TY - JOUR
T1 - The Barbara Hypothesis
T2 - Performance and Spectatorship in the Musical Biopic
AU - Vidal, Belen
N1 - Funding Information:
This research was funded by the generous support of the Arts and Humanities Research Council through the project Producing the Postnational Popular: The Expanding Imagination of Mainstream French Films and Television series (2019–2023).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
PY - 2023/5/11
Y1 - 2023/5/11
N2 - The author examines the mise en scène of performance in Barbara (Mathieu Amalric, 2017) in the context of the problematic yet pervasive cultural re-inscription of the musical biopic in French cinema, and its remediation of the traditions of chanson française and variété through the body of the female performer. Featuring Jeanne Balibar as ‘Brigitte’, an actress playing the eponymous singer-composer, Barbara unfolds as a ‘film-about-filmmaking’ that presents the iconic Barbara as a hypothesis. The article looks at performance in terms of approximation rather than imitation and considers the ways in which the film extends its investigation on the chanteuse to the spectator-in-the-text played by Amalric himself. As a biopic, Barbara stands against the fetishisation of the absent (i.e. dead) performer. Instead, it engages with the rhetorical authenticity that makes for the basis of the genre by producing the female performer’s presence as cinematic event. Furthermore, the article discusses the connection between performer and spectator through affective intimacy and redefines the space of performance as a nomadic cinematic form, which hypothesises a postnational cinematic aesthetic that weakens the alignment of the female musical performer with the Frenchness of the biopic.
AB - The author examines the mise en scène of performance in Barbara (Mathieu Amalric, 2017) in the context of the problematic yet pervasive cultural re-inscription of the musical biopic in French cinema, and its remediation of the traditions of chanson française and variété through the body of the female performer. Featuring Jeanne Balibar as ‘Brigitte’, an actress playing the eponymous singer-composer, Barbara unfolds as a ‘film-about-filmmaking’ that presents the iconic Barbara as a hypothesis. The article looks at performance in terms of approximation rather than imitation and considers the ways in which the film extends its investigation on the chanteuse to the spectator-in-the-text played by Amalric himself. As a biopic, Barbara stands against the fetishisation of the absent (i.e. dead) performer. Instead, it engages with the rhetorical authenticity that makes for the basis of the genre by producing the female performer’s presence as cinematic event. Furthermore, the article discusses the connection between performer and spectator through affective intimacy and redefines the space of performance as a nomadic cinematic form, which hypothesises a postnational cinematic aesthetic that weakens the alignment of the female musical performer with the Frenchness of the biopic.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85159116706&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/26438941.2023.2195260
DO - 10.1080/26438941.2023.2195260
M3 - Article
SN - 2643-8941
JO - French Screen Studies
JF - French Screen Studies
ER -