Crashing the millionaires' club: Popular women's cinema in twenty-first century France

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article first surveys the rise of a contemporary French popular women's cinema, defined as female-directed films that attract over a million paying admissions. From 2000 to 2010 the so-called club des millionnaires included eighteen female directors responsible for 28 of France's best-received and most lucrative productions. Next, the article analyses the commercial materials these film-makers use: the design of emancipation narratives; the use of female stars; the negotiation of mass genres (the cinéma d'ado, the romantic comedy, the intellectual farce); their occasional historical and political engagements. The article also considers the potential of these films as one possible best-case scenario for popular cinema itself: mainstream-oriented yet also textually ‘feminine’ (i.e. non-hegemonic and open or subversive in design) and cinematically progressive.