quite right to see her as one of their icons (see the cover of No. 582), and to underline the breadth of her work. Everything that she touches is marked by this image that combines talent, rigour, and risk-taking - such as her recent record with Rodolphe Burger (her singing voice incidentally recalling Moreaus), or her casting in Saltimbank, Jean-Claude Biettes last film before he died. The second defining criterion is authenticity in all its forms, which is a guiding principle for all women actors of the jeune cinma. Wanting to be perceived as both true actors and actors of the truth, they reject any atti- tude that could be read as artificial or capricious. Modesty rules, therefore. Jeannes goes as far as humility. She responds with devastating simplicity to the flattery of the journalists, starting with a refusal to accept the label of intellectual actor that they try to stick on her. Not only does she not see herself as an intellectual, she describes herself as completely lacking in culture, and minimizes all her successes, including the fact that she passed the prestigious entrance exam to the cole Normale Suprieure. She modestly minimizes her fame thus: Its only in the Latin Quarter that I am recognized (Roig 2001). As far as her performance style is concerned, she is distinct from her contemporaries who (as opposed to Adjani and Marceau in the 1980s) have returned to a quasi-monastic view of acting where working at the role is paramount. On the contrary, Balibar has adopted the view, like Asta Nielsen, Dietrich and Garbo before her, that to act in cinema means being satisfied with being in front of the camera and bringing nothing of oneself into the frame: There is nothing to learn, in my view. Just letting oneself be seen by another at least once in ones life (Palmiri 2001). True to this logic, she claims that she prepares nothing for her theatre roles and arrives hands in pockets, without knowing my part and without having thought about it beforehand (Coissy 2003). Her unquestionable innate natural talent and her innocence counter the occasional irritation caused by her studied diction and her stiffness; the reward is a success she never seeks out. This taste for the real is also a taste for risk, which means going on stage and testing oneself on the boards (as do Sylvie Testud and Dominique Blanc). Of all the women actors of this generation, Balibar is the one who most splits her time between theatre and cinema. And her 55 Group portrait with a star: Jeanne Balibar and French jeune cinema theatrical successes rebound on her cinematic appearances in which there is an implicit intellectual and creative relationship with the film director. Speaking about the making of Va savoir, in which she was not cast origi- nally, she stresses the way in which she communicated with Jacques Rivette almost without words, and how her character Camille emanated from the few directives he gave her and the extreme attention she paid to his slightest reaction. Indeed, whether the director speaks or not seems to have little importance: It is the materiality of the voice or silence that directs not the content (Frodon and Lalanne 2003). The ease with which Balibar can decipher the directors intentions could appear to contradict the modesty mentioned earlier. But in fact, this contradiction makes it clear that we are dealing here with a star construction in that it is the very nature of stardom to be a cluster of contradictions that are assimilated and smoothed over into a coherent whole that overrides the internal dissonances. Her taste for authenticity, finally, resides in her stubborn, even rebellious attitude towards institutions and big-budget productions. Some actors give in sometimes, tempted by the big budget. But not Balibar, who admits to a strong liking for undertakings that are non-mainstream, artisanal, and not fully integrated into a repertoire (Diatkine 1999); although she got into the Comdie Franaise, she fled from it after four years, as if freeing herself from an iron collar, and at the same time she left the academic context of her studies. However, she only values this freedom within her work, which in itself is fairly constraining: Its within the constraints of the scene or the take that I feel the most free (Diatkine 1999). This can extend as far as making her a quasi-martyr when dealing with extremely demanding film- makers, such as Arnaud Desplechin, with whom she has said she had her baptism by fire - a minimum