Cinema and Contact: The Withdrawal of Touch in Nancy, Bresson, Duras, and Denis by Laura McMahon

Abstract

in a chef’s coat and toque made for him by his grandmother foreshadow his destiny. But is it easier to start from scratch, as Michel did, or to inherit an empire and try to stay on top? Entre les Bras is divided into seasons, a fitting and logical setting for a film about food and life. The story comes full circle, in the course of a year, from spring to spring, showing four generations of family interact with one another around food. Sébastien works on his own signature dishes, telling his own story, built on the time spent with his grandparents on their farm. One touching scene shows Sébastien alone in the kitchen creating a dessert that he later calls his own chemin, or pathway, using elements from his childhood: bread (his dad), milk skin and chocolate (his mom), and blackberry jam and Laguiole cheese (his grandmother ). He seems truly at peace with the completion of this dish. He must find his own way. He knows this and his dad knows this. The changing of the guard occurs as the viewer watches Michel take down his photos and mementos and put away his notebooks filled with recipes and drawings. Sébastien’s notebooks and a final scene of Alban, Sébastien’s son, cooking in the kitchen with his grandfather , wearing a miniature chef’s coat and toque, replace them. Michel’s work is not yet finished. From one of the first scenes, showing the plating of Michel Bras’s signature dish, Gargouillou, to the beauty of the Aubrac sunrises and sunsets , this is a stunningly beautiful and poignant story of the humans behind the creation of legendary food. Durham Academy (NC) Teresa Bell Engebretsen MCMAHON, LAURA. Cinema and Contact: The Withdrawal of Touch in Nancy, Bresson, Duras, and Denis. London: Legenda, 2012. ISBN 978-1-907975-03-5. Pp. xi + 176. $89.50. McMahon joins the conversation among film scholars who argue to include senses other than sight, in particular that of touch, in theories of film viewing. Generally speaking this group holds the common objective of moving beyond the traditional psychoanalytic model of spectatorship that emphasizes vision, identification , and fusion. In her introductory remarks McMahon details her agreements and disagreements with other theorists of embodied spectatorship and suggests that her approach brings a new element to the discussion by bringing cinema into a reciprocal dialogue with philosophy. Following the observation that although film always invites a sense of touch, it also simultaneously refuses viewers the physical act of touching, McMahon turns to philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy in whose writings (a number of which concern film) she finds an elaboration of the nature of touch that resonates with the relationship between viewer and film. In Nancy’s view of the world, touch can be understood as a mode of contact that exists solely as “interruptive contiguity”— simultaneously being both in touch with, and separated from, ourselves and others—entities being with each other, side by side, but never fused. Bringing together these reflections leads McMahon to her central contention that “cinema offers a privileged space for understanding touch as a figure of withdrawal, discontinuity , and separation rather than [...] as a marker of immediacy, continuity, and presence” (2). 1250 FRENCH REVIEW 86.6 Chapter 1 examines more closely Nancy’s desire, like that of the filmmakers examined here, to “untie cinema from the realm of representation in favor of a logic of exposure, and a paradoxical thought of the (un)touchable” (33). McMahon devotes a chapter each to reading Nancy “in tandem” with selected films of Robert Bresson, Marguerite Duras, and Claire Denis. These cineastes differ stylistically— modernist ascetic (Bresson), avant-garde counter-cinema (Duras) and synesthetic formalism (Denis)—but all “combine an emphasis on touch, materiality, and sensation with anti-representational forms of cinema which privilege visual ellipsis and narrative discontinuity,” elements which in turn emphasize “psychological illegibility” (3–4). In short, this trio utilizes techniques that cause disruption of touch/contact between onscreen entities as well as between film and viewer. McMahon deploys touch as a motif of separation (disruption) to scrutinize the treatment of key themes in each director (the logic of incarnation in...