Unhappily ever after: visual irony and feminist strategy in Agnès Varda's Le Bonheur

Abstract

Although Agnès Varda is recognized as an early avatar of feminist film-making, her 1965 film Le Bonheur remains a misunderstood work, frequently criticized for its ostensibly anti-feminist message. This essay excavates specific sources of imagery from French women's magazines that idealized the daily drudgery of the housewife and explains how Varda applied this imagery to her characters to challenge feminine ideals. This essay shows that Le Bonheur expands visually and thematically on two influential texts: Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex (1949) and Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique (1963). As a director making feminist films in an unreceptive climate, Varda employed a sophisticated strategy of visual irony in Le Bonheur that disputes the film's narrative and conservative notions of domestic harmony. We can thus discern new depths in post-war feminism and appreciate Varda's contribution to a complex, trans-Atlantic dialogue about the structure of domestic life.