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The filmmaker’s presence in French contemporary

autofiction: from filmeur/filmeuse to acteur/actrice

Lourdes Monterrubio Ibáñez

To cite this article: Lourdes Monterrubio Ibáñez (2021) The filmmaker’s presence in French
contemporary autofiction: from filmeur/filmeuse to acteur/actrice, New Review of Film and
Television Studies, 19:4, 533-559, DOI: 10.1080/17400309.2021.2007713

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/17400309.2021.2007713

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NEW REVIEW OF FILM AND TELEVISION STUDIES
2021, VOL. 19, NO. 4, 533–559
https://doi.org/10.1080/17400309.2021.2007713

The filmmaker’s presence in French contemporary

autofiction: from filmeur/filmeuse to acteur/actrice
Lourdes Monterrubio Ibáñez
Institut ACTE, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, Paris, France

ABSTRACT
Autofiction as realized in cinematic practice adds a figure of identification to the
literary author-narrator-character: that of actor/actress. The filmmaker, playing
him/herself, employs innovative strategies in audiovisual narration to generate
this autofictional identity. This article analyses these strategies as seen in French
cinema, on which literary autofiction has a determining influence. My analysis of
this practice is mapped along a double axis. The first classifies the films in a
progressive evolution from the factualisation of the fictional (documentary’s
starting point) to the fictionalisation of the factual (fiction’s starting point). The
second analyses the films with regard to the filmmaker’s presence: from the
filmeur/filmeuse who stands behind the camera and records the images him/
herself to the acteur/actrice who exclusively appears in front of the camera. This
cinematic exploration of the self thus situates the filmmaker in all possible
positions so as to develop autofictional strategies for exploring postmodern
identity and alterity, using parody and irony as effective tools. In this laboratory
of the self, filmmakers experiment with the topics they address – reflection on
cinema, artistic exploration, self-knowledge, ideological reasoning, and socio­
political criticism – as well as create valuable screen manifestations of resilience,
empathy, sorority, and even pedagogy.

KEYWORDS French cinema; autofiction; filmer; subjectivity; alterity; film analysis

Introduction
Among the various ultra-contemporary francophone literary practices, l’au­
tofiction is undoubtedly one of the most fertile, both in its own production
and in the theoretical work it generates. Some works of literary autofiction
have in turn become raw material for film creation (Monterrubio Ibáñez
2018b). Additionally, ‘born cinematic’ autofiction flourishes, but has been
studied to a lesser extent (Boully 2006; Roche 2006; Quéinnec 2007; Sirois-
Trahan 2009; Libois 2008; Fontanel 2016, among others). This article ana­
lyses French cinematic autofiction by parsing the filmmaker’s presence in

CONTACT Lourdes Monterrubio Ibáñez [email protected]

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content
of the article.
© 2022 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
534 L. MONTERRUBIO IBÁÑEZ

these films. Since the term autofiction first appeared on the back cover of Fils
by Serge Doubrovsky (1977), critics and writers have developed and dis­
cussed its conceptualisation within literary theory (Colonna 1989;
Darrieussecq 1996; Forest 2007; Gasparini: 2004, 2008; Vilain 2010, among
others). Three decades after coining the term, Doubrovsky stated:
‘Autofiction is the postmodern form of autobiography’ (2007: 64–65).
Standing at the literary crossroads of postmodernity, which Chloé Delaume
surveys in her book La règle du Je, ‘Autofiction is an experimental genre. In
every sense of the term. It’s a laboratory [. . .] A real laboratory. Of writing
and living’ (2010: 20).
Expanding on literary autofiction’s ‘figurative and nominal identification of
the author, the narrator and the character’ (Fontanel 2016: 69), cinematic
autofiction includes that of the actor/actress, and finds the filmmaker playing
him/herself. In this regard, Vincent Colonna’s (1989) concept of self-fictiona­
lisation becomes crucial in pointing out the difference between documentary’s
display of oneself and autofiction’s display of different degrees of self-fabula­
tion and self-representation. Whereas Jean-Luc Godard depicts himself in the
documentary space and Agnès Varda creates fictionalised self-portraits, the
filmmakers analysed here employ self-fictionalisation in reflecting on their life
experiences and biographies.
Thus, cinematic autofiction can be analysed along a spectrum that emerges
between the two extremes defined by Marie Darrieussecq: ‘The autofictional
text is then an irresolvable text en bloc. “Fictionalisation” of the factual and
“factualisation” of the fictional’ (1996: 378). It can be then established that the
‘factualisation of the fictional’ (at the documentary end) and the ‘fictionalisa­
tion of the factual’ (at the fiction end) occupy the two extremes of autofictional
cinematic representation. Moreover, the presence of the filmmaker as the
protagonist of his/her own work calls for its analysis simultaneously along a
second axis: from the filmeur/filmeuse who stands behind the camera filming,
to the acteur/actrice who only appears in front of it. I use the French expression
filmeur/filmeuse, coined by filmmaker Alain Cavalier, defined by the film­
maker’s position in holding the camera (Monterrubio Ibáñez 2019), and I
translate it as ‘filmer’. This spectrum additionally allows me to study the
different materialisations of the filmmaker in relation to the range of topics
addressed: personal, artistic, professional, social, and political.
I present below the French cinematic corpus that I consider most relevant
to this analysis:

● Lettre pour L . . . (Letter for L . . ., 1992) by Romain Goupil

● Pourquoi (pas) le Brésil (Why (Not) Brazil, 2004) by Lætitia Masson
● J’aimerais partager le printemps avec quelqu’un (I’d Like to Share the
Spring with Someone, 2007) by Joseph Morder
● Le Bal des actrices (All About Actresses, 2009) by Maïwenn
 NEW REVIEW OF FILM AND TELEVISION STUDIES 535

● Pater (2011) by Alain Cavalier

● Les garçons et Guillaume, à table! (Me, Myself and Mum, 2013) by
Guillaume Gallienne
● Les Jours venus (The Days Come, 2014) by Romain Goupil
● Rock’n Roll (2017) by Guillaume Canet

This corpus’s affiliation with the 21st century is confirmed by an exception of

great importance, Romain Goupil’s Lettre pour L . . ., a work of cinematic
autofiction that brings to the screen the complexity and possibilities of literary
autofiction. Two decades later, Goupil created another work of autofiction, Les
Jours venus; together the films demonstrate the diversity of possibilities and
confirm cinematic autofiction’s evolution towards a progressive fictionalisa­
tion, as I argue below. Placing the films within this corpus on the aforemen­
tioned axes (Table 1) proves challenging due to the multiple nonfiction-fiction
strategies employed across these cinematic works, all of which exhibit autofic­
tion’s main interests: self-fictionalisation, subjectivity, alterity, experimenta­
tion, hybridisation, and fragmentation, among others.

