A Feminine Cinematics : Luce Irigaray, Women and Film

This timely book provides new insights into debates around the relationship between women and film by drawing on the work of philosopher Luce Irigaray. Arguing that female-directed cinema provides new ways to explore ideas of representation and spectatorship, it also examines the importance of contexts of production, direction and reception. Drawing on the work of philosopher Luce Irigaray, this groundbreaking study intervenes in the debate around women and film. Women's films can be seen as providing a new arena for the exploration of sexual difference and patterns of representation and spectatorship. This timely book analyses films such as The Piano, Orlando, Antonia's Line and The Silences of the Palace in order to make the case that a feminine cinematics is now emerging through the scene of women's filmmaking. Caroline Bainbridge moves beyond the framework of textual analysis by making a compelling case for the importance of contextual elements in contemporary women's cinema, foregrounding issues of production, direction and reception Front Matter....Pages i-ix Introduction....Pages 1-7 Reading the Feminine with Irigaray....Pages 8-31 Spectatorship, Cinematic Strategy and Mediation....Pages 32-60 Practising the Feminine: Contexts of Production, Direction and Reception....Pages 61-76 Fantasy and the Feminine: Female Perversions and Under the Skin....Pages 77-98 Screening Parler Femme: Silences of the Palace, Antonia’s Line and Faithless....Pages 99-124 Orlando and the Maze of Gender....Pages 125-154 Riddles of the Feminine in The Piano....Pages 155-183 Impossible Differences: Slippages and Auguries....Pages 184-196 Back Matter....Pages 197-223