Female bodies in Paris: iconic urban femininity and Parisian journeys

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe link between French female stars and Paris is so strong that they have become an integral and highly visible part of the urban screenscape. I examine Une Parisienne (Boisrond, 1957), Ascenseur pour l'échafaud (Malle, 1957), Le Fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain (Jeunet, 2001) and Chaos (Serreau, 2001) to illustrate how female protagonists not only embody iconic types of Parisian femininity, but also trace inner journeys through the cityscape in both auteur and popular films. In my analysis, I shift the discussion from the figure of the flâneuse, while looking at other spatial practices that enable projections of subjectivities in the city space, including feminine cartographies, haptic travels that position female spectators as voyageuses and spectatorial practices related to star images. I argue that Parisian female stars and vedettes as both objects of consumption and subjective protagonists map the city of Paris according to their inner structure, in both objectified and personal terms, as the collusion of these two categories on-screen and in off-screen media texts enables them to circulate desire for the city as feminine urban icons.