Table 1. The corpus films positioned on the defined axes.

FILMMAKER-ACTOR/ACTRESS
Rock’n Roll (2017)

Les garçons et Guillaume, a table ! (2013)

Le Bal des actrices (2009)

Les Jours venus (2014)

Pourquoi (pas) le Brésil (2004)

Le#re pour L… (1992)

Pater (2011)

J’aimerais partager le printemps avec quelqu’un (2007)

FILMMAKER-FILMER

FACTUALISATION OF THE FICTIONAL FICTIONALISATION OF THE FACTUAL

This first attempt at classification provides an overview of my analysis’s

development: autofiction arises from the experimentation of the filmers and
their reflections on cinema (Morder and Cavalier); it emerges from the
dialectics between the personal and the political (Goupil); it materialises
through the nonfiction-fiction dédoublement that catalyses artistic explora­
tion (Masson); and finally it instrumentalises fake documentary (Maïwenn)
536 L. MONTERRUBIO IBÁÑEZ

or postmodern autobiography (Gallienne and Canet) as fictionalisation

strategies. In analysing how the possibilities afforded by literary autofiction
expand when applied to cinematic creation, I build on Charles Burgelin’s
reflection:

Autofiction widens the field of self-exploration, plows and sows it differently

without really leaving the traces and furrows of facts. By making heard on all
kinds of levels what can be played between objective accuracy and subjective
truth, autofiction becomes an adventure of language [image], imagination and
intelligence particularly stimulating. (2010:15)

Autofiction as filmers’ experimentation for reflection on cinema

Along with Alain Cavalier, Joseph Morder is a noted French filmer
(Monterrubio Ibáñez 2019) who since the age of eighteen has been filming
his (as it's called) Journal filmé. This diaristic practice, conducted with
camera in hand, has continued over five decades, although it has evolved
over time: from silent Super 8mm, to sound Super 8mm, to MiniDV and HD.
J’aimerais partager le printemps avec quelqu’un, created in the diaristic form
and covering from February 21 to May 15, 2007, is a sustained experiment in
filming with a mobile phone that became the first film made entirely with this
device to be released in commercial theatres in France. Morder’s primary
interest in the mobile device’s audiovisual characteristics means that both
image and (exclusively direct) sound were recorded in auto-mode, without
the filmer’s manipulation, and without any modification in post-production.
The lightness and manageability of the mobile camera allow for innova­
tive shot composition and almost complete freedom of movement. On the
diary’s second day, Morder records himself in front of the mirror, directing
his gaze and words to the spectator to share that he is the same age (57) as his
father was when he died. On February 23, he appears on camera depressed,
confessing his desire to ‘share the spring with someone.’1 On March 3, on a
walk through the city, Morder returns to a topic explored in two of his
previous fictional films: Le Grand Amour de Lucien Lumière (1981) and
Romamor (1992). Those works narrated the encounters of a Super 8mm
filmer (Lucien and Mark respectively, played by Morder himself) with two
women who they wished to film. Now the filmer repeats the experience, but
this time approaches a man, Sacha, who he is interested in filming. In his new
aim to create a nonfiction-fiction hybrid work, Morder uses an unknown
actor (Stanislav Dorochenko) to yield autofiction out of a fortuitous encoun­
ter that the spectator may take as real, since it captures the spontaneity and
discomfort of this exchange with a stranger very different from him.
 NEW REVIEW OF FILM AND TELEVISION STUDIES 537

Figure 1. J’aimerais partager le printemps avec quelqu’un (Joseph Morder, 2007). © La vie
est belle films.

Days later, Morder travels to London, where he fears having lost the
agenda containing Sacha’s phone number. In recording this moment of
near-panic, his apparent emotions are imprinted on the image, which
moves and shakes without any motion control (Figure 1). Previously, he
had recorded a sort of invocation addressed to Sacha as a self-portrait in
the dark. Thus, autofiction in both cases serves as conduit for emotional
affect linked to filming, in the earlier case exhibiting film’s conveyance of
intimacy and in the later its loss of control. Back in Paris, the filmmaker
recovers his lost diary and travels to Moulin d’Andé (in Normandy),
where he confesses his ‘lovesickness’ (March 15). Days later, he receives
a text from Sacha, who proposes to meet him on his return to Paris.
Their second encounter (April 10) takes place in a cafe. Sacha agrees to
be recorded, but the fact of filming seems to spoil the date, becoming an
adulterant in the intimate personal relationship and causing Morder to
reflect: ‘Which do I like more, love or cinema? Or do I like both?’
(Figure 2). While the filmer’s emotion had earlier distorted the filming,
now filming adulterates the affective relationship.
Later, Morder receives a visit from Françoise Michaud (his friend and
the protagonist of Romamor), of whom he asks advice about whether to
film Sacha on their next date. Her opinion is emphatic: ‘Consenting to
being filmed implies a relationship of submission.’ The fictionalisation
538 L. MONTERRUBIO IBÁÑEZ

Figure 2. J’aimerais partager le printemps avec quelqu’un (Joseph Morder, 2007). © La vie
est belle films.

progresses since it is shared, thus becoming interwoven with the film­

maker’s diaristic activity. It is then a third character who becomes
Morder’s accomplice. During their conversation, Françoise takes the
camera to film Morder; in so doing, the filmmaker entrusts the camera
to a loved one, turning the self-portrait into a portrait and the filmer
into actor. The film’s autofiction, thus far enunciated from behind the
camera, materialises then in front of it. Finally, the third date with Sacha
takes place on May 14 at the filmmaker’s house, and Morder narrates it
the day after, while filming the empty bed where they spent the night
together:

