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Description
In the introduction to her extensive 1970 essay on old age, Simone de Beauvoir states that her primary objective is to break a "conspiracy of silence": apart from specialized sociological and medical works, she protests, old age is never talked about. This comment certainly applies to cinema; indeed, it becomes a truism when film is envisaged first and foremost as an extension of consumer culture, its overriding function to provide a type of fantasy entertainment that is aligned with consumer values. In effect, such is the power of the logic of occultation that even in the face of aging Western populations, and in spite of the commitment to a different vision that includes trends of "realism," independent and European cinemas seem almost as reluctant as their Hollywood counterparts to give space to the aging and the old. French cinema, for instance, has certainly produced at least a few feminine screen icons who, while growing older, retain their place in the pantheon of international stars. At seventy-three, Jeanne Moreau undoubtedly remains a highly regarded figure on the national and international scene. Yet in spite of her undaunted enthusiasm and activity, she has lost a great deal of her public prominence. Moreau's management of her career as she grows older is interesting: the actress has taken a pro-active approach, initiating and producing theatrical adaptations and films which provide her with roles. Cet Amour La her latest cinema project, however, received limited coverage and distribution. Younger than Moreau by ten years, Catherine Deneuve remains one of the leading internationally rated French female stars, but significantly she is celebrated for her aura, her function as beauty icon, and her agelessness. (1) This essay will only allude to the incarnation of femininity as the "mature" woman--a problematic addressed elsewhere and in particular through studies of Deneuve's career (2)--focusing instead on femininity as the old woman, and on women who "play their age." To help set a partly arbitrary marker, one may use as a reference the age of such established personalities in French cinema as Moreau and director Agnes Varda, both over 70. (3)
The representation of aging femininity throws into relief issues that, though raised by feminist writers and directors since the 1970s, appear as pertinent as ever. It generates a range of questions that are fundamental to the problematic of gender, "otherness," and of exclusion as a whole. Given that in the Western economy of image construction, definitions of femininity have been dominated by appearance, physicality, and objectification as far as cinematic representations of women are concerned, in film the process of aging has been a process of nullification. Gender plays a further role in the strategies of exclusion: not only are men on screen granted a longer life-span as sexual beings, (4) but they retain a status as individuals, defined in terms of (actual or past) activities, professional, cultural, or political. Since in the case of female characters, such aspects traditionally tend to be played down to emphasize their function as sexual objects, such conversion is often denied them. In fictional films, the old woman belongs to one of the least visible of categories. There are, of course, notable exceptions, but in the few instances where the central protagonists are old, as in the touching, empathetic Belgian film Pauline et Paulette, aging is also likely to be the very subject of the film rather than a matter of course.
Not only are old women virtually absent in mainstream cinema, but they are rarely given a voice of their own. Restricted to the margins of the screen and the background of the image, deaf, dumb, beset by senility and death, they tend to remain silent, or to become prophetic vessels that speak a language of doom or a discourse of wisdom that goes beyond them. In this context, Moreau's recent collaboration with director Jose Dayan to produce a biographical film based on the life of Marguerite Duras seemed promising. In spite of its intriguing premise--to depict the sixteen-year relationship of France's most prominent modern writer and filmmaker to a man thirty years her junior--and Moreau's praised performance, the film remains an anecdotal and picturesque portrait, taking the form of a conventional sentimental drama. As such, and most strikingly, it fails to explore the potential offered by the evocation of an older female author celebrated for the uniqueness and idiosyncratic power of her voice.
Overall, in mainstream film, the screen life of the old woman thus appears almost entirely determined within the confines of well-established stereotypes. Comedy, to take the most explicit example, has provided the most opportunity for representations of the old woman, partly because the genre relies heavily on a narrow set of strictly defined cliches--the sympathetic confident, the "old child," the witch, the object of (sexual) derision-readily exploitable to satirical ends. It is the subject of Chatilliez's Tati Danielle, a film that focuses on a malevolent seventy-something played by Tsilla Chelton, whose relatives persist in casting her as the vulnerable and irresponsible old parent to be doted on. It is the discrepancy between her entourage's determination to protect her and provide for her, and the reality of the old woman's selfish, greedy, and devious scheming, that creates the comedic effect. The film arguably undermines its potentially subversive argument in its reliance on the grotesque and the obvious rather than on a satirical vision. Yet, by playing up and simultaneously ridiculing certain stereotypes within the very cinematic genre that traditionally foregrounds them, the film still provides a provocative counter-representation of old age. As such however, Chatilliez's film is less a movie about an old woman than a comment on dominant cultural cliches.
While popular genres such as comedy traditionally draw on hackneyed characterizations of old women, in less mainstream films the status of the old woman has been equally problematic. (5) Indeed, one of the aims of this essay is to explore whether Catherine Johnston's early warning that so-called art cinema is just as prone (albeit surreptitiously) to reductive strategies of representation applies in this case (29). Non-mainstream cinema has provided few prominent characters of elderly women to date and, in many instances, the presence of the old woman is restricted to an increasingly peripheral or limited screen presence through her role as a mere element in a symbolic discourse. Yet, as discussed below, even within the confines of allegorical representation, tensions can arise where the characterization or the actresses' performance, in particular, allow for the emergence of less unified types.
This essay will focus on contemporary French cinema, and more precisely on a sample of art and auteur films, in order to investigate some of the strategies employed in the representation of femininity as old age. With reference to Agnes Varda's latest feature, it will briefly illustrate the connection between the mass production and consumption of images and the exclusion of the old from the realm of the visible. The article will then investigate the significance of cinema's treatment of the old woman as symbolic presence, drawing examples from films such as Lacombe Lucien, J'ai pas sommeil (I Can't Sleep), Chacun cherche son chat (When the Cat's Away), and La Chambre des magiciennes (The Sorceresses' Room). As such, it will explore in particular the relation between old and otherness (national, racial), between the white anxieties of a postcolonial western society and the casting of older women as metaphors of social disintegration.
FILM AND REFUSE
In the context of a late capitalist culture old age is a disease, equivalent to the categories of low consumer value and low productivity; a social stigma that is acutely reflected in its status in terms of representation. That in cynical economics the old are not considered a worthwhile investment for long term marketing may be understandable, but the fact that in spite of their sheer numbers old people are not taken as a valuable target consumer group or audience (6) seems less rational. The obvious shortfall of such broad policies indicates that, in the... |
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