ReFocus: The Films of François Ozon: (ReFocus: The International Directors Series)

Examines Fran ois Ozon, one of France's most prolific and best known international (queer) directors Analyses films including Potiche, Frantz and By the Grace of God, and shows how Ozon's work is deeply influenced by literature, cinema and music Draws on recent theoretical developments in gender, queer and film studies Each chapter offers a case study of one film while grounding its arguments within Ozon's larger oeuvre, as well as the social, historical and political context A queer auteur who plays with generic conventions, Fran ois Ozon is one of France's most prolific and best known international directors, who has built a filmography that not only engages in the representation of non-normative sexualities, kinship and violence, but also makes room for social outcasts and marginalised communities. This edited collection brings together renowned and emergent scholars to investigate further questions of minority, queerness, (queer) intertextuality and gender representations, as well as secrecy, transgression and intimacy in his films, offering the most up-to-date study of Fran ois Ozon's cinema.

Table of Contents:
Introduction: In the beginning was the word - Loïc Bourdeau Part One: The Politics of Form 1. Queer Tyranny and Intertextuality in Gouttes d’eau sur pierres brûlantes: François Ozon Pays Homage to Master Fassbinder - Amy Bertram 2. François Ozon’s Sitcom and Politics of Form - Tamara Tasevska 3. Queering the Trenches: Homoerotic Overtones in Frantz - Helena Duffy 4. The Crystal-Image and Queer Ambiguity in Sous le sable - Peadar Kearney 5. French Ozon/Global Ozon: French Specificity and Globalisation in Jeune & jolie - Felicity Chaplin Part Two: (In)Formal Politics 6. ‘The Scent of a Middle-class Woman’: Desire, family and the adolescent imagination in François Ozon’s Dans la maison - Jamie Steele 7. Bringing Up Baby in the Twenty-First Century: Le Refuge and the Ozonian Family - Thibaut Schilt 8. Transing Dynamics: Ozon’s Une nouvelle amie - Todd W. Reeser 9. Sex Wars in Potiche: Womanhood Then and Now - Loïc Bourdeau 10. Female Creativity, Selfishness and Monstrosity in François Ozon’s Angel - Fiona Handyside 11. From Faits Divers to Grandes Affaires: Giving Voice to Sexual-Abuse Survivors in Grâce à Dieu - Levilson C. Reis

About the Author :
Loïc Bourdeau is a scholar of French Studies and the Medical Humanities in the School of Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures at Maynooth University, formerly Louisiana Board of Regents Associate Professor of Francophone Studies at UL Lafayette. He has published extensively on contemporary cultural productions by marginalised voices in France and Québec. In addition to several chapters and articles, he has edited or co-edited four volumes, including Horrible Mothers. Representations across Francophone North America (2019), ReFocus: The Films of François Ozon (2021), and Revisiting HIV/AIDS in French Culture: Raw Matters (2022). He has edited special issues of the Australian Journal of French Studies (2020), Nouvelles Études Francophones (2022), and a special issue of Nottingham French Studies on ‘The Twenty-first Century Social Novel in French’ (2024).

Review :
From experimentations with genre and intertextuality to new visions of queerness and relationships, ReFocus: The Films of François Ozon captures the unique spirit of one of France’s most idiosyncratic directors. Loïc Bourdeau’s edited volume is intellectual yet creative, cohesive yet wide-ranging, inventive yet steeped in a rich cultural tradition. Much like François Ozon’s cinema itself. By now a familiar fixture in contemporary French cinema, the prolific auteur François Ozon seems to have grown in stature over the last decade. Loïc Bourdeau has assembled an exciting and eclectic collection of original essays that combines a welcome return to the perverse queerness of the filmmaker’s early work with a full examination of the later more ‘mature’ Ozon including a timely focus on the sexual politics of abuse. This is an impressively wide-ranging collection that will no doubt contribute to a fuller critical understanding of one of 21st century cinema’s important directors.