of thirty-five takes (Palmiri 2001). This authenticity and sense of freedom which can go as far as a delib- erate sacrifice for the sake of art and credibility to another aspect of Balibars personality: the good citizen, which she embodies even more so than her peers. Independent, politically and socially mature, active, the jeune cinma actors willingly are very public in their political commitment, without fear of damaging their image, it has to be said. Indeed, their politi- cization has become an everyday reality, at least in the recent past. Emmanuelle Barts story is a case in point. In 1996, she stopped advertis- ing for Christian Dior after giving her support to the Church of Saint Bernards sans-papiers (illegal immigrants). And in this early twenty-first century, media communication is such that the political commitment of actors is no longer startling news. In fact they find it difficult not to speak out on the political life of their country, especially in times of crisis. For her part, Balibar joined the action in defence of the sans-papiers in 1997 when she become part of the artists movement against the Debr laws; she agreed to speak about herself to the communist daily LHumanit, but only on political subjects and the defence of the sans-papiers (Fleury 1998). After having been the godmother of a deportee, she signed, on 23 May 2003, the manifesto of the movement, which ends with the follow- ing: We declare that we have helped strangers whose situation is irregu- lar. [...] If solidarity is a crime, I demand to be prosecuted for this crime (GISTI 2003). 56 Jacqueline Nacache Of course, neither she nor any other signatory was prosecuted, and the fact that it was clear that they would not be made their gesture ineffectual, to say the least. To take another example, let us recall that the support Balibar and many other actors gave to the cause against the casualization of the profession during 2003 only produced meagre results. However, it was this occasion, in which she was deeply involved, that produced her most fiery and most ostensibly political discourse, as the following inter- view makes clear: My view is that since the liberation there has been a cultural policy in place that is absolutely sacrosanct and which this government is currently smash- ing to pieces. They are pretending to count as unemployment benefit what is in fact an agreement arrived at between the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Labour to subsidize French cultural life via the UNEDIC. The bosses could give a shit about culture. Besides which they are perfectly happy to close off any means of protest to those who wont comply. Because domi- nant capitalist ideology never leaves anything to chance and consistently looks for ways to make conformist entertainment even more powerful. This is both reactionary, but completely within the logic of exploitation of the labour forces by the bosses, and deathly for Frances cultural life. So it is normal that we should react. (Coissy 2003) But this reaction had little effect. A stars political engagement is limited because of their inability to be truly at the heart of the struggle; their untouchable nature protects their actions either from causing them any real trouble or from having any lasting effect. No matter. What does count in terms of Balibars image is not the way in which her persona impacts upon the world, but her weightlessness, her ingenuous grace in a variety of contexts, her enormous talent and com- mitment to a high ideal of culture. Taking her filmography as a whole, only a small number of films allow us to distinguish a clear image. With Balibar, it is far more a case of a mise-en-scne of evanescence, of fleeting- ness without any clearly delineated characteristics, but for two dominant traits: intellectualism, and psychological instability. The first of these traits comes through with characters who are drawn along the lines of Balibars own personality; this character lives in a uni- versity environment (Comment je me suis disput ... ma vie sexuelle), is an actor (Va savoir), musician (Toutes ces belles promesses/All the Fine Promises (Civeyrac, 2003)), is politically experienced and worldly-wise - she meets Fidel Castro in Dieu seul me voit/Only God Sees Me (Podalyds, 1998). In all these instances, she is articulate and cultivated, and this allows her to take on board quite stylized dialogue, even deliver monologues with a literary tone, thus bringing out a