Cinematic Queerness : Gay and Lesbian Hypervisibility in Contemporary Francophone Feature Films

The last three decades have witnessed the proliferation of gay/lesbian-themed films both on our screens and at international film festivals. This trend - termed 'hypervisibility' by Julianne Pidduck - has gone far beyond the boundaries of countries with a multicultural tradition and now reaches many territories, including the French-speaking world. What is the narrative and thematic originality of such films in French-speaking contexts? Do such feature films develop problematics and approaches specific to areas such as metropolitan France or Francophone Canada? The sixteen essays included in this collection (six in English and ten in French) aim to answer to such questions by offering in-depth and challenging discussions of film productions from France and Quebec, ranging from Patrice Chereau's L'Homme blesse/The Wounded Man (1983) via Josiane Balasko's Gazon maudit (1995) to Jean-Marc Vallee's C.R.A.Z.Y. (2005). Works by Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau, Sebastien Lifshitz, Gael Morel, Francois Ozon and Lea Pool are also examined.