Les films classiques ont créé des images stéréotypées féminines, en fixant des modèles déterministes du caractère féminin, des rôles féminins, de l’ « être femme ». Ces modèles risquent de supplanter la réalité, car ils réduisent la diversité des figures féminines. Depuis longtemps le féminisme a lutté contre tous les stéréotypes sexistes. Cette thèse se propose d’étudier les films d’Agnès Varda, Chantal Akerman et Catherine Corsini pour comprendre les devenir-femme(s) à travers des relations intimes et sociales. Dans leurs œuvres cinématographiques, elles rendent compte, chacune à leur manière, d’une nouvelle façon de produire des images du corps de la femme et de sa subjectivité. Les questions de la subjectivité féminine liées aux notions de désir, de jouissance, de plaisir et de sexualité rejoignent la psychanalyse pour comprendre, d’une part, le mécanisme de l’appareil cinématographique suscitant le fantasme des spectateurs, d’autre part, la possibilité d’une objectivation positive de la complexité de la figure féminine. Notre première approche se focalise sur la relation entre femmes telle que la relation mère-fille et la relation homosexuelle féminine. La deuxième envisage le contexte socioculturel dans lequel évoluent les personnages féminins des films de ces cinéastes à travers l’analyse du langage, de la narration et de l’espace cinématographiques, en s’intéressant à leurs styles, leurs esthétiques et leurs choix narratifs de la vie des femmes. Ainsi c’est le regard qui est nouvellement questionné et le maniement du dispositif cinématographique comme capables d’interroger, voire de susciter une autre subjectivité des femmes. Nous intégrons différentes approches théoriques dans l’analyse des films. Ainsi, la psychanalyse, le féminisme, la théorie queer, la sémiologie, l’esthétique vont enrichir notre réflexion sur le regard des femmes chez nos trois femmes cinéastes. / Classic films have created a stereotypical image of women by setting deterministic standards for female personality, her role and what is meant by ‘being a woman’. These standards might supplant reality, as they minimize the diversity of female figures. Feminism has long fought against gender stereotypes. This study examines films by Agnès Varda, Chantal Akerman and Catherine Corsini in order to understand the construction of femininity through intimate and social relations. In their films, each filmmaker develops unique approaches to produce images of the female body and its subjectivity. Psychoanalysis sheds light on the questions of female subjectivity related to the notions of desire, pleasure, and sexuality. It allows us to appreciate the mechanism of the camera arousing the viewers’ fantasies, as well as the possibility of a positive objectification of the complex female figure. This study first focuses on the relationships between women, such as the mother-daughter relationship and the homosexual relationship. It then explores the socio-cultural context in which the female characters live through an analysis of language, narration and space in the films, namely the filmmakers’ styles, aesthetics and narrative choices in the life of women. It examines how gender can influence the camera’s perspective and how it can question, or even produce, a new female subjectivity. Psychoanalysis, feminism, queer theory, semiology and aesthetics are all approaches which support and expand the analyses of female perspective as developed by the three women filmmakers.

O estudo da cor no cinema tem alcançado relevantes dimensões de pesquisa ao longo da primeira década dos anos 2000. Diversas publicações mapearam os mais amplos temas em que a cor é posta na análise fílmica. Desta maneira, é possível revisitar algumas obras do passado e partir para novas interpretações e olhares. Sob o domínio da cor é que proponho a análise dos filmes Pierrot le fou (Jean-Luc Godard) e Le bonheur (Agnès Varda). Na investigação do sistema cromático desses cineastas, é possível avaliar questões interdisciplinares como a representação da França dos anos 60 e as relações de gênero. / The study of color in the cinema has reached relevant research dimensions throughout the first decade of the 00\'s. Several publications have mapped the broadest theme in which color is put in film analysis. Therefore, it is possible to revisit some past works and move on to new looks and interpretations. Under the domain of the color, I propose the film analysis of Pierrot le fou (Jean-Luc Godard) and Le bonheur (Agnès Varda). In the investigation of the chromatic system of these moviemakers, it is possible to evaluate interdisciplinary questions like the representation of France in the 60\'s and gender relations.

