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Studies in French Cinema Volume 5 Number 1 2005 Intellect Ltd

Article. English language. doi: 10.1386/sfci.5.1.49/1

Group portrait with a star: JeanneBalibar and French jeune cinema

Jacqueline Nacache Paris 7-Denis Diderot

AbstractEven with a film industry as resistant as Frances to the American invader, its

popular cinema is showing signs of exhaustion in the face of Hollywood competi-

tion whilst auteur cinema is taking a lead. It is in this context that, at the begin-

ning of the 1990s, a new movement emerged full of energy, the jeune cinmafranais which is backed by a funding policy and supported by an auteur cinemaaudience that is already well established in France. This movement has provedpropitious for the construction of star images of the vernacular, which have

developed against the grain of the traditional values of the star system and which

have more of a political than economic cachet. Jeanne Balibar is the most striking

example of this. Her image incorporates, other than a strong affinity with the

intellectual world, paradoxical elements that prevail in her film roles and which

make of her a star in the sense that she is today the woman actor, par excellence,

who best embodies the ambitions and difficulties experienced by this jeunecinma franais.

She is a beautiful person, has read all the books, the air around her is alwaysinhabited by an evanescent and enveloping mystery. She is an actor made ofthe stuff of dreams - is that what we call a star?

(Darge 2003)

Le jeune cinma: auteurs, audiences, actorsIf stars are becoming increasingly rare in French popular cinema (or atleast less identifiable as such), then this is because in France, as elsewherein Europe, the concept of the star can no longer function as a meaning

solely within the confines of the cinema screen. Nowadays, cinema repre-sents only one sector of the entertainment industry amongst others -fashion, sport, music, television - from which stars emerge, even the mostephemeral ones, who can legitimately be studied as social constructions(take, for example, those fabricated by TV reality shows such as StarAcademy). Not only has cinema lost its status as leader in the leisure indus-try for the masses, going to the cinema today has become, even in themost ordinary of circumstances, a marker of social distinction. As the sen-ators Michel Thiollire and Jack Ralite enquired in their 2002-03 reporthas the time when cinema was a popular spectacle finally come to anend?, leaving us to understand that cinema since the late 1960s mayhave joined the selective ranks of the other arts:

KeywordsJeanne Balibarjeune cinma

starsauteur cinema

Jai horreur de lamour

political commitment

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by each new masterpiece by Alain Resnais whose Pas sur la bouche/Not onthe Lips (2003) is a far cry from his early films.

Concomitant with this extension of the auteurs domain is the factthat, henceforth, there is, in terms of consumers of this auteur cinema, amore singular and more solidly constituted audience than in the past. As

Jean-Pierre Esqunazi reminds us, consumers of elite culture are, by defin-ition, both more homogenous and more easily identifiable (Esqunazi2003: 3). In this context, the French auteur cinemas audience has thebenefit of a long history, going back to the New Wave. In terms of politicalculture it is aligned with the Left, a position maintained (not without gaps)during the period 1981-2002 which witnessed the discontinuous butregular presence of a government of the Left. It can be located in symboliccommunities, whether these be constituted by readers of Le Monde orLibration, or by viewers of the Franco-German cultural television channelArte. This auteur cinema turned genre cinema (Serceau 1999: 39) hasestablished a new cinephilic practice which no longer concerns the formeraudience of the Cinmathque Franaise (predominantly masculine and

across all classes), but reaches cultivated middle classes of both sexes whoenjoy auteur cinema as part of a more global consumption practice whichincludes literature, theatre and musical concerts. As opposed to a former,classical cinephilia, these audiences are well aware of how their culturalpractices define them and are more readily committed to them; it is nolonger a matter of spectators demonstrating the cultural goodwill ofwhich Bourdieu speaks (Bourdieu 1979: 365), but of a consciously chosencultural commitment. And, over the past decade, cinematic productionhas fed this commitment insofar as it has allowed the intellectual Frenchmiddle classes to express clearly their hostility to American cultural impe-

rialism and, concomitantly, their attachment to the famous French cul-tural exception (Sojcher 1996).The blurring of boundaries between auteur and popular cinema, the

institutionalization of a public that is more aware of the social and culturalimport of their practices - these are two reasons which can in part explainnot just the consolidation of auteur cinema in France, but its mostremarkable departure, namely the so-called jeune cinma franais whichdates from the early 1990s. For nearly fifteen years now, a wave of first-time films has been shaking up Frances cinematic landscape to such aremarkable extent that several critics have been speaking in terms of the

