Active or Passive? Representations of AIDS and People with AIDS in French Features Films

Florian Grandena

Department of film and communication studies

University of Ottawa

(Canada)

Bruno Dumont’s first film, La Vie de Jésus / The Life of Jesus (1997), is a harrowing tale of racism and murderous hatred in an underprivileged French provincial town. Throughout this astonishing piece of cinematic realism, attention is paid to the boredom and social alienation experienced by a gang of increasingly isolated and violent young men. However, from the outset, the filmmaker confronts his characters with a hospitalised AIDS sufferer, presumably a friend of the young men, who is portrayed as an agonising and dehumanised freak. Indeed, this man’s expressionless face, disfigured with Kaposi sarcomas, contrasts sharply with that of his devastated and sobbing comrades. The director thereby undoubtedly uses the AIDS sufferer’s graphic disfigurement as a means to portray the otherwise unmoved gang members under a more human and compassionate light.  

Using this particular film as a starting point, I will discuss the uses and functions of AIDS in a series of contemporary French feature films from 1986-2005. I will pay particular attention to the way(s) AIDS and people with AIDS (PWAs) are represented and used in these productions.  I will argue that cinematic fictions contribute to a binary system of representation (i.e. healthy individuals vs. PWAs; life before AIDS vs. life with AIDS; life vs. death; us vs. them etc.) which ultimately results in two different types of AIDS narrative: passive and active representations. The sociologist queer/lesbian activist Marie-Françoise Bourcier provides a useful definition of each of these terms: ‘passive representation’ occurs when gays and lesbians are represented by others. ‘Active representation’ happens when gays and lesbians represent themselves. I will extend Bourcier’s definitions and apply them to representations of PWAs. Thus, here, passive representation refers to the fact that AIDS and PWAs are represented by non HIV+ individuals whereas active representation concerns film representations of PWAs by themselves.  In the first case (passive representation), AIDS and PWAs often function as a narrative twist but are also relegated to the margins of the narrative. I will illustrate that AIDS and PWAs have a revelatory function as they allow a specific conflict to emerge.  For example, in part one of this presentation, I will show how in Viard’s romantic drama Clara et moi (2004), the male protagonist’s selfishness is highlighted/underscored at the expense of the female character’s medical condition and life with HIV. Furthermore, in Beauvois’s N’oublie pas que tu vas mourir (1995), the disease merely becomes the trigger of the central character’s existential crisis, which will develop in a fragmented and crumbling Europe. Thus, in such films, AIDS and PWAs are simply used as pretexts to focus on the destabilizing effects of the disease on non-infected individuals. 

The second part of this presentation will be dedicated to active representation. Here, I will contrast the previous texts with other cinematic works that aim at uprooting AIDS and people with HIV through an active representation of themselves. I will focus here on two films conceived, written and directed in tandem by the Olivier Ducastel - Jacques Martineau.  Indeed, the films under study here avoid a representation based on alterity and positively foreground as an alternative the presence of protagonists living with HIV. These include the flamboyant musical Jeanne et le garcon formidable (1998) that portrays AIDS as a political crisis concerning the whole of society and the up-beat road-movie Drôle de Félix (2000) that depicts AIDS as a ‘conventional’ viral disease. These two films focus on the life of individuals with HIV and although the seriousness of their condition is acknowledged throughout Jeanne et le garcon formidable and Drôle de Félix, emphasis is put on the life-affirming qualities of their respective stories.

In sum, the cinematic modes of representation of AIDS and PWAs in contemporary French cinema will constitute the backbone of my analysis. Emphasis will be put on the (non)centrality of PWAs in these AIDS narratives.

SELECTED FILMOGRAPHY

Ceux qui m’aiment prendront le train (Patrice Chéreau, 1998).

Clara et moi (Arnaud Viard, 2004).

Crustacés et coquillages (Olivier Ducastel, Jacques Martineau, 2005).

Drôle de Félix (Olivier Ducastel, Jacques Martineau, 2000).

Jeanne et le garçon formidable (Olivier Ducastel, Jacques Martineau, 1998).

La Vie de Jésus (Bruno Dumont, 1997).

Les Nuits fauves (Cyril Collard, 1992).

Mauvais sang (Léos Carax, 1986).

Merci la vie ! (Bertrand Blier, 1991).

N’oublie pas que tu vas mourir (Xavier Beauvois, 1995).

About Florian Grandena

Florian Grandena holds a PhD from Nottingham Trent University (GB) where his doctoral research examined the return of socio-political films in French cinema of the 1990s and early 2000s. As a post-doctoral fellow at Concordia University (Montreal, Canada), he organised the Hypervisibility conference, which took place in June 2006 and focused on the representations of homosexualities in contemporary French and Francophone film and television. He is currently editing a book on the same topic. He has published on the representation of the provinces in contemporary French cinema as well as French queer cinema and his work has appeared in Studies in French Cinema and Contemporary French Civilization. He also teaches film and communication studies at the University of Ottawa (Canada).

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