hoarseness in her voice which accentuates its theatrical quality. As for the psychological instability, this is less perceptible at first, and yet it is the more striking aspect of her persona. There is a ghost in Balibar, a madness that haunts her, an eeriness that sticks to her translucent thin- ness. Hers is a face that comes from the past. Her gestures are agitated; she 57 Group portrait with a star: Jeanne Balibar and French jeune cinema is the abandoned woman inhabited by nostalgia for lost coupledom (Fin aot, dbut septembre), a nervous body riddled with obsessions (a ira mieux demain), a troubling mixture of lucidity and madness in La Comdie de lin- nocence, where Isabelle Huppert (herself often cast in unstable roles) strug- gles against the Machiavellian alter ego played by Balibar. The television film Toutes ces belles promesses focuses on Jeannes character, and fore- grounds her oversensitive and tormented character: her skinny bony limbs, her ability to experience devastating love from one moment to the next, her gift of extrasensory perception which allows her to relive amongst the dead, in the core of her own past. These effects are reinforced by the presence of Bulle Ogier, who formerly held in auteur cinema a posi- tion not dissimilar to that occupied today by Balibar. Jai horreur de lamour: a case study Jai horreur de lamour/I Cant Stand Love (Ferreira Barbosa, 1997) is a Balibar film par excellence, insofar as it works overtly to combine the image held in the public domain of the professionally competent actor with the fragility which is gradually emerging from her roles. A study in wholeness as much as in disintegration, the scenario is fully focused on the character played by Balibar, and to which she brings her own foibles: a mixture of stubbornness and weakness, a precariously balanced body that is on the verge of collapse, a seeming competence which eventually gives in to social pressures. The films bitter humour has meant that very few critics seem aware of its deep pessimism. What is admired, as for example by Grard Lefort when the film came out, is the fact that the film is not a fiction, but a documen- tary on Balibar herself: Finally, very significantly, La Balibar. It is a privilege reserved for the greatest actors that their name be equal to that of the director. Men Prefer Blondes is just as much a Marilyn film as it is Hawkss. Here, Jeanne Balibar, with her extraordinary presence in the role of Annie is in this sort of league. Right at its core it is a Balibar film with its spiritual scepticism and struggles with the body which she plays without making herself a hostage to the performance. (Lefort 1997) A star is born. The article, by referring to Monroe, by using the direct article la used only for divas or demimondaines, consecrates the fusion between the role and the actor. This emphasizes that the film is about the defeat of a woman. Annie Simonin aspires, on the one hand, to engage fully with her humanitarian commitment and, on the other, to fulfil her role as a doctor to the highest of her ideals. However, these goals are incompatible with her private life. The film describes in minute detail how she is finally destroyed by three men who manage to invade her personal and public space. Costa (Bruno Lochet) is an ex-convict she hires as her secretary; Laurent (Laurent Lucas) is an AIDS sufferer she hesitates about seeing through to his death, and Richard (Jean-Quentin Chtelain) is a persecuting hypochondriac whose constant harassment eventually drives her mad. 58 Jacqueline Nacache Because Balibar does vacillate, such is her public destiny. Her reed-like figure makes her bend this way and that, sometimes to the point of break- ing. She wavers between the sexes. She is an outrageously feminine seducer, yet her voice is deep and her body androgynous. She vacillates between strength, which allows her to be on stage for the eight hours of Le Soulier de satin, and a delicate, almost depressive weakness, which she embodies in most of her film roles; between the strength of her political convictions and the dreamy uncertainties of her characters; between the naturalness with which she describes her relationship with the theatre arts, and the rejection of all naturalness in her work as an actor. If Balibar emerges as a pure icon of the auteur cinema of the 1990s, it is because her paradoxical image evokes better than any other the artistic insecurity of a movement such as the French jeune