Sacha called me yesterday, he came home in the afternoon, for the first
time. I decided not to film him. It was more important for me to see him
for the first time with my eyes, without a mediating gaze [. . .] I already
knew, when sleeping with him, that I would film the empty bed in the
morning. The empty bed, the rumpled sheets, everything that belongs to
the domain of the trace, therefore, to the imaginary [. . .] And here I am,
reconstructing in the morning reality a night event that took place in their
reality, ours. And it’s ok. It is what I wanted, what I had wanted for this
spring.
 NEW REVIEW OF FILM AND TELEVISION STUDIES 539

Therefore, the filmer, placed behind the camera, introduces autofiction

within the diary film through character and plot – factualisation of the
fictional – without identifying it as such, engendering a filmer-actor who
reflects on the cinematic depiction of the intimate experience.
In Pater, Alain Cavalier, that other leading exponent of French filmeurs,
turns the solitude of filming into an encounter and dialogue with the actor
Vincent Lindon, transforming him into co-author of the work by giving him a
camera: ‘By revealing ostentatiously the instruments of its so particular writ­
ing, the film confesses the cinematic pact on which it is built. Foundational,
capital, generic confession: in the same way as Cavalier is an actor in the film,
Lindon is also a filmeur’ (Fargier 2011: 14). On this occasion, the experience of
reality is hybridised with the creation of a fiction: ‘We both film ourselves in
our daily lives. And under the gaze of the spectator, we transform ourselves
into fictional characters regularly and depending on the circumstances, before
returning to our daily affairs’ (Cavalier 2011). While Morder inserted fiction in
his diary without revealing it as such, proposing a discussion about its indis­
cernibility, Cavalier addresses this same topic through the dialectics between
fiction and nonfiction. The filmmaker performs as the President of the French
Republic and Lindon plays his Prime Minister and expected successor. Pater’s
double nature thus involves interesting displacements within its conceptuali­
sation. The film begins in a sort of in medias res: Cavalier prepares lunch and it
is Lindon who records him. From this moment on, the spectator must
decipher the nature of the autofictional device seen. The filmmaker-filmer
records the actor who he later legitimises as a filmer by handing him the
camera in the dressing room scene, in which Lindon lends him a necktie to
play the President. As in Morder’s film, the gesture of handing the camera to
another person becomes a ritual recognition of its autofictional nature. This
same filmmaker-filmer also records, camera in hand, the fictional scenes in
which he does not participate. The dialogue between the two characters is
initially filmed from an external point of view, but the camera positioning
gradually shifts to the perspective of both characters, until the subjective shot/
counter-shot materialises, turning the characters into filmers. In addition, the
character of the President continues his activity as a character-filmer in
solitude, voicing reflections that he shares with a cat.
These displacements, which constantly play with this hybridisation of
fiction and reality, exploring the indiscernibility between them, or rather
their complementarity. It is thanks to that hybridisation, to the transmission
that takes place between person and character, that they come to know
themselves and each other, and the spectators to know them. This hybridisa­
tion comes to the fore at two moments. First, in a brief shot in front of the
mirror, Cavalier, in character as the President, observes his double chin; it
seems then an aesthetic concern belonging to the character. In a later
540 L. MONTERRUBIO IBÁÑEZ

Figure 3. Pater (Alain Cavalier, 2011) © Caméra One, ARTE France Cinéma.

sequence, however, it is the filmmaker, still shirtless, who looks, in front of

the mirror, at the scar from the operation that removed some skin on his
neck (Figure 3):

3.000 euros, without anaesthesia. Was it the President who did this or was it
me? My father had it and I didn’t like it. I didn’t like that. I didn’t like his
authority over me. I did not like his sufficiency, the pleasure that exercising his
power as a high official brought him. The problem is that today I look like him.
I am him. I am his clone. Therefore, I regret judging him, and today I love him.

In this way, fiction and nonfiction feed each other through an autofictional
experience that consists of framing the spaces of both in the mirror. First,
mirrors are placed in front of oneself, as in this case, in which autofiction’s
possibilities are ideally on display in quite literally reflecting the shift between
factualisation and fictionalisation. Second, mirrors are placed in front of the
other, as in the final sequence, in which the transition works to confront
alterity. In the last dialogue between the two, all of these displacements
materialise. We view the scene from the outside, thus situating us in the
fictional space, in which the President offers the Prime Minister a commem­
orative pin of the French Republic. Then, the Prime Minister/Lindon takes
his camera to capture the moment from his point of view. Agreeing to film
the action in another take as a subjective shot/counter-shot, the President/
Cavalier takes his camera and they repeat the action (Figure 4). For the first
time, the spectator contemplates the scene of the double filming from the
exterior perspective. Fiction returns to the documentary space of these filmer
and actor playing to create a fiction. The final part of the scene returns to the
point of view of the filmer, thus repeating the synthesis of the film that
concludes:
 NEW REVIEW OF FILM AND TELEVISION STUDIES 541

Figure 4. Pater (Alain Cavalier, 2011) © Caméra One, ARTE France Cinéma.

Cavalier: . . . and I told myself, but you are stupid . . . and besides, it’s a film, it
isn’t true . . . but yes, yes, it’s true.
Lindon: It’s a film and it’s true.
Therefore, this clever device generates autofiction from multiple displace­
ments of the filmmaker-filmer and the actor, with which different autofic­
tional mirrors emerge, revealing the nature of the frontier between
nonfiction and fiction and enabling self-knowledge and mutual knowledge.

