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ReFocus: The International Directors Series

ReFocus: The Films of Denis Villeneuve

Edited by Jeri English and Marie Pascal

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£95.00

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About this book

Critically examines the work of Québécois filmmakers Denis Villeneuve
  • Engages with all of Villeneuve’s feature films (some individually and some comparatively), including those that have up until now received little critical attention
  • Proposes original analyses of all the films from multiple critical and theoretical approaches (thematic, sociocultural, formal, ontological, feminist, allegorical, narrative, spectatorial, intertextual) which both contribute to current scholarship and serve as a resource for undergraduate and graduate students
  • Offers a clear overview of Villeneuve’s contributions to contemporary cinema, both in a Québécois context and with regards to his Hollywood films

The nimble, creative spirit of Québécois screenwriter and filmmaker, Denis Villeneuve, is reflected in his varied body of work. Villeneuve explores questions of alterity and interculturality, of language and identity, of memory and forgetting, of violence and retribution, throughout his filmography: Un 32 août sur terre (1998), Maelström (2000), Polytechnique (2009), Incendies (2010), Enemy (2013), Prisoners (2013), Sicario (2015), Arrival (2016), Blade Runner 2049 (2017) and Dune: Part 1 (2021).

This edited collection brings together original works of scholarship on all of Villeneuve’s feature films from different theoretical approaches, in order to deepen our understanding of this important and yet relatively understudied director; read individually or as a collective whole, these studies reveal important elements of Villeneuve’s filmic practice, as well as the evolutions of his oeuvre.

Reviews

This valuable collection provides a rich discussion of Villeneuve’s oeuvre, from Quebec indie -auteur to Hollywood blockbuster. Individual essays provide deep analysis of formal elements including the use of sound, camera-movement, and editing alongside examinations of such themes as gender, trauma and memory, monsters and temporality, nationhood, subjectivity and identity.

This rich volume of essays on the work of Denis Villeneuve provides a comprehensive study of his filmmaking to date. Exploring Villeneuve’s position as Quebec and Hollywood director in chapters ranging from his early auteur films to major blockbusters, the contributors offer fascinating and insightful readings of his varied oeuvre.

Table of contents

Introduction: Jeri English and Marie Pascal

1. Denis Villeneuve, Québécois and Citizen of the World - Amy J. Ransom

2. Science Fiction, National Rebirth, and Messianism in Un 32 août sur terre - Kester Dyer

3. Close-ups and Gros plans: Denis Villeneuve the Macrophage - Marie Pascal

4. Reproductive Futurism and the Woman Problem in the Films of Denis Villeneuve - Brenda Longfellow

5. Filming Missing Bodies: ‘Bodiless-Character Films’ and the Presence of Absence in Denis Villeneuve’s Cinema - Emily Sanders

6. Life, Risk, and the Structuring Force of Exposure in Maelström - Terrance McDonald

7. The Self as Other and the Other as Self: Identity, Doubling and Misrecognition in Incendies, Enemy and Blade Runner 2049 - Jeri English

8. Villeneuve’s Hidden Monsters: Representations of Evil in Prisoners and Sicario - Alex Frohlick

9. Beyond Complexity: Narrative Experimentation and Genre Development in Enemy - Melanie Kreitler

10. Subjectivity and Cinematic Space in Blade Runner 2049 - Christophe Gelly, David Roche

11. Mere Data Makes a Man: Artificial Intelligences in Blade Runner 