cinma. It is a move- ment, as I have said elsewhere, that is caught in a web of contradictions (Nacache 2003): between television and cinema; supported by a culturally engaged public and neglected by the rest; suffering from the paternalistic weight of previous filmic generations; wishing itself to be free and rebel- lious, but obliged to acknowledge its subsidized nature; wanting to be independent and yet, despite itself, finding itself obliged to represent a nec- essary resistance to the American invader. Hardly surprising then that this difficulty in being should find its expression in a star whose very discre- tion is itself spectacular, whose tormented and fleeing image constructs physical and psychological frailty into the ultimate sign of modernity. No surprise either that Balibar exemplifies a model that is not only just vernac- ular, but which no other woman, even in the tiny circle in which she is known, could even begin to imitate. For this new definition of the film star, purely symbolic and auratic, has nothing of the makeshift about it. Indeed, it is the embodiment of the unique blend of vigour and precariousness that has characterized, for nearly fifteen years now, the jeune cinma franais. Translated by Susan Hayward References Bourdieu, P. (1979), La Distinction : critique sociale du jugement, Paris: Minuit. Coissy, E. (2003), Rencontre avec Jeanne Balibar, 360, http://www.360.ch/presse/2003/11/jeanne_nest_pas_une_sainte.php. Accessed 24 September 2004. Darge, F. (2003), Jeanne Balibar, la belle chappe, Le Monde, 24 September. Diatkine, A. (1999), Entretien avec Jeanne Balibar, Libration, 7 April. Dyer, R. (1998), Stars, London: BFI. Esqunazi, J.-P. (2003), Sociologie des publics, Paris: La Dcouverte. Fleury, E. (1998), Entretien avec Jeanne Balibar, LHumanit, 22 August. Frodon, J.-M. and Lalanne, J.-M. (2003), Jeanne Balibar: le grain de la voix, Cahiers du Cinma, 582, pp. 12-15. GISTI [Groupe dinformation et de soutien des immigrs] (2003), Manifeste des dlinquants de la solidarit, http://petition.gisti.org/manifeste/. Accessed 28 December 2003. Jousse, T. (1993), Dix places pour le jeune cinma , Cahiers du Cinma, 473, pp. 28-30. Lefort, G. (1997), Jai horreur de lamour, Libration, 11 June. 59 Group portrait with a star: Jeanne Balibar and French jeune cinema Nacache, J. (2003), Mare haute: le jeune cinma franais des annes 90, Le Septime Art (ed. J. Aumont), Paris: Lo Scheer, pp. 309-22. Nezick, N. (1996), Nouvelle Nouvelle Vague ?, Contre Bande, 2, Universit Paris I- Panthon Sorbonne, pp. 57-65. Palmiri, M. (2001), Entretien avec Jeanne Balibar, Elle, 2911, pp. 178-83. Prdal, R. (2002), Le Jeune cinma franais, Paris: Nathan. Roig, C. (2001), Entretien avec Jeanne Balibar, Elle, 2877, pp. 102-06. Sellier, G. (2001), Jeanne Moreau, star du cinma moderne, Brler les planches, crever lcran : la prsence de lacteur (eds G.D. Farcy and R. Prdal), Saint-Jean- de-Vdas: LEntretemps ditions, pp. 319-30. Serceau, D. (1999), De lpoque des producteurs celle du cinma dauteur devenu cinma de genre, Iris, 28, pp. 39-47. Sojcher, F. (ed.) (1996), Cinma europen et identits culturelles, special issue, Revue de lUniversit de Bruxelles 1995: 1-4, ditions de lUniversit de Bruxelles. Thiollire, M. and Ralite, J. (2003), Exploitation cinmatographique: le spectacle est-il encore dans la salle?, Rapport dinformation, 308 (2002-2003) - com- mission des affaires culturelles, http://www.senat.fr/rap/r02-308/r02-308_mono.html. Accessed 28 December 2003. Vincendeau, G. (2000), Stars and Stardom in French Cinema, London and New York: Continuum. Suggested Citation Nacache, J. (2005), Group portrait with a star: Jeanne Balibar and French jeune cinema, Studies in French Cinema 5: 1, pp. 4960, doi: 10.1386/sfci.5.1.49/1 Contributor Details Jacqueline Nacache is Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at Paris 7-Denis Diderot. Her work focuses primarily on classical Hollywood cinema. She is the author of Lubitsch (Edilig, 1987), Le Film hollywoodien classique (Nathan, 1995) and Hollywood, lellipse et linfilm (LHarmattan, 2001). But it is as a film critic (for Cinma, La Revue du Cinma, Bref, Positif) that she has broadened her interests to encompass French cinema as well. Presently she is working on the function of the actor. In this context she has published LActeur de cinma (Nathan-Universit, 2003). Contact: Jacqueline Nacache Paris 7-Denis Diderot 2 Place Jussieu 75251 Paris Cedex 05. E-mail: jnacache@noos.fr 60 Jacqueline Nacache