Romain Goupil: autofiction as an expression of ‘the personal is

political’
Romain Goupil’s Lettre pour L . . . is a letter-film that perfectly aligns with the
literary parameters defining antofictional practice (Monterrubio Ibáñez 2018a:
365–374). The filmmaker creates a letter to L (played by actress Françoise
Prenant), who suffers from a serious illness and who prompts him to make ‘a
good film.’ The filmmaker-filmer creates an autofictional letter-film in diaristic
form during his stays in Moscow, Gaza, Berlin, Belgrade, and Sarajevo
throughout 1992 and early 1993. Its multiple materials (film, video, photo­
graphy) evidence its complex hybridisation and enable the filmmaker’s pre­
sence in all possible positions: behind and in front of the camera as filmmaker-
filmer (Figure 5), in front of it as filmmaker-actor, and also through his
voiceover. In analysing its autofictional realisation, I differentiate among
three practices: autofictional reconstructions of the past; parodic autofiction
in the form of short pieces or sketches; and autofiction in the present.
542 L. MONTERRUBIO IBÁÑEZ

Figure 5. Lettre pour L . . . (Romain Goupil, 1992) © Les Films du Losange.

First, the film’s autofictional reconstructions of the past, which revolve

around the love affair between the correspondents, are generated through
materials expressly created for the film – cinematic and photographic images,
both in black-and-white – to which material from their real-life personal
archive and the fictional material of other authors are added. In an exemplary
instance of the hybridisation of fiction and reality that autofiction performs,
Goupil illustrates the breakup with L through images from Raymond
Depardon’s Une femme en Afrique (Empty Quarter, A Woman in Africa
1985), in which Prenant played the protagonist, thereby confusing the
identities of L and Depardon’s character.
Second, the account of their past affair merges the personal with the
political, the axis on which the film is built, through a sort of parodic
autofiction in the form of brief sketches. Among them, a reflection on
cinema’s essence and its relationship to history takes up L’s question again:
‘But what is a good film?’, which leads to a new parody, entitled Un film bien,
about modern cinema. In it, Goupil performs a parodic imitation of Jean-Luc
Godard, who assigns his self-appointed brigade (called ‘Un image juste’) the
mission of finding ‘an Arab, a real one, a worker, a real one’ (Figure 6). This
parodic and ironic criticism of militant cinema is followed by a new version
of Un film bien, this time followed by the subtitle Le paradis c’est ici (Paradise
Is Here), a quotation the film attributes to Mikhail Gorbachev, and which
functions to parody a naïve socialist utopia. A subsequent sketch presenting
Goupil as director of the (invented) film Fermeture pour travaux (Closed for
Business) as he is interviewed for television on the occasion of its premiere
offers a critical parody of the achievements of the political commitment of
 NEW REVIEW OF FILM AND TELEVISION STUDIES 543

Figure 6. Lettre pour L . . . (Romain Goupil, 1992) © Les Films du Losange.

French intellectuals and the role of the media within the film industry. This
autofictional parody concludes with the same question, now asked in anger:
‘But fuck, what is a good film?’
After the stay in Gaza, where Goupil reveals his innermost feelings, the
letter-film focuses on narrating and portraying his stays in Berlin, Belgrade,
and Sarajevo. In this present of the wartime conflicts in the Balkans, the
filmmaker continues to ask himself, and others, what constitutes a good film.
While in Berlin, autofictional expression materialses through a third practice.
The filmmaker-filmer meets a woman named Régine and films her while
asking about the city. He then becomes a filmmaker-actor who proposes she
accompany him, as his assistant, on his trip to Sarajevo. From this moment
on, the epistolary addresser also becomes the protagonist within the por­
trayal of the present. In Belgrade, documentary images and epistolary voice­
over alternate with the autofictional present in which Goupil meets the
actress Milena Vuskovic (played by Anita Mancic) with whom he converses
throughout a day.
In December 1992 Goupil arrives in Sarajevo with the intention of filming
everything he sees, in order to capture the reality of the besieged city, thus
resuming his practice as filmer. He meets there the filmmaker Ademir
Kenovic, who guides and offers him his valuable testimony about the horror
suffered by Sarajevo’s citizens. Documentary images then replace autofic­
tional ones in order to show the reality of the city’s inhabitants. Goupil also
records Kenovic's filming during the war conflict, making the question ‘What
is a good film?’ more relevant. For all these reasons, Lettre pour L . . . becomes
an exemplary cinematic materialisation of Gasparini’s definition of literary
544 L. MONTERRUBIO IBÁÑEZ

autofiction as an ‘autobiographical and literary [or cinematic] text presenting

many features of orality, formal innovation, narrative complexity, fragmen­
tation, alterity, contrast and self-commentary which tend to problematise the
relationship between writing [cinematic creation] and experience’
(2008: 311).
More than two decades later, in Les Jours venus, Goupil once again
addresses autofictional creation by reversing the terms between factuali­
sation and fictionalisation. Here he offers a fictionalisation of his present
life, which in this moment revolves around his family (partner, children,
and parents, played by themselves), his community (the Cité des artistes
and its tenants’ association), and his professional activity. In this present
autofictional space, the reflection on the indiscernibility between perso­
nal and political that in Lettre pour L . . . revolved around the love affair
now occurs in his familial space and concerns his roles as father and
son, out of which ongoing self-criticism around ideological embourgeo­
isement and cross-generational strife arise. The filmmaker, about to turn
60, is preparing to retire and even takes out a funeral insurance policy
(with a firm named Le Jour Venu). In the professional domain, the film
relates his efforts to launch his new project, whose plot focuses on a
‘caméra catastrophe’ that would cause disaster every time it films. This
autobiographical episode of failure allows the filmmaker to reflect on the
capacity of cinema to be part of social transformation: ‘What is doing
good?’ Here again autofiction offers a harsh parody of masculinity, in
which Goupil’s ego needs “constant attention” from women with whom
he establishes relationships illustrating the structures of patriarchy: his
producer, played by the actress and filmmaker Noémie Lvovsky; his
financial agent, whom he has a flirtation, played by the actress and
filmmaker Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi; and a young neighbour, played by
Marina Hands, to whom he exhibits paternalism.
Throughout the film, the present’s fictionalisation finds cause to confront
the past through family images in the form of recordings of his partner,
Sanda, and children taken over the years, often in Sarajevo, Sanda’s native
city. The filmmaker’s voiceover comments on the first three and the penulti­
mate of these past images (twelve in total), linking the present and the past
autofiction:

It was my first shot in Sarajevo. It was in 1992. The city is under siege. There is
gunfire everywhere. I am sheltering behind this building [. . .] How would I
have known that in this building lived Sanda, with whom I was going to fall in
love? Four years later the war is over. Same building, my son at the window.
Who could know?
 NEW REVIEW OF FILM AND TELEVISION STUDIES 545

Figure 7. Les Jours venus (Romain Goupil, 2014) © Les Films du Losange.

