Women Who Love Women in French Contemporary Literature and Film

In this study, I analyze late twentieth- century French novels and movies that have, central to their narratives, love between women; and I bring to the surface the fresh standpoints that authors and filmmakers develop about changing and contested modes of relationality in modern France. More particularly, I demonstrate how the normative connotations of lesbian love, first impose oppressive and reductive representations of women who love women, and second, how these connotations can be displaced from within, and, once subverted, open up questions that pertain to other domains of human life than love, in particular to notions of temporality, community and relationality.