Thinking Contemporary Political Cinema with Cantet

Abstract

This article focuses particularly on two Laurent Cantet films, Ressources humaines (Human Resources, 2000) and Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang (2012). Its main thrust, however, is to use Cantet’s work to pose more general questions about the functioning of a political cinema at the current moment. Firstly, it examines how the director hollows out his own voice to accommodate other, often disempowered or marginalized voices at a time when the radical or institutional left no longer provides a collective language of opposition. Secondly, drawing on Jean-Luc Nancy’s understanding of ‘being with’, it looks at how the films stage the interplay between individuals, groups and broader social contexts and notes that, if characters cannot stand alone as isolated individuals, nor can they simply merge back into some broader collectivity. Again, it suggests that this uneasy position is expressive of the current moment. Thirdly, the article looks at the uncomfortable place the films open up for the spectator who is neither reassured about the acceptability of the status quo nor given some easy utopian alternative but is instead forced to work out his or her stance in a conflicted field. The article concludes by arguing that this obligation to work out where one stands pulls together the director, the characters and the audience. In deeply conflicted times, when not taking a position is not an option, and ready-made standpoints are no longer available, they must work out their stance, as must we.