New New Wave (Nezick 1996: 37). Far from being an overnight wonder,this phenomenon has persisted and asserted itself. If nowadays it seems tobe running out of steam this is due to the economic reasons we havealready mentioned, and to the limited renewal of the generation of youngauteurs. However, with hindsight, there can be no denying the existence ofthis movement whose artistic output has been uneven, but whose undeni-able vitality - assisted by favourable financing and a faithful and curiouspublic - has contributed enormously to the image of French cinema.

Above all what needs stressing here is that this movement has equallycontributed to a muddling of the star image, even a significant slippage inthe definition of this image. Indeed, as early as its recognition in the spe-cialized press (Jousse et al. 1993), this young cinema has shown how

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small and liminal terrain such as the French jeune cinma. Viewed in thisway, these actors become vernacular stars (as opposed to national orinternational stars, just as vernacular languages are usually opposed tonational or universal languages), even though their star image is con-structed in very much the same way as those produced by the star systemin dominant cinemas.

We could even go so far as to say that, if the concept of star has theo-retical value in the field of French cinema studies, it is easier to see how itcould be applied within the context of thejeune cinma than in the popularcinema where it appears to be more difficult to use. Texts that presentlysurround popular French stars are lacklustre, full of holes, rather superfi-cial, whereas the jeune cinma, for its part, generates star texts that are farmore coherent because they are based in the complete reversal of earliermodels.

Of course, this reversal does not necessarily produce spectacularresults: not all the jeune cinma actors are stars. Moreover, we note thatespecially where female actors are concerned, there is a redefinition and

reconceptualization of the star image which is made up of a mixture offormer elements (such as those developed in relation to Jeanne Moreauand Anna Karina) and new ones, thanks to the particular configuration ofFrench society in the 2000s. When this combination of elements isembodied at its most extreme it produces a social phenomenon, which interms of magnitude may not be that grandiose, but which nonethelessconforms in all ways to the concept of a star image. And it is precisely thisphenomenon that I would like to consider in the following case study of

Jeanne Balibar.

A star of thejeune cinma: the case of Jeanne BalibarJeanne Balibar epitomizes many of the traits associated with the 1980sgeneration of actors, and as such is at the core of this cohort. Born in1968, she began her film career in 1992 with Arnaud Despleschins LaSentinelle/The Sentinel, and, henceforth, has never strayed very far awayfrom the most exacting of auteur cinema: Despleschin again withComment je me suis disput ... ma vie sexuelle/My Sex Life ... or How I Got Into

an Argument (1996), Jacques Rivette (Va savoir/Va Savoir (Who Knows?)(2002)), Olivier Assayas (Fin aot, dbut septembre/Late August, EarlySeptember (1999); Clean (2004)), Jean-Claude Biette (Trois ponts sur la

rivire/Three Bridges on the River(1999); Saltimbank (2003)), Raoul Ruiz (LaComdie de linnocence/Comedy of Innocence (2000)). Nor do first-time filmsscare her; she seems rather to be attracted to the adventure they mightbring. This is the case, for example, with those of Mathieu Almaric, herone-time partner and also an actor (Mange ta soupe/Eat Your Soup (1997);Le Stade de Wimbledon/Wimbledon Stage (2001)), or Christophe Honor, aformer writer and critic (Dix-sept fois Ccile Cassard/Seventeen Times CecileCassard(2002)).

Balibars refusal to appear in mainstream cinema contributes in anideal way to the status of absence/presence that is so readily linked withauteur cinema stars. Indeed, it gives her film image that elusive qualitywhich was formerly associated with that other Jeanne (Moreau, with



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factors that create the intellectual radiance that surrounds Balibarspersona - not least of which is that at her very young age she has alreadybeen embodied on screen by one of her peers from the jeune cinma (whoalso has a prestigious theatrical career), Anne Alvaro in MathieuAmalrics TV film La Chose publique/Public Affairs (2003) where he relates,in fictional form, the story of the break-up of his relationship with Balibar.

