Cover -- Series page -- Title page -- Copyright page -- List of Contributors -- Acknowledgments -- Editorial Practice -- Introduction -- Contexts: Institutional, Political, Cultural, and Economic -- Characteristics of Contemporary French Cinema -- Thematic Preoccupations -- Trends, Developments, and the Future of French Cinema -- Part I: Economic, Institutional, and Political Contexts -- 1 The Political Economy of French Cinema -- Changing Patterns of Cinema Attendance -- Cinematic Production and Its Outcomes -- The Competitiveness of French Cinema and Market Share -- Concentration and Diversity -- The Transformation of the Pool of Theaters -- The Future of Cinematic Theaters -- Conclusion -- 2 "Do We Have the Right to Exist?" French Cinema, Culture, and World Trade -- France -- Europe: Television Without Frontiers -- Cultural Exception: GATT -- Cultural Diversity: MAI/UNESCO -- Conclusion -- 3 Historicizing Contemporary French Blockbusters -- A Tentative Typology -- "Cultural Diversity" or Cultural Crisis? -- The Second Lang Plan (1989-1993) -- The Maturation of a "Forced Marriage" -- StudioCanal in the Crosshairs -- A New Oligopoly? -- Conclusion -- 4 Moving Between Screens -- The Role of Television in the Financing of Cinema -- Arte as a Stimulus and Sponsor of the New Cinema -- A Cinema of Collections -- Realism and Television -- The Revival of Documentary -- Films/Telefilms: A Play of Mirrors -- "Television Films" and Cinema Formatting -- From Comic Television to Comedy in Cinemas -- Cinema and Televised Series -- Conclusion -- 5 Contemporary Political Cinema -- Taking Stock: Working-Class Histories and the Exit from Fordism -- Outsiders and Victims, Ethics and Politics -- Political Effectiveness -- New Departures? -- 6 Diasporic and Postcolonial Cinema in France from the 1990s to the Present.

Auteur-led Productions and the "Return" of the Politicalin Diasporic and Postcolonial Cinema Since the 1990s -- From Margins to the Mainstream: Postcolonial Comedy and the Mainstreaming of Maghrebi-French Filmmakers in the 2000s -- Memorializing Colonial History: From Neo-Colonial to "Counter-Heritage" Cinema -- Return Narratives in Diasporic Cinema of the 2000s -- Beyond Ethnicity? Reconfiguring Difference in Diasporic Cinema -- Part II: Auteurs and Auteurism -- 7 The Veterans of the New Wave, Their Heirs, and Contemporary French Cinema -- The Extraordinary Fecundity of the Veterans of the New Wave -- The Quartet of Founding Members: Chabrol, Rohmer, Rivette, Godard -- The "Left Bank" of the New Wave -- A Problematical Legacy -- Epilogue: The Enduring Influence of Bresson and Pialat -- 8 Was There a Young French Cinema? -- To What Does the Term "Young French Cinema" Refer? -- The Arrival of the New Cinema -- The Counter-Attack of Positif -- Maturity and Defining Parameters -- New Appraisals, New Perspectives -- Consensus and Uncertainties -- What Remains of the Young French Cinema? -- 9 Auteurism, Personal Cinema, and the Fémis Generation -- Characteristics of Auteur Cinema -- Categories of Auteur Directors -- Auteurist Styles -- Cinephilia and Its Influence -- The Personal Dimension -- The Functions of Personal Cinema -- François Ozon: A Case Study -- Symbolic Figuration and Ozon's Personal Myth -- The Common Denominator of the Cinéma d'Auteur -- Part III: Genres, Cycles, and Cinematic Forms -- 10 Contemporary French Comedy as Social Laboratory -- Popular, Local, and Starved of Affection -- Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis, a Popular French Comedy -- Comic Misadventures of Masculinity -- The Emergence of Auteur Comedy -- The Ambivalence of Auteur Comedy: Variations on Personal Relationships and Middle-Class Navel-Gazing -- Conclusion.

