Between Men and Women; Beyond Heterosexuality: Limits and Possibilities of the Erotic in Lynne Stopkewich's Kissed and Patrice Leconte's La Fille Sur Le Pont

Abstract

Following a broadly Butlerian reading, which holds that gender and sexuality function as modes of performative imitation for which there is no original, this paper explores the unusual portrayal of sexual desire in two films of the 1990s. Lynne Stopkewich's Kissed (Canada, 1996) and Patrice Leconte's La Fille sur le pont (France, 1999) construct narratives which replace heterosexual relations and sexual intercourse with alternative erotic economies, both of which have death as their third term (respectively, necrophilia and an eroticised game of knife-throwing). While these directors risk accusations of exploitative (and, in Leconte's case, misogynistic) content, it is equally possible to argue that the films work as elaborate quotations, showing up the dynamic of objectification and possession common to both the heterosexual imaginary and the language of film-making.In these extreme scenarios, notions of masculinity and femininity are loosened from concepts of activity and passivity, by means of a play with cinematic traditions regarding the masculine gaze and subjective viewpoint. The cinematic narratives play with conventions of representing desire in such a way as to make ethical and political commentary difficult. By calling into question the discourses surrounding male–female desire, they gesture towards a 'queering' of heterosexuality.