This aura could explain why, in 2002, the image of this young starillustrates the cover of the first academic book dedicated to a study of thejeune cinma (Prdal 2002). The portrait is in profile, in very tight close-up,her eyes wide open and concentrating, she is holding the stem of herglasses in her mouth, which makes her look more student-like thanactorly. Jeanne thus embodies a certain idea of this cinema: artist, outsider,modern. Whether she likes it or not, she has been given the role of intel-lectual muse. The Cahiers du Cinma are quite right to see her as one oftheir icons (see the cover of No. 582), and to underline the breadth of herwork. Everything that she touches is marked by this image that combinestalent, rigour, and risk-taking - such as her recent record with Rodolphe

Burger (her singing voice incidentally recalling Moreaus), or her castingin Saltimbank, Jean-Claude Biettes last film before he died.

The second defining criterion is authenticity in all its forms, which is aguiding principle for all women actors of the jeune cinma. Wanting to beperceived as both true actors and actors of the truth, they reject any atti-tude that could be read as artificial or capricious. Modesty rules, therefore.

Jeannes goes as far as humility. She responds with devastating simplicityto the flattery of the journalists, starting with a refusal to accept the labelof intellectual actor that they try to stick on her. Not only does she not seeherself as an intellectual, she describes herself as completely lacking in

culture, and minimizes all her successes, including the fact that shepassed the prestigious entrance exam to the cole Normale Suprieure.She modestly minimizes her fame thus: Its only in the Latin Quarter thatI am recognized (Roig 2001).

As far as her performance style is concerned, she is distinct from hercontemporaries who (as opposed to Adjani and Marceau in the 1980s)have returned to a quasi-monastic view of acting where working at therole is paramount. On the contrary, Balibar has adopted the view, like AstaNielsen, Dietrich and Garbo before her, that to act in cinema means beingsatisfied with being in front of the camera and bringing nothing of oneself

into the frame: There is nothing to learn, in my view. Just letting oneselfbe seen by another at least once in ones life (Palmiri 2001). True to thislogic, she claims that she prepares nothing for her theatre roles andarrives hands in pockets, without knowing my part and without havingthought about it beforehand (Coissy 2003). Her unquestionable innatenatural talent and her innocence counter the occasional irritation causedby her studied diction and her stiffness; the reward is a success she neverseeks out.

This taste for the real is also a taste for risk, which means going onstage and testing oneself on the boards (as do Sylvie Testud andDominique Blanc). Of all the women actors of this generation, Balibar isthe one who most splits her time between theatre and cinema. And her



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theatrical successes rebound on her cinematic appearances in which thereis an implicit intellectual and creative relationship with the film director.Speaking about the making of Va savoir, in which she was not cast origi-nally, she stresses the way in which she communicated with JacquesRivette almost without words, and how her character Camille emanatedfrom the few directives he gave her and the extreme attention she paid tohis slightest reaction. Indeed, whether the director speaks or not seems tohave little importance: It is the materiality of the voice or silence that directsnot the content (Frodon and Lalanne 2003). The ease with which Balibarcan decipher the directors intentions could appear to contradict themodesty mentioned earlier. But in fact, this contradiction makes it clear thatwe are dealing here with a star construction in that it is the very nature ofstardom to be a cluster of contradictions that are assimilated and smoothedover into a coherent whole that overrides the internal dissonances.

Her taste for authenticity, finally, resides in her stubborn, even rebelliousattitude towards institutions and big-budget productions. Some actors givein sometimes, tempted by the big budget. But not Balibar, who admits to a

strong liking for undertakings that are non-mainstream, artisanal, and notfully integrated into a repertoire (Diatkine 1999); although she got intothe Comdie Franaise, she fled from it after four years, as if freeing herselffrom an iron collar, and at the same time she left the academic context ofher studies. However, she only values this freedom within her work, whichin itself is fairly constraining: Its within the constraints of the scene or thetake that I feel the most free (Diatkine 1999). This can extend as far asmaking her a quasi-martyr when dealing with extremely demanding film-makers, such as Arnaud Desplechin, with whom she has said she had herbaptism by fire - a minimum of thirty-five takes (Palmiri 2001).

