Tous les garçons and toutes les filles

Abstract

The televised series Tous les garcons et les filles de leur âge (1994), including nine one-hour films by contemporary French directors focusing on the periods of their own adolescence (from the early 1960s to the early 1990s), has been cited in numerous accounts of contemporary French cinema as heralding a new era of ‘young French cinema’. This essay focuses on four films in the series in which women directors explore female adolescence (Claire Denis's US Go Home, Chantal Akerman's Portrait d'une jeune fille de la fin des années 60 à Bruxelles, Patricia Mazuy's Travolta et moi, and Emilie Deleuze's L'Incruste). In different ways, these four films highlight and explore the relationship between gender, memory, and film narration.