Cinema at the Shore ― The Beach in French Film

Following the trend of moving away from the temporal/historical towards the spatial/geographical as objects of interest in the humanities, this study explores the ways that the beach and its associated coast line has been treated as a liminal, threshold site in their representations in French cinema from the 1950s to the present, offering a means of de- and re-constructing identity in new and varied ways. Chapters discuss the interactions between the Cannes Film festival, Brigitte Bardot, and beaches as a signifier of sexual freedom and youthful modernity; the ways in which film portrays gender relations through the use of the beachscape; and the ways in which three directors ("one classical, one feminist and one queer;" respectively, Eric Rohmer, Agnes Varda, and Francois Ozon) have used beachscapes to hone and express their auteur projects. Annotation c2014 Ringgold, Inc., Portland, OR (protoview.com)

Fiona Handyside is Senior Lecturer in Film Studies in the Department of Modern Languages, University of Exeter, UK. She is the editor of Eric Rohmer: Interviews (2013) and has published in several journals, including Screen and the European Journal of Cultural Studies.