Narrative and the Gender Perspective

Teresa De Lauretis has made several meaningful contributions to the studies of narrative with psychoanalytic focus on how spectators perceive narrative in film. He theories on desire and its movement of identification throughout films has allowed for a certain masking to take place when viewing films. Men and women take on these different masks when interpreting and identifying with certain aspects of the narrative in films. With this in mind I like to say something on a very unique film La Pointe Courte, directed by Agnes Varda.

De Lauretis points out that women identify both with the active agent in the film and that of the passive agent. The active agent being the male protagonist off to" rescue the princess" and the passive agent being the princess or the setting or landscape through which the male agent travels. In the film the passivity of the land is that of the  male's hometown and the agent traveling across this is both the women and the male. Since the whole premise of the film is based on the couple revealing the state of their relationship, the setting serves as a template for this journey to take place on. The female perception is taken somewhat while the male passivity is explored, since in this case the female agent is the one on "foreign soil", an unfamiliar land that is now a part of both of their lives.

I believe the state of their relationship is that of a strong bond like the one that the male holds with his hometown. The landscape is a metaphor for their relationship, stale, polluted, lackluster and full of predictability. It is inescapable and the woman now has to accept it if she wants the relationship to continue. Certain shots and editing call attention to this bond. For instance, their is a profiling of the two main character's faces in one of the film's most memorable shots with the male facing the camera while half of his face is completed with part of the women's face in a profile. This hermaphroditic visual shows the bond of the relationship in a single frame and part of  a single being or countenance. This shot happens twice with the positions of the faces being switched and it shows a being much like that of the state of the two characters' relationship. They have become bonded, much like the man and his hometown, and they have evolved into something much more than a couple enchanted by the passion of their love. They have become inseparable.

The land through which the active agent travels is a landscape shared by the two characters. It is the landscape of their bond that they've formed since they were together. It is the exploration of this land that brings on the closure at the end of the tale, which De Lauretis claims in the usual narrative is the point where the female identifies with the object of desire the "princess". This film's closure comes from a realization of a bond, one that is strong, but not as full of life as it had been in the throngs of passion. Therefore, the "rescuing of the princess" becomes less of a symbol of the triumph of the male gaze, and more so a repositioning of that gaze to one that may pertain to both sexes.