This authenticity and sense of freedom which can go as far as a delib-erate sacrifice for the sake of art and credibility to another aspect ofBalibars personality: the good citizen, which she embodies even more sothan her peers. Independent, politically and socially mature, active, thejeune cinma actors willingly are very public in their political commitment,without fear of damaging their image, it has to be said. Indeed, their politi-cization has become an everyday reality, at least in the recent past.Emmanuelle Barts story is a case in point. In 1996, she stopped advertis-ing for Christian Dior after giving her support to the Church of SaintBernards sans-papiers (illegal immigrants). And in this early twenty-first

century, media communication is such that the political commitment ofactors is no longer startling news. In fact they find it difficult not to speakout on the political life of their country, especially in times of crisis.

For her part, Balibar joined the action in defence of the sans-papiers in1997 when she become part of the artists movement against the Debrlaws; she agreed to speak about herself to the communist daily LHumanit,but only on political subjects and the defence of the sans-papiers (Fleury1998). After having been the godmother of a deportee, she signed, on 23May 2003, the manifesto of the movement, which ends with the follow-ing: We declare that we have helped strangers whose situation is irregu-lar. [...] If solidarity is a crime, I demand to be prosecuted for this crime(GISTI 2003).

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Of course, neither she nor any other signatory was prosecuted, and thefact that it was clear that they would not be made their gesture ineffectual,to say the least. To take another example, let us recall that the supportBalibar and many other actors gave to the cause against the casualizationof the profession during 2003 only produced meagre results. However, itwas this occasion, in which she was deeply involved, that produced hermost fiery and most ostensibly political discourse, as the following inter-view makes clear:

My view is that since the liberation there has been a cultural policy in placethat is absolutely sacrosanct and which this government is currently smash-ing to pieces. They are pretending to count as unemployment benefit what isin fact an agreement arrived at between the Ministry of Culture and theMinistry of Labour to subsidize French cultural life via the UNEDIC. Thebosses could give a shit about culture. Besides which they are perfectly happyto close off any means of protest to those who wont comply. Because domi-nant capitalist ideology never leaves anything to chance and consistently

looks for ways to make conformist entertainment even more powerful. Thisis both reactionary, but completely within the logic of exploitation of thelabour forces by the bosses, and deathly for Frances cultural life. So it isnormal that we should react.

(Coissy 2003)

But this reaction had little effect. A stars political engagement is limitedbecause of their inability to be truly at the heart of the struggle; theiruntouchable nature protects their actions either from causing them anyreal trouble or from having any lasting effect.

No matter. What does count in terms of Balibars image is not the wayin which her persona impacts upon the world, but her weightlessness, heringenuous grace in a variety of contexts, her enormous talent and com-mitment to a high ideal of culture. Taking her filmography as a whole,only a small number of films allow us to distinguish a clear image. WithBalibar, it is far more a case of a mise-en-scne of evanescence, of fleeting-ness without any clearly delineated characteristics, but for two dominanttraits: intellectualism, and psychological instability.

The first of these traits comes through with characters who are drawnalong the lines of Balibars own personality; this character lives in a uni-

versity environment (Comment je me suis disput ... ma vie sexuelle), is anactor (Va savoir), musician (Toutes ces belles promesses/All the Fine Promises(Civeyrac, 2003)), is politically experienced and worldly-wise - she meetsFidel Castro in Dieu seul me voit/Only God Sees Me (Podalyds, 1998). In allthese instances, she is articulate and cultivated, and this allows her to takeon board quite stylized dialogue, even deliver monologues with a literarytone, thus bringing out a hoarseness in her voice which accentuates itstheatrical quality.