Thus, the two works of autofiction stand as a kind of diptych, mirroring one
another. The ‘factualisation of the fiction’ of sentimental life with L. became
the factual of the encounter with Elle (Sanda) (Figure 7), whose present is
now fictionalised, on which he also reflects:

I remember one day of terrible bombings in Sarajevo. I filmed this bush with
dozens of sparrows twirling [. . .] flying away [. . .] coming back to rub their
beaks on their legs. For me, it was the image of what we wanted: to circulate in
freedom, not to have to give neither our name, nor our nationality, nor our
destination.

Goupil thus reveals, through the juxtaposition of both spaces, the multiple
differences in materialisations of the filmmaker-filmer and the filmmaker-
actor, between the naked subjectivity of the former and the multiple pro­
cesses of objectivation that give rise to the latter; a sort of reality-filtering that
leads to that reality’s stylisation. The brilliant final sequence of the film self-
critically reflects on the filmmaker's decision about retirement and its con­
sequences in terms of political commitment. We attend Goupil’s funeral in
the consolidated space of the fictionalised present until, accompanying a
crane shot, absent apart from this scene, the filmmaker’s off-screen voice is
heard saying ‘Cut’. (Figure 8). For a moment, the filmmaker’s gaze aligns
with that of the crane, from which Goupil descends angry that his actors,
family, and friends ‘are not up to the shot’.
546 L. MONTERRUBIO IBÁÑEZ

Figure 8. Les Jours venus (Romain Goupil, 2014) © Les Films du Losange.

Using parody, the filmer of the past’s documentary images turns into
a filmmaker who uses a camera crane – symbol of the capitalist film
industry that stands in total opposition to the filmer’s work – to repre­
sent his own funeral: ‘It isn’t me who speaks. It’s the film’. The aban­
donment of the filmmaker’s commitment is thus symbolised with the
quoted sentence addressed to Mathieu Amalric, that member of the
brigade ‘Une image juste’ who sought to make Un film bien as militant
cinema in Lettre pour L . . . Finally, Goupil’s intention in his failed
project to use the cinema to ‘change the world’ or ‘do good’ becomes
the authoritarian practice that perpetuates what he intended to combat,
and about which Daniel Cohn-Bendit proclaims: ‘Trotskyist one day,
tyrant always’. The sequence thus becomes a hilarious, intelligent, and
critical self-parody of the filmmaker’s activity, evidencing the ability of
autofiction to convey self-criticism, to turn a critical gaze upon
ourselves.

The nonfiction-fiction dédoublement as artistic exploration

In Pourquoi (pas) le Brésil Lætitia Masson carries out a unique experiment in
cinematic autofiction taking off from Pourquoi le Brésil (2002) (Monterrubio
Ibáñez 2018b), Christine Angot’s ‘transfictional autobiography’ (Genon
2013: 21) that inspires Masson’s attempt at a parallel work in her film
practice. Faced with Angot’s autofictional and metadiscursive writing, the
filmmaker fulfils the same task in cinematic creation: ‘they both speak of
themselves directly, right to the eyes of the reader or the spectator’ (Prédal
2008: 170). Masson creates an autofictional and metadiscursive cinematic
 NEW REVIEW OF FILM AND TELEVISION STUDIES 547

Figure 9. Pourquoi (pas) le Brésil (Lætitia Masson, 2004) © Rezo Films.

space wherein three dimensions coexist: the nonfiction in her work as a

filmmaker-filmer behind and in front of the camera, where the writer also
appears; the fictionalisation of Masson’s own life; and the fiction of Angot’s
novel. This dédoublement of the filmmaker’s first-person enunciation
emerges in the first scenes of the film. Masson, in front of the camera,
introduces herself and explains the financial circumstances that led her to
accept the project. This same shot is then repeated, but now the filmmaker is
played by actress Elsa Zylberstein, who will also play Angot in the adaptation
of the novel. From that moment on, the filmmaker instrumentalises the
nonfiction to reflect on the creative process of the film and that of fictiona­
lisation so as to narrate her personal and professional experience during its
creation. It is crucial to point out that this fictional space exposes her inability
to play herself, to perform her experiences in the first person: ‘I could never
say I love you, like that, in a film. Like Christine does in her book. I film other
people’s love, because I can’t film my own’.
After the initial sequence described, the space of nonfiction is constructed
by means of two approaches: Masson’s self-filming in her solitary personal
space; and the exteriorised filming of her encounters with other people. In
addition, both are overlaid with the filmmaker’s voiceover, which also moves
between autofiction and fiction, thus becoming the first level of reflection.
Masson portrays herself in a revealing progression. First, she places the
camera in fixed positions that capture her on-screen, occasionally looking
at the camera. Next, she takes the camera in hand to film herself in the mirror
(Figure 9), while her voiceover expresses the personal conflict that the project
has caused: ‘No producer, no money, no more actors . . . Nearly no husband,
he is sick of my shit’. As Julia Dobson analyses, these shots ‘articulate a
deeper ambivalence about the relationship between lived experience and
creative agency’ (2012: 150). Later, she films her surroundings through
succinct panorama shots, while continuing her musing on the creative
548 L. MONTERRUBIO IBÁÑEZ

Figure 10. Pourquoi (pas) le Brésil (Lætitia Masson, 2004) © Rezo Films.

