Objectification and resistance: Dance performances in Abdellatif Kechiche’s La Graine et le mulet (2007) and Vénus noire (2010)

Abstract

Performance is central to the work of Abdellatif Kechiche. Where male verbal performance took centre stage in the explorations of French national identity undertaken in his first two films, a gradual shift in focus towards female bodily performance in La Graine et le mulet (2007) and Vénus noire (2010) evidences the director’s increased awareness of the complex ways in which gender and ethnicity can combine in exclusionary discourse. This article presents close analyses of key sequences from the latter two films, showing how the representation of the dancing body in Vénus noire may call into question existing readings of the controversial belly dance scene that concludes La Graine et le mulet. Making extended reference to Brigitte Bardot’s mambo dance at the end of Et Dieu … créa la femme (Vadim, 1956), the article shows how dance performances in Kechiche can involve not only the adoption of stereotypical identities that serve to highlight the continuing force of exclusionary discourse, but also assertions of agency on the part of the female ethnic other.