After Adele met Emma for the first time, she had a spring dream about Emma during her half-awake masturbation. This part of the shooting is a kind of appreciation with strong emotions. The lens seems to be a pair of eyes. At this time, Adele is obviously "being watched". This also sets the tone for a "seen" male gaze for the subsequent real sex scenes.
The so-called masculine gaze refers to a powerful, surveilling seeing behind which gender power is implicit. At the same time, this kind of seeing is to materialize the female body into an admirable and symbolic existence, so that it can be viewed as a work of art without restraint.
In this scene, every time the audience sees a part of Adele's body. In a sense, cinema itself is an art of voyeurism. The peeping on Adele's body here turns the original complete character image into a fragmented body part, thus forming a materialization.
After Adele and Emma established a relationship, the two had their first sex. This is a "shock" sex scene, using extremely exaggerated gestures and unimaginable duration. The two protagonists change their postures in a variety of ways, quoting from "Adele's Life" - Beyond Gender and Sexuality, the director "Trying to push the boundaries of empathy, to communicate physical rapture by visual means, he bumps into the limits of the medium and lapses into voyeurism, turning erotic sensation into a spectacle of flesh.”. Through this almost crazy sex, people can feel the two women's enthusiasm for life and love, and their desire and need for each other's bodies. Therefore, this piece of play has inevitability in terms of dramatic effect. However, unfortunately, in the specific handling, the film's performance here is too much, which seems to run counter to the director's original intention. However, this kind of visual shock is very uncomfortable for me as a female audience.
In this sex scene, desire is far greater than love, and women naturally have the right to pursue pure sexual pleasure. But for two women who are emotionally attracted to each other and admire each other, according to the method, it is not in line with lesbians, or women's expectations and habits of sex. In this scene, the director didn't even give the two protagonists any kissing or eye contact shots, focusing all the shooting on one person's exploration of the other's body and even organs. A large number of close-ups of organs and constantly changing sexual methods make the audience gradually forget "who they are".
Women's sex is often related to emotions to some extent, especially when the two have a relationship for the first time, the kind of teasing, shyness, and emotional echoes between women, there is no such thing in the film, only intense and almost outrageous sex. . Women who have awakened female consciousness refuse to be passive objects, so it is impossible for them to use each other as the object of their desires without having a high degree of emotional resonance and emotional communication with them.
Although what we see in this scene is the physical entanglement of two women, the sexual logic embodied is purely heterosexual, and it can even be said that it belongs to male discourse and is subject to male gaze.
The realistic style of the film, when used here for intimate acts such as sex, is difficult to remove the suspicion of pornography. It has neither become a booster for the audience to understand the emotional process of the two like "Lust and Caution", nor can it honestly inform the audience of the true state of lesbians in sex. Especially when the whole scene deliberately does not use any soundtrack, and the sound is recorded on the spot, making this exaggerated sex even more detached from reality and erotic.
And when the relationship between the two matured and gradually became equal, how did the sex scene show? The director arranged a wrestling in sex to show the game in the relationship between the two. This is a very ingenious setting, and it has a non-negligible effect on the promotion of the plot and the audience's understanding of the relationship between the characters.
However, this pivotal sex scene uses a completely distorted way of sex - scissors. This method is only because of its strong visual impact, which conspires with men's imagination of lesbian sex. The film has made a lot of foreshadowing in line with feminism, including Adele's favorite novel "La Vie de Marianne", the discussion of women in class by classmates, and Adele and Emma participating in the gay parade, Emma and friends discuss the female body in art works. debate, etc. It is all reflected in the intention of setting the background of the film, but choosing such a distorted and inappropriate method here just shows a curious mentality from a male perspective.
In addition, instead of focusing on what the two do to each other in this scene, the camera is aimed at the actress's face, and the audience is shown the moaning face of the actress in an oversized close-up that almost occupies the screen. Expression reactions, these reactions can also appear in male and female sex, and even the intercepted body parts have great imagination space, allowing male audiences to generate substitution and reverie.
When the relationship between the two gradually stabilized, although the contradictions gradually began to appear, the relationship between the two began to converge. In this intercourse, the two had rubbing each other's ears and kissing a lot for the first time. At this time, the emotional echo that could be felt between the two was stronger than an almost crazy sex. But after the sex, there's another very detailed, slow advance of Adele's body from feet to body. It is the same as the previous review scene, but this time the review finally uses the protagonist. The audience actually borrowed Emma's POV to appreciate Adele's body. Emma took out her brush and started painting while admiring Adele's body. This scene is hard not to be reminiscent of the classic scene of "Titanic", Jack's capture of Rose's femininity. Here, the director transforms the classic male gaze into a female perspective. On the surface, it seems that it can be seen as a woman's enthusiasm for her own body, but in fact, it is suspected of female self-objectification.
At this time, the relationship between the two has reached a very tender stage. Emma's feelings for Adele should not and cannot be just a compliment to her body. Adele's body does not become beautiful because the relationship between the two becomes deeper. From the beginning, the director has taken the trouble to tell everyone how wonderful this youthful carcass is. And Emma only started to examine this body at this time, which is obviously just a blunt transformation of the male gaze.
Adele's pose here is with her legs wide open facing the camera representing Emma's eyes. Among them, the content of female erotic consumption is self-evident.
To put it another way, compared to gay films, would gay films show male genitalia so recklessly? Or have one actor perform oral sex on another actor in a near-real performance? The answer is obvious.
From the perspective of anti-pornography feminist, all erotic products are consumed by women, which I do not agree with. In fact, women also have the right to consume pornographic products. But as far as this film is concerned, when its main purpose is to express the love between lesbians, such a large-scale sexual description has to be said to have a consumption color.
However, the paradox is that the director of this film, Abdellatif Kechiche, in terms of his previous works, is a person who is good at shooting women, or is willing to patiently understand and interpret women with a kind vision. In this film, he also tried his best to show female desire, trying to fully depict lesbian sexuality and the strong need between women for each other, which has actually been done well in similar works. But despite this, the film is inevitably mixed with so much male gaze and female consumption.
Just like the director himself in the film, a line confided by the character happens to be the core of what this article wants to discuss. "No matter how you praise or describe it, male creators always express what they see, imagine, and even imagine women to prove that they have seen and understood."
The director also expresses his own predicament and confusion here, but being able to articulate it so clearly makes me feel that this film, despite its inevitable male gaze, is by no means an anti-feminism film. . It could even be said that it was a very brave and daring attempt by men to understand women.
However, looking around all the lesbian movies made by male directors, it is difficult to avoid male gaze, especially in a large number of sex scenes, which makes the pursuit of curiosity and beauty become the inescapable fate of traditional lesbian movies.
The irreconcilable contradiction between the natural male gaze of the film and the use of film to interpret women is indeed a difficulty that needs to be solved continuously, and cannot be solved by Abdellatif Kechiche alone. However, last year, as an example, "Portrait of a Burning Girl" did it, and perhaps the advantages of female directors in gender interpretation will become increasingly prominent in the future.
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