conflict she is facing: ‘I can’t do it either. The book resists me. Their story
resists me. How to show the complexity of their relationship? I’m not sure I
understand it.’ However, except for the initial scene described, we will never
hear her voice on- or off-screen in this first intimate space. Expressed in
voiceover, her reflection carries over into the other two spaces. As Kate Ince
indicates, these tactics imply ‘a feminist phenomenological approach to
embodied female subjectivity, by allowing a female director’s self-reflexive
approach to her own subjectivity to be explored as it is performed’ (2017:
129). Masson demonstrates that not only are her reflections a result of an
intellectual activity but of the physical environments she inhabits and her
behavior therein.
Angot’s narrative offers up her private life for complete exposure, in
particular an experience of falling in love. Married, with a stable love life,
Masson decides to explore that experience through her attraction to her
children’s paediatrician, and in the space of fictionalisation. As already
observed, the filmmaker recognises her limitations in voicing the narration
in the first person, which even leads to writer’s block. Masson meets with
Angot to discuss the conflict she suffers and tries to overcome: how to go
about ‘exposing myself but protecting the others’. Angot’s answer is empha­
tic: ‘It’s impossible’. Her writing is born from what she calls ‘a hate for
secrets’. Her literary experience is unattainable for Masson. A key instance
of self-filming then occurs and for the first time another camera captures the
filmmaker while she films herself (Figure 10):

Hotel room, Nancy [city in France]. Christine, you say there is no secrets, no
shame. You say you write everything in the book. I don’t film everything.
There are secrets, my secrets, and my shame too. Maybe your book led me
here. To Nancy, to the heart of shame.
 NEW REVIEW OF FILM AND TELEVISION STUDIES 549

Masson’s discovery thus reveals that her artistic practice consists neither of
adapting the literary work nor of filming her private life. Only two images
justify her cinematic search: those of the real characters of her grandmother
and the paediatrician. Thus, the film responds to the description of autofiction
offered by Bruno Blanckeman as enabling one ‘to know the other of myself,
through the autofictional narrative; to know myself in the other, through the
transpersonal narrative’ (2000: 21). The film ends with Masson’s departure,
having decided to abandon the project and offering a clever reflection on what
this autofiction work has led her to: ‘I don’t experience things to make films. I
make films because I can’t experience things. That’s it, mostly.’

Fake documentary as an autofictional device

Le Bal des actrices, the second directorial work of actress Maïwenn, is an
autofictional film premised on the making of a documentary about French
actresses, which instrumentalises fake documentary (Dobson 2012;
McFadden 2014) as its enunciative form. Thus, there is a displacement
from documentary to fiction instead of the dédoublement of Masson’s
work. Maïwenn’s film is the story of its own shooting. Therefore, she is its
main character, portrayed in her task as the project’s filmmaker, seen filming
the actresses with a handheld camera (Figure 11). These first-person images
are inserted into the film at intervals. In this way, and for the first time, the
presence of the filmmaker-filmer becomes a character:

Instead of occupying both positions behind and in front of the camera,

Maiwenn abandons her post, so to speak, to occupy fully the position in
front of the camera. She does not want to present a disembodied voice but

Figure 11. Le Bal des actrices (Maïwenn, 2009) © Les Films du Kiosque.
550 L. MONTERRUBIO IBÁÑEZ

rather shows the filmmaker, the person who is holding the camera, in order to
disrupt further the divide between filmmaker and actress, between creator and
the subject of creation (McFadden 2014: 197-198)

I would add to McFadden’s analysis that it is the filmer, more specifically, who
relinquishes her non-fiction practice behind the camera so as to create a
fictionalisation that allows autofiction in front of it, which produces another
interesting effect. On several occasions, the actresses she interviews ask her to
stop recording and she does. The spectator contemplates this action from the
outside, thus evidencing that the filmmaker-filmer belongs to the autofiction,
and so points out ‘the ambiguity between the real and fictive while highlighting
representational practices’ (192). In addition, Maïwenn fictionalises her personal
life, with the rap singer Joeystarr (Didier Morville) playing her partner. However,
this intimate space is fictionalised entirely, since in these scenes the filmmaker
never appears filming. Therefore, this dimension would not be part of the
documentary in development, although the whole film is shot with a shoulder-
mounted camera, thereby infusing the autofictional space with documentary
aesthetics.
For their part, the actresses’ portraits, eleven in total, also generate their
respective autofiction: ‘the actresses are screened through autofictional stra­
tegies, maintaining artistic distance and allowing a blurring of “reality” and
fiction’ (Vanderschelden 2012: 249). Each portrait includes musical autofic­
tion in which each actress in turn performs a song describing experiences
from their lives that speak to the topics addressed in their respective por­
traits, thereby ‘enact[ing] their dreams, fears and fantasies in the musical
scenes’ (251). In this way, the stereotypes by which they are judged (the
ambitious startlet, the ingénue, the diva, the struggling actress, the model-
turned-actress, the grande-dame) are systematically exposed, and the gender
discriminations they suffer (emotional abuse in castings, the tyranny of hi-
res imagery that mandates cosmetic procedures, despotic directors, ageism)
emerge from the quotidian portraiture.
To conclude the film, Maïwenn circles back to one of the subplots inter­
woven through the film. Having had an early encounter with actress-model
Estelle Lefébure that then leads to a dinner game with friends in which they
kiss, Maïwenn falls in love with her and finally meets to confess her feelings.
The filmmaker uses it as an excuse for having herself be the last actress the
film portrays (Figure 12). Estelle asks her why she fell in love with Joey, and
Maïwenn’s answer is revealed at the private screening organised for the crew
of the now-finished film. Facing Maïwenn’s image on the screen, the
actresses – now spectators of the documentary on which the film is based –
angrily criticise what they consider to be Maïwenn’s narcissistic film, and not
a documentary about them. Once again, the filmmaker ironically references
the stereotypical narcissism associated with both actresses and autofiction,
 NEW REVIEW OF FILM AND TELEVISION STUDIES 551

Figure 12. Le Bal des actrices (Maïwenn, 2009) © Les Films du Kiosque.

turning it into self-criticism on both counts. This irony thus completes the
circular structure and the protagonists of the autofiction become spectators
of it in order to, once again, construct a parody that offers criticism of the
movie industry and vindication of the actresses, denouncing the professional
discrimination they endure.
As in the case of Masson, Maïwenn’s film expresses the value of feminist
resilience and becomes a clear expression of sorority, which, as Annie
Richard explains with regard to the literary sphere, emerges as a kind of
‘altruism’ within autofiction:

The contemporary movement of awareness of the fictions at work in all the

writings of the self, a particularly precious lever certainly to sweep away the
identities imposed to women, has a universal scope: paradoxically, autofiction
would be the most apt path currently to shake up the tyranny of the image and
to seek a knowledge that brings us together in an intersubjective reality, a real
path towards altruism. (2013: 158)

As in other women’s cinematic adaptations of women’s literary autofiction –

Borderline (Lyne Charlebois, 2008), Nelly (Anne Émond, 2016) – women’s
cinematic autofiction is intrinsically bonded to sororal experiences that fight
machismo and patriarchal stereotyping and strengthen female intersubjec­
tivity (Monterrubio Ibáñez 2018b).

