« L'illusion de l'amour n'est pas l'amour trouvé » : Camp and queer desire in Jacques Demy's Les Parapluies de Cherbourg, Les Demoiselles de Rochefort, and Peau d'âne

• Main Author: Finch, Frank Frederick
• Other Authors: Foreign Languages
• Format: Others
• Published: Virginia Tech 2020
• Subjects: Jacques Demy; Les Parapluies de Cherbourg; Les Demoiselles de Rochefort; Peau d'âne; Catherine Deneuve; camp; queer; desire; lack; seduction; gender performativity; Nouvelle Vague; affect theory
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10919/100782

Jacques Demy's Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (1964), Les Demoiselles de Rochefort (1967), and Peau d'âne (1970), though quite popular with the public at their time of release and continuing to leave an aesthetic stamp on contemporary cinema, have been received by some critics and viewers in general as pure contrivance with little edification. This thesis puts forward, however, that such interpretations of these Demy musicals as primarily saccharine, superficial, and light miss the elemental melancholy belied by the charming varnish. Here, the three are unified as a triptych that thematizes and aestheticizes lack and desire in ways that can speak directly to the queer viewer. This thesis first situates the films among criticism from the 1960s to the present, opening a discourse on the potential for diverse political and aesthetic readings of Demy's work that continues to the present queer reading. Through a method of narratological close reading, I unify the three films as a triptych, each a variation on themes of isolation, absence, and amorous lack. Jean-Pierre Berthomé's Jacques Demy et les raciness du rêve (1982) is a rich resource in presenting these three seemingly distinct films as a totality. Once justified for study as a triptych, my thesis presents a queer reading of the films' ostensibly heterosexual narrative structures. With the buttressing of the queer theory of Harold Beaver, Andrew Ross, and Michael Koresky, among others, this chapter demonstrates how the narratives of longing Demy crafts can speak to the queer viewer and transcend a heterosexual framework. Finally, my thesis moves beyond narrative to another continuity, the aesthetic of camp present throughout the triptych. Through an exploration of the interconnectivity of camp, gender performance, and seduction, drawing on scholars Susan Sontag, Judith Butler, and Jean Baudrillard, respectively, the aesthetic of Demy's triptych is situated in a queer sensibility. Catherine Deneuve, Demy's "princesse idéale," is read as the reification of this sensibility in her potent performance of gender at the confluence of masculine and feminine qualities, as well as the ideal tabula rasa onto which the queer viewer's desire and longing can be projected. Ultimately, the triptych's reconciliation of the visually confectionary and the narratively somber is celebrated, as it points to a victory over tragedy through affective agency. === Master of Arts === Jacques Demy's Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (1964), Les Demoiselles de Rochefort (1967), and Peau d'âne (1970), French musicals from a masterful director of the New Wave movement in cinema, have been generally received positively by the public, and especially by gay viewers. Yet, these Demy films have been met with a range of skepticism to derision by some critics and even by a number of Demy's contemporaries. The three films' narratives concern a nascent romance thwarted by the Algerian War and economic demands, potential amorous encounters prevented by missed connections and arbitrary social barriers, and a flight from incestuous demands and its consequences of isolation and ridicule, respectively. Though these narratives are fundamentally melancholic, they are aestheticized through kaleidoscopic colors, virtuosic dancing, and the beautiful music scores of Michel Legrand. This thesis reexamines these films as a triptych that, considered together, thematizes lack and desire in a way that can speak directly to the queer viewer. Areas of overlap between the filmic narratives and the queer experience in the West are excavated and explored to demonstrate how the films can carry intimate signification to sexual minorities, as well as other marginalized identities. Finally, the particular and continuous aesthetic of the three films is studied as a queer sensibility embodied by the star of all three, Catherine Deneuve. The ability of this triptych to transcend a singular heterosexual interpretation and to heighten its effects on the viewer through a tension of form and content is celebrated.