The disabled body and disability in the cinema of Jacques Audiard

Abstract

Jacques Audiard’s films deal with disabling social exclusion. Protagonists are systematically discriminated against owing to their physical disabilities or social disabilities such as low socio-economic status, lack of education, and cultural/linguistic marginalisation. Sur mes lèvres (2001) and De rouille et d’os (2012) feature characters with both physical and social disabilities. The first film examines the relationship between an ambitious, deaf, real-estate company secretary and a former convict whom she employs as her assistant. The second follows the romance between a killer-whale trainer who loses her lower limbs when she is attacked by a killer whale, and a man from a low-income, low-education background who is passionate about boxing. The characters are focused on surviving in a society in which they are alienated, stigmatised, and where options are limited. Through a mutual recognition of shame and isolation, the characters develop an alliance that challenges, exploits, and finally rejects the social norming of received attitudes towards the disability of the other person. The article analyses how these representations of physical disabilities conform to contemporary theories of embodied disability and argues that Audiard’s cinema can be viewed through both a phenomenological and a cognitive lens.