Autofiction as postmodern autobiography

Les garçons et Guillaume, à table !, the film adaptation of the play of the same
title (2008), also created by actor Guillaume Gallienne, is yet another exemp­
lary realising of autofiction’s possibilities, in this case for achieving the
552 L. MONTERRUBIO IBÁÑEZ

postmodern autobiography that Doubrovsky described. Gallienne proposes a

new autofictional structure that also instrumentalises theatrical space. The
actor appears on the scene characterised as his adolescent self, who will be
both narrator and protagonist of a monologue addressed to spectators, and
who will mature as his narration progresses. This enunciative configuration
establishes a first great difference with respect to canonical autobiographical
narration since the narrator is placed in the present of the narrative.
Thus, the film begins in the theatrical space, and then Guillaume’s account
becomes cinematic, which turns his voice into a narrator’s voiceover. This
filmmaker-actor not only appears as a character in both theatrical and
cinematic realms, but also plays his mother in the filmic narrative.
Gallienne thus creates an essential device well-suited to address the film’s
topic: his traumatising awareness of his gender identity and sexual orienta­
tion as they affect his relationship with his mother, for whom both child and
adolescent Guillaumes feel total adoration that manifests as imitation and
even impersonation. All this, once again narrated with recourse to postmo­
dern parody and irony.
Theatrical space is also ‘cinematised’ through the different camera posi­
tions and frame sizes, even allowing for a breaking of the cinematic fourth
wall by means of Guillaume’s gaze at the camera. What is thus revealed is the
existence of two different audiences, the theatre spectators within the film
and the cinema viewers, whose differentiation will be crucial to the film’s
denouement. In addition, different continuity rules distinguish the two
spaces. First, the lines spoken by the theatrical character are responded to
by a cinematic character. Second, the theatrical performance and especially
body movements and gestures are repeated in the cinematic space and vice
versa. This strategy achieves catharsis with the materialisation of the thea­
trical character in the cinematic image to mark the revelation Guillaume
experiences regarding female breath: ‘It was beautiful. It’s great . . . I just
understood something wild . . . In fact, the thing that sets women apart the
most . . . is their breath’ (Figure 13). The theatrical character takes the place
of the cinematic one and he addresses the camera as if it were his stage
audience. Thus, the film demonstrates the creative and expressive possibi­
lities of this autofictional duplication and its exchanges. Gallienne also
multiplies the autofictional elements in the cinematic space. Her mother
becomes in Guillaume’s reverie a mental image with two different functions:
one comical and parodical (in the scenes of holidaying in Spain, the gay
disco, and the second sexual attempt) and the other dramatic in its expres­
sion of trauma (at boarding school, undergoing psychological therapy). In
addition, the mother is cause for a reverie in which both characters appear
reincarnated as members of a Renaissance aristocratic family, generating
thus a new level of self-fictionalisation in which Guillaume finally reincar­
nates as a woman.
 NEW REVIEW OF FILM AND TELEVISION STUDIES 553

Figure 13. Les garçons et Guillaume, à table ! (Guillaume Gallienne, 2013) © Don’t Be Shy
Productions.

In the outcome of this double autofiction, Guillaume falls in love with a

woman, and thus can finally identify himself as heterosexual to his mother.
At this moment, Guillaume relates his intention to create a play to narrate his
story. The conclusion of the film occurs in the theatre space in which it
began. The adolescent Guillaume has become an adult on stage and at the
end of his monologue he discovers his mother – the real one – among the
spectators. The ‘cinematisation’ of the theatrical scene now extends to the
stage audience, by means of a shot/counter-shot in which the gazes of the real
two people, from whom the autofiction has arisen, meet. Then, Guillaume
address his speech to his mother (Figure 14):

Even if she sometimes calls me baby-doll, she knows that I am a boy. That’s
how it is. Even if we pretended the opposite, she and I. It made our lives easier,
right? Hers, to have a daughter. Mine, to set myself apart from my brothers. To
distinguish myself. But all that is over now. It’s over because I love Amandine.

Figure 14. Les garçons et Guillaume, à table ! (Guillaume Gallienne, 2013) © Don’t Be Shy
Productions.
554 L. MONTERRUBIO IBÁÑEZ

After offering the maximum ‘fictionalisation of the factual’, the film finally
allows autofiction both theatrical and cinematic to face the reality from
which it was born. Gallienne’s film delves into the cinematic specificities of
autofiction and its relationship with the concept of alterity, maternal in this
case, as indicated by Gontard: ‘autofiction [. . .] places the principle of
uncertainty and the law of alterity at the heart of the subject issue, in the
strongly coded context of autobiography’ (2013: 94). Furthermore, the nar­
rator’s transformation from adolescence to adulthood enables the lived
experience to become, through his narration, a pedagogical proposal.
Finally, Rock’n Roll as an autofictional film achieves complete fictionalisa­
tion, since it rejects both dédoublements, that between filmmaker and actor –
the former does not appear – and between characters, as those analysed in
Gallienne’s film. Here Guillaume Canet’s character suffers a ‘midlife crisis’;
an experience, again treated with recourse to postmodern parody and irony,
that materialises in an impressive physical transformation. Thus autofiction
prompts an interesting reflection on the concept of self-image, understood as
the meeting and conflict point among different perspectives: the image he
has of himself; the image others have of him (both in his professional and
personal lives), including the public's stereotypes about famous actors; and
finally the interpretation he draws from those external perceptions of him.
The work thus offers multifaceted autofiction (professional and personal,
public and private) that gravitates around the vulnerability inherent to
autofictional practice. That is, intimate self-exposure is achieved through
bizarre autofiction. The exhibition of Canet’s private life implies a second
equally interesting autofiction, that of his partner, Marion Cotillard, ima­
gined as a perfectionist and obsessive actress, who keeps working on her
acting roles in her day-to-day life. Furthermore, the presence of family
members, friends, and colleagues demonstrates their commitment with the
autofictional creation.
The actor’s crisis is triggered by the shooting of a new film in which he
must play the father of a twenty-year-old girl. Faced with this generational
difference, his self-image suffers a serious blow upon realising how the
public’s perception of him has changed. He refuses to accept his current
status as a middle-aged actor (with a committed partner and a son) far
removed from the younger generation and its lifestyle. At first, his intention
is to change that external perception, leading to situations in which he
embarrasses himself: flirting with his co-star, about whom he fantasizes
having a sexual encounter; a drug overdose requiring treatment by para­
medics, resulting in an untimely recording then circulated on social media.
But this identity crisis brings him to a deeper questioning of his self-percep­
tion, here meaning not the image he projects to others but that which the
mirror reflects back to him (Figure 15). Guillaume decides to embark on a
journey in search of his lost youth, enabled by cosmetic procedures, chemical
 NEW REVIEW OF FILM AND TELEVISION STUDIES 555

substances, and bodybuilding. His gradual transformation improves his self-

image, both physically and psychologically (Figure 16), in contrast to the
reaction of his family and friends. The astonishment expressed by these
external ‘mirrors’ – Marion, the producers, the film’s director – takes iden­
tical form as a gesture of horror: hands covering their mouths and eyes wide-
open with incomprehension. Turned into Beauty and the Beast for the
tabloids, Guillaume and Marion separate and he continues his transforma­
tion despite losing his job and being rejected and ridiculed by the public.
Contrary to what would happen in conventional fiction, in which Guillaume
would realize his problem and return to his previous life having come to
accept his age, this postmodern autofiction delivers the opposite outcome.

Figure 15. Rock’n Roll (Guillaume Canet, 2017) © Les Productions du Trésor.

Figure 16. Rock’n Roll (Guillaume Canet, 2017) © Les Productions du Trésor.
556 L. MONTERRUBIO IBÁÑEZ

Guillaume’s new image, which could be evidence of a psychological condi­

tion, instead becomes the materialisation of his new self-esteem, of a positive
self-image that makes him happy despite the social rejection. Unemployed,
Guillaume decides to accept an offer to star in an American television series
that will take him to Los Angeles for three years. The film then concludes
with the reinforcement of this irreverent parody that breaks with conven­
tions about healthy self-image.
In a happy ending, Marion goes in search of Guillaume a year later, when
he has become the star of (the suitably inane) Crocodile Ranger. The film’s
epilogue displays the series’ credits, in which Cotillard appears as co-star.
Rock’n Roll thus shows the extraordinary power of the cinematic autofic­
tional image, of playing oneself when it is the body itself that undergoes
autofictional transformation. Its postmodern instrumentalisation implies a
crucial subversion of the status quo, thus showing the value of autofiction as
tool for critical thinking.

Conclusion
Having covered a considerable range of cinematic autofiction – from the
filmmaker-filmer’s documentary work, in which an autofictional plot is
inserted, to the complete fictionalisation of a filmmaker-actor/actress who
enacts autofictional transformation upon his/her own body – the multi­
plicity, complexity, and generativity of cinematic autofictional strategies are
evident. I summarise them below, using the axes established in the introduc­
tion (Table 2).

Table 2. Cinematic autofictional strategies mapped along the defined axes.

FILMMAKER-ACTOR/ACTRESS
In front of the camera + voiceover
Representaon of the filmmaker-filmer
The filmmaker-actor/actress plays different characters
Physical transformaon of the filmmaker-actor/actress

Behind and in front of the camera:

Dédoublement filmmaker-actor/actress
Dédoublement nonficon-filmer / ficon-another actor/actress
Appearance of the actor/actrice-filmer and the character-filmer

Behind the camera + off-screen voice

through mirrors or in front of the camera
Behind the camera + voiceover
Handing the camera to another person to be filmed

FILMMAKER-FILMER

FACTUALISATION OF THE FICTIONAL FICTIONALISATION OF THE FACTUAL

 NEW REVIEW OF FILM AND TELEVISION STUDIES 557

Thus, the fourth identification inherent to cinematic autofiction yields

new possibilities of hybridisation and experimentation that multiply those
materialised by literary autofiction and allow its deepening. This cinematic
exploration of the self situates the filmmaker in all possible positions, devel­
oping autofictional strategies for delving into concepts of postmodern iden­
tity and alterity, using parody and irony as effective tools. In this laboratory
of the self, filmmakers experiment with the topics they address. Morder,
Cavalier, and Masson produce reflections on cinema, artistic exploration,
and self-knowledge, experimenting with the filmer’s position behind and in
front of the camera. Goupil instrumentalises the shift between both positions
to engender social and political criticism and ideological self-criticism.
Maïwen uses the fake documentary to transform the filmer into a fictional
character and to offer, as does Masson, a feminist self-fabulation that creates
sororal intersubjectivity. Finally, Gallienne and Canet focus on the film­
maker-actor to generate autofiction as postmodern autobiographies, deepen­
ing identity and self-image through postmodern irony and parody. Thus, all
these authors provide valuable materialisations of resilience, empathy, sor­
ority, and even pedagogy.

Note
1. All film translations are mine.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributor
Lourdes Monterrubio Ibáñez is a Film Studies researcher at the Institut ACTE,
Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, where she carries out the research project
EDEF – Enunciative Devices of the European Francophone Essay Film, awarded a
Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship. Her research interests are in the
filmic writings of the self and the relationships between literature and cinema.
Monterrubio Ibáñez is the author of De un cine epistolar (Shangrila, 2018) and editor
of Epistolary Enunciation in Contemporary Cinema (Área Abierta, 2019).

ORCID
Lourdes Monterrubio Ibáñez http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0566-3666
558 L. MONTERRUBIO IBÁÑEZ

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