O estudo da cor no cinema tem alcançado relevantes dimensões de pesquisa ao longo da primeira década dos anos 2000. Diversas publicações mapearam os mais amplos temas em que a cor é posta na análise fílmica. Desta maneira, é possível revisitar algumas obras do passado e partir para novas interpretações e olhares. Sob o domínio da cor é que proponho a análise dos filmes Pierrot le fou (Jean-Luc Godard) e Le bonheur (Agnès Varda). Na investigação do sistema cromático desses cineastas, é possível avaliar questões interdisciplinares como a representação da França dos anos 60 e as relações de gênero. / The study of color in the cinema has reached relevant research dimensions throughout the first decade of the 00\'s. Several publications have mapped the broadest theme in which color is put in film analysis. Therefore, it is possible to revisit some past works and move on to new looks and interpretations. Under the domain of the color, I propose the film analysis of Pierrot le fou (Jean-Luc Godard) and Le bonheur (Agnès Varda). In the investigation of the chromatic system of these moviemakers, it is possible to evaluate interdisciplinary questions like the representation of France in the 60\'s and gender relations.

This paper serves to explore how female subjects are represented in films featuring a woman on the road in ways that can create a female gaze, as an alternative to the male gaze. It looks for answers in four films from the 1970s to 2016, all made by female filmmakers, which are Je, Tu, Il, Elle (1974), Vagabond (Sans Toit Ni Loi) (1978), Wendy and Lucy (2008) and American Honey (2016). All four films share approaches that reject objectification in the depiction of females, but each is distinctive in their filmi strategies. Focusing on each work individually while attempting to make comparisons with others, this paper also aims to connect the shift of strategies in these works to the related discussion in feminist film theories.

This dissertation examines the use of the quotidien (the everyday) in contemporary French film and literature to understand its relationship with notions of place and space. Defined as the paradoxical process of how one repeatedly constructs each day "anew" on a routine basis, the quotidien in the texts of my analysis is not static, but rather a means for articulating changes in French communities and ways of life, while further reflecting ongoing changes to attitudes, politics, and identity. I advance current readings of the quotidien by viewing it as both descriptive, a recurring manifestation of change, as well as transformative, able to effect change. I argue that, in these depictions, the quotidien effectively erodes traditional spatial categories to create and reveal new and less stable versions. Specifically, places lose their real and symbolic sway to indeterminate spaces in which meaning is uncertain, in flux, or non-existent. My dissertation is novel for its interest in tracing the quotidien across spatial categories, so that its chapters move from the more "stable" categories of the rural and the urban to those in more obvious flux, edges and interstices. Chapter 1 studies the depicted quotidiens of rural France in Agnès Varda's film, Les Glaneurs et la glaneuse (2000), and Raymond Depardon and Claudine Nougare's film series, Profils paysans (2000-2008). Chapter 2 investigates the quotidiens of urban centers in Cédric Klapisch's film, Chacun cherche son chat (1996), Patrick Modiano's novel, Dora Bruder (1997), and Laurent Cantet's film, Entre les murs (2008). Chapter 3 examines everyday France at the periphery of Paris in Gérard Gavarry's novel, Hop là! Un deux trois (2001). The Conclusion addresses the emergence of a new space, the interstitial, in which its dwellers float, move, or exist between places on a daily basis, such as a commute to work. I analyze Walter Salles and Daniela Thomas's short film, Loin du 16ème (2006), Abdellatif Kechiche's film, La Graine et le mulet (2007), and Alain-Paul Mallard's film, L'Origine de la tendresse (1999). These mini-ethnographies of French society reveal a France grappling with issues related to globalization, shifting populations, the relative newness of the European Union, and consequently, identity. Who is French, and where does "authentic France" lie? / text

Mémoire numérisé par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal.

Cléo from 5 to 7 is perhaps the most famous work of influential French filmmaker Agnès Varda, who is often called the "Grande Dame of the New Wave". The depth of symbolism, the richness of imagery, the beginnings of cinécriture (a Varda-ism describing cinema as a form of writing that uses all the tools available to a filmmaker, not just words), and the charm of the story have guaranteed Cléo's popularity with scholars and audiences alike. Current scholarship has tended to focus on a few aspects of Cléo, including her role as a flâneuse, the use of mirrors and the theme of gazing, time and the division of the film into chapters, the female gaze, and femininity. I will examine the thematic of decay, nature, and beauty in Cléo. Beginning by linking it to her more contemporary documentary The Gleaners and I, I will analyze how Varda undermines conventional ideas of health, youth, and beauty by deconstructing Cléo's world through the threat of disease, only to show how Cléo regains autonomy and control of herself by learning to embrace the inevitability of decay in nature, and in her own body. I will rely on the theories in Elaine Scarry's The Body in Pain to show how Cléo's changing relationship to her body constitute the profound transformation mentioned at the beginning of the film. I will also examine Cléo's cancer in light of Susan Sontag's essay Illness as Metaphor. We will see how Varda uses cinécriture to express these ideas, especially in regards to the dialogue between characters, visual symbols, and the use of space.