As for the psychological instability, this is less perceptible at first, andyet it is the more striking aspect of her persona. There is a ghost in Balibar,a madness that haunts her, an eeriness that sticks to her translucent thin-ness. Hers is a face that comes from the past. Her gestures are agitated; she



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is the abandoned woman inhabited by nostalgia for lost coupledom (Finaot, dbut septembre), a nervous body riddled with obsessions (a ira mieuxdemain), a troubling mixture of lucidity and madness in La Comdie de lin-nocence, where Isabelle Huppert (herself often cast in unstable roles) strug-gles against the Machiavellian alter ego played by Balibar. The televisionfilm Toutes ces belles promesses focuses on Jeannes character, and fore-grounds her oversensitive and tormented character: her skinny bonylimbs, her ability to experience devastating love from one moment to thenext, her gift of extrasensory perception which allows her to reliveamongst the dead, in the core of her own past. These effects are reinforcedby the presence of Bulle Ogier, who formerly held in auteur cinema a posi-tion not dissimilar to that occupied today by Balibar.

Jai horreur de lamour: a case studyJai horreur de lamour/I Cant Stand Love (Ferreira Barbosa, 1997) is aBalibar film par excellence, insofar as it works overtly to combine theimage held in the public domain of the professionally competent actor

with the fragility which is gradually emerging from her roles. A study inwholeness as much as in disintegration, the scenario is fully focused onthe character played by Balibar, and to which she brings her own foibles: amixture of stubbornness and weakness, a precariously balanced body thatis on the verge of collapse, a seeming competence which eventually givesin to social pressures.

The films bitter humour has meant that very few critics seem aware ofits deep pessimism. What is admired, as for example by Grard Lefort whenthe film came out, is the fact that the film is not a fiction, but a documen-tary on Balibar herself:

Finally, very significantly, La Balibar. It is a privilege reserved for the greatestactors that their name be equal to that of the director. Men Prefer Blondes is

just as much a Marilyn film as it is Hawkss. Here, Jeanne Balibar, with herextraordinary presence in the role of Annie is in this sort of league. Right atits core it is a Balibar film with its spiritual scepticism and struggles with thebody which she plays without making herself a hostage to the performance.

(Lefort 1997)

A star is born. The article, by referring to Monroe, by using the direct

article la used only for divas or demimondaines, consecrates the fusionbetween the role and the actor. This emphasizes that the film is about thedefeat of a woman. Annie Simonin aspires, on the one hand, to engagefully with her humanitarian commitment and, on the other, to fulfil herrole as a doctor to the highest of her ideals. However, these goals areincompatible with her private life. The film describes in minute detail howshe is finally destroyed by three men who manage to invade her personaland public space. Costa (Bruno Lochet) is an ex-convict she hires as hersecretary; Laurent (Laurent Lucas) is an AIDS sufferer she hesitates aboutseeing through to his death, and Richard (Jean-Quentin Chtelain) is apersecuting hypochondriac whose constant harassment eventually drivesher mad.



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Because Balibar does vacillate, such is her public destiny. Her reed-likefigure makes her bend this way and that, sometimes to the point of break-ing. She wavers between the sexes. She is an outrageously feminineseducer, yet her voice is deep and her body androgynous. She vacillatesbetween strength, which allows her to be on stage for the eight hours of LeSoulier de satin, and a delicate, almost depressive weakness, which sheembodies in most of her film roles; between the strength of her politicalconvictions and the dreamy uncertainties of her characters; between thenaturalness with which she describes her relationship with the theatrearts, and the rejection of all naturalness in her work as an actor.

If Balibar emerges as a pure icon of the auteur cinema of the 1990s, itis because her paradoxical image evokes better than any other the artisticinsecurity of a movement such as the French jeune cinma. It is a move-ment, as I have said elsewhere, that is caught in a web of contradictions(Nacache 2003): between television and cinema; supported by a culturallyengaged public and neglected by the rest; suffering from the paternalisticweight of previous filmic generations; wishing itself to be free and rebel-

lious, but obliged to acknowledge its subsidized nature; wanting to beindependent and yet, despite itself, finding itself obliged to represent a nec-essary resistance to the American invader. Hardly surprising then that thisdifficulty in being should find its expression in a star whose very discre-tion is itself spectacular, whose tormented and fleeing image constructsphysical and psychological frailty into the ultimate sign of modernity. Nosurprise either that Balibar exemplifies a model that is not only just vernac-ular, but which no other woman, even in the tiny circle in which she isknown, could even begin to imitate. For this new definition of the film star,purely symbolic and auratic, has nothing of the makeshift about it. Indeed,

it is the embodiment of the unique blend of vigour and precariousness thathas characterized, for nearly fifteen years now, the jeune cinma franais.Translated by Susan Hayward

References

Bourdieu, P. (1979), La Distinction : critique sociale du jugement, Paris: Minuit.

