Abstract
This article is concerned with the construction of the older female protagonist in a number of British, Irish and French films. In order to identify what knowledge is legitimated about aging women, and what is not, a close textual analysis of four films: Night Train (Ireland 1998), Keeping Mum (UK 2005), Une Liason Pornographique (France 1999) and Partir (France 2009) was undertaken. All these films feature a female protagonist, in her late forties or early fifties, and challenge, in varying degrees, myths about the asexual nature of older women. At a thematic level, the female characters in all four films undertake a journey, real or imagined, in order to experience sexual passion. In the course of that journey they each become enriched by a sexual experience and make significant discoveries which, in varying degrees, deconstruct preconceived notions about aging women. Some of the specifics of the British, Irish and French film industry and culture are also explored in order to gain a nuanced understanding of factors that contribute to the marginalization or valorization of the older female protagonist. The different treatment of mature female sexuality in the French films is explained with reference to different cultural discourses surrounding female sexuality, a film industry that privileges art before commerce and generous film funding.
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Notes
Prior to 2011, the statistical yearbooks, from which I gathered the data on British films only registered films with budgets of £500,000, and over. Low budget and micro-budget films were not tracked by the UK Film Council at all, until 2008. Hence, it was reluctantly decided to exclude them from this analysis but I am persuaded that the absence of this category is not numerically significant and does not distort my findings.
Mature female sexuality is defined as any form of heterosexual or homosexual sexual activity that specifically indexes desire. This may range from a passionate kiss to simulated sexual intercourse, the articulation or demonstration of female sexual desire, or the display of the sexualised, mature, female body.
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Liddy, S. Stories We Tell Ourselves: Writing the Mature Female Protagonist. Sexuality & Culture 19, 599–616 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12119-015-9280-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12119-015-9280-7