WIGELSWORTH, Amy (2024). ‘Sandrine Bonnaire regained’: space and mobility in Sans toit ni loi and Prendre le large. French Screen Studies.
Documents
33957:644992
PDF (RRS)
Wigelsworth-SandrineBonnaireRegained(AM).pdf - Accepted Version
Restricted to Repository staff only
Available under License Creative Commons Attribution.
Wigelsworth-SandrineBonnaireRegained(AM).pdf - Accepted Version
Restricted to Repository staff only
Available under License Creative Commons Attribution.
Download (330kB)
33957:644993
PDF (RRS)
Wigelsworth-SandrineBonnaireRegained(SupMat).pdf - Supplemental Material
Restricted to Repository staff only
Available under License Creative Commons Attribution.
Wigelsworth-SandrineBonnaireRegained(SupMat).pdf - Supplemental Material
Restricted to Repository staff only
Available under License Creative Commons Attribution.
Download (236kB)
Abstract
This article considers the parallels that can be drawn between two characters portrayed by Sandrine Bonnaire at distinct junctures in her film career: Mona, a young homeless woman whose wanderings are recounted retrospectively after her frozen corpse is discovered at the start of Agnès Varda’s Sans toit ni loi/Vagabond (1985), and Édith, a middle-aged woman who relocates to Morocco to keep her job with an offshored French textile factory in Gaël Morel’s Prendre le large/Catch the Wind (2017). The author first considers Mona and Édith in the context of a stasis-mobility dynamic identified as central to both films, subsequently reflects on the political implications of their mobility and finally considers a more proximate notion of space, with reference to the theory of haptic visuality explored by Laura Marks (2000). Prendre le large illustrates the limits of the palimpsestic star image and, in counterpoint, the recuperative possibilities of a film depicting an immersive encounter with a foreign space. The article aims to demonstrate how the quite specific questions of labour and relocation broached in these films point to broader existential issues pertaining to identity and movement, as well as to consider what the two films, in dialogue with each other, might add to current debates around precarity in contemporary cinema.
More Information
Share
Actions (login required)
![]() |
View Item |