Coissy, E. (2003), Rencontre avec Jeanne Balibar, 360,http://www.360.ch/presse/2003/11/jeanne_nest_pas_une_sainte.php.Accessed 24 September 2004.

Darge, F. (2003), Jeanne Balibar, la belle chappe, Le Monde, 24 September.

Diatkine, A. (1999), Entretien avec Jeanne Balibar, Libration, 7 April.Dyer, R. (1998), Stars, London: BFI.

Esqunazi, J.-P. (2003), Sociologie des publics, Paris: La Dcouverte.

Fleury, E. (1998), Entretien avec Jeanne Balibar, LHumanit, 22 August.

Frodon, J.-M. and Lalanne, J.-M. (2003), Jeanne Balibar: le grain de la voix,Cahiers du Cinma, 582, pp. 12-15.

GISTI [Groupe dinformation et de soutien des immigrs] (2003), Manifeste desdlinquants de la solidarit, http://petition.gisti.org/manifeste/. Accessed 28December 2003.

Jousse, T. (1993), Dix places pour le jeune cinma , Cahiers du Cinma, 473, pp. 28-30.

Lefort, G. (1997), Jai horreur de lamour, Libration, 11 June.



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Nacache, J. (2003), Mare haute: le jeune cinma franais des annes 90, LeSeptime Art (ed. J. Aumont), Paris: Lo Scheer, pp. 309-22.

Nezick, N. (1996), Nouvelle Nouvelle Vague ?, Contre Bande, 2, Universit Paris I-Panthon Sorbonne, pp. 57-65.

Palmiri, M. (2001), Entretien avec Jeanne Balibar, Elle, 2911, pp. 178-83.

Prdal, R. (2002), Le Jeune cinma franais, Paris: Nathan.

Roig, C. (2001), Entretien avec Jeanne Balibar, Elle, 2877, pp. 102-06.

Sellier, G. (2001), Jeanne Moreau, star du cinma moderne, Brler les planches,crever lcran : la prsence de lacteur (eds G.D. Farcy and R. Prdal), Saint-Jean-de-Vdas: LEntretemps ditions, pp. 319-30.

Serceau, D. (1999), De lpoque des producteurs celle du cinma dauteurdevenu cinma de genre, Iris, 28, pp. 39-47.

Sojcher, F. (ed.) (1996), Cinma europen et identits culturelles, special issue,Revue de lUniversit de Bruxelles 1995: 1-4, ditions de lUniversit deBruxelles.

Thiollire, M. and Ralite, J. (2003), Exploitation cinmatographique: le spectacleest-il encore dans la salle?, Rapport dinformation, 308 (2002-2003) - com-

mission des affaires culturelles,http://www.senat.fr/rap/r02-308/r02-308_mono.html.Accessed 28 December 2003.

Vincendeau, G. (2000), Stars and Stardom in French Cinema, London and New York:Continuum.

Suggested Citation

Nacache, J. (2005), Group portrait with a star: Jeanne Balibar and French jeunecinema, Studies in French Cinema 5: 1, pp. 4960, doi: 10.1386/sfci.5.1.49/1

Contributor DetailsJacqueline Nacache is Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at Paris 7-Denis Diderot. Herwork focuses primarily on classical Hollywood cinema. She is the author ofLubitsch (Edilig, 1987), Le Film hollywoodien classique (Nathan, 1995) andHollywood, lellipse et linfilm (LHarmattan, 2001). But it is as a film critic (forCinma, La Revue du Cinma, Bref, Positif) that she has broadened her interests toencompass French cinema as well. Presently she is working on the function of theactor. In this context she has published LActeur de cinma (Nathan-Universit,2003). Contact: Jacqueline Nacache Paris 7-Denis Diderot 2 Place Jussieu 75251Paris Cedex 05. E-mail: [email protected]


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