11 Between Tradition and Innovation -- The Paradoxes of the American-style Thriller: Desire for a Globalized Cinema and Rejection of the "New Europe" -- The Invention of a New Type of Transnational Crime Film -- The "Last Combatant": Defending French Identity in the Context of Globalization -- The Ideological Conservatism and Pessimism of the "Old-style" Film Noir: Cinematic Nostalgia and Suffering Men -- The Perils of Modern Capitalism and Supermodernity in the Social Crime Film: Between Documentary and (Masculine) Tragedy -- Conclusion -- 12 Contemporary French Horror Cinema -- The Place of Genre in French Cinema -- French Horror since 2000 -- Horror and the Body -- Historicizing Horror -- The Cutting Edge of Horror Spectatorship -- 13 The Historical Film and Contemporary French Cinema -- Genre, the Historical Film, and Historical Thinking -- The New History Film -- From Heritage Film to Biopic -- The Historical Film: Moving into the Twenty-First Century -- Sensationalism: The Spectacle of History -- The Age of Individual Moral Choice -- Collective Memory and Twentieth-Century History -- The Biopic and the Cult of the Individual -- Conclusion -- 14 Major Stars, the Heritage Film, and Patrimonial Values in Contemporary French Cinema -- French Heritage Stars: Trends and Parameters -- Responding to the Contemporary Sense of Crisis -- Bridging the Gap between Auteur Cinema and Commercial Cinema -- A Reaction to the Disappearance of the Classical Star System -- Countering the Supremacy of Hollywood -- The Younger Generation and the Uncertain Future of the Heritage Solution -- 15 French Animated Cinema, 1990 to Present -- Michel Ocelot's Model for Feature Film Production -- Toward a "New Wave" of French Animation -- French Animation: 2011-2012 -- Conclusion -- 16 Contemporary French Documentary -- What is a Documentary?.

The Market for French Documentary: A Deceptive Renaissance? -- Recent French Documentaries: People, Subjects, Forms -- Webdocs and the Future of Documentary -- Part IV: Gender and Sexuality -- 17 Pitiful Men, Instrumental Women -- At the Top of the Box Office, a Gendered Asymmetry -- 1994: Women Become Visible, But at What Price? -- 2010: The Diversity of the Masculine, the Archaism of the Feminine -- Conclusion -- 18 French Women Directors Since the 1990s -- Women's Access to Filmmaking in France: Old and New Trends -- Agnès Varda and The New Wave -- The Generation of 1968 -- The Fémis Generation -- Generation 2000 -- An(other) French Exception? Auteur Cinema / Popular Cinema -- "New" Genres: Rom-Com -- Queens of Comedy: The "Millionnaires" of the 2000 s -- First Films: And After? -- Conclusions -- 19 Modes of Masculinity in Contemporary French Cinema -- Creating/ive Masculinity: The Artistic Agency of Emmanuel Mouret and Romain Duris -- In the Wilderness: Atavistic Masculinity and the Cinéma du corps -- The Refracted Man: Representations of Masculinity in Films by Women -- 20 Hors milieu -- Visible -- Invisible -- Relational -- Cruising and Disorientation -- Male Space -- Conclusion -- 21 Sexually Explicit French Cinema -- Romance (Catherine Breillat, 1999) -- Baise-moi (Virginie Despentes and Carolie Trinh Thi, 2000) -- Choses secrètes (Jean-Claude Brisseau, 2002) -- Conclusion -- Part V: Continuities and Emerging Trends -- 22 Booking Passages -- Adaptations of Historical Novels -- Adaptations of Foreign Novels -- Adaptations of Recent Best-Selling French Novels -- Conclusion -- 23 The Return of Theatricality in French Cinema of the 1990s -- The Theatrical "Revival" -- Context, Successes, Strategies: The Spectacular -- Value Judgments: The Mingling of Categories -- A Typology of Theatrical Films: Continuities and Innovations.

The Place of the Spectator: Identification and Detachment -- On "Pop" Cinema -- Stereotypes and Performance -- An American Approach? -- 24 Soundscapes of Loss -- The Contemporary Musical -- Songs in Contemporary Non-Musical Films: Theoretical and Methodological Issues -- French-Language Songs -- English-Language Songs -- The Final Song in French -- Conclusion -- 25 From the Margins to the Center -- Globalization and Diversity in Twenty-First Century French Stardom -- Ethnic Casting: From the Margins to the Center -- The "Trojan Horse" of Comedy -- Trans-Ethnic to Color-Blind Casting: Erasure or Integration? -- The Power of Global Celebrity Culture -- 26 An Invention with a Future -- Vintage Cinema -- Only the Cinema -- Animation Retro-Style -- Twilight Visions -- Conclusion -- 27 The Amateur in Cinema, in France, Since 1990 -- Familial Space: The End of the Family Film -- The Space of "Amateur Cinema" -- The Space of "Different" Cinema -- Amateur Cinema Recognized at Last: The Space of the Document -- The Space of Everyday Communication: Beyond "Cinema," the Language of Images and Sounds -- Conclusion -- List of Contemporary French Films Since 1990 Cited in this Volume -- Bibliography -- Index -- End User License Agreement.