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Référence bibliographique [21080]
Ransom, Amy J. 2019. «Forgiving the Horrible Mother: Children’s Needs and Women’s Desires in Twenty-First-Century Québécois Film». Dans Horrible Mothers: Representations across Francophone North America , sous la dir. de Loïc Bourdeau, p. 149-168. Lincoln (Nebraska): University of Nebraska Press.
Fiche synthèse
1. Objectifs
Intentions :
«[T]his chapter examines how a significant corpus of films focalized through the viewpoint of a child protagonist negotiates situations of maternal neglect and abandonment, working—admittedly to varying degrees—toward forgiving the horrible mother.» (p. 150)
2. Méthode
Échantillon/Matériau :
The author uses a corpus of Quebec films from the twenty-first century. She begins her analyse «with two watershed films released on the cusp of the new millennium, Léa Pool’s Emporte-moi (Set Me Free, 1999) and François Bouvier’s Histoires d’hiver (Winter Stories, 1999) […].» (p. 150)
Type de traitement des données :
Réflexion critique
3. Résumé
«Whereas we cannot deny that popular cinema in Québec continues to vehicle black-and-white images of the “horrible mother” and the victimized child, it does so in order to condemn the pre–Quiet Revolution values of the Grande Noirceur […]. We can nonetheless conclude, based on the corpus of films examined here and their more nuanced treatments of the mother, that complex female characters have become increasingly present on the province’s big screens and that women’s roles in Québec society, both public and private, must be acknowledged. In particular, these films indirectly address the role of the women’s liberation movement as part of the various movements for national autonomy during the 1960s. […] Furthermore, while we expect that a woman filmmaker such as Pool, frequently labeled as “feminist,” […] would pave the way for films that revise a deep-rooted image of the mother, it is significant that male filmmakers of a younger generation also offer such visions, as seen in Leclerc’s Un été and Falardeau’s C’est pas moi. Significantly, these acknowledged auteurs allow their mothers greater latitude in terms of progressive lifestyles that can combine motherhood with a career. Finally, even the more ambivalent imagery found in the works of filmmakers more closely linked with popular media […] reveals that Québec has come a long way toward forgiving the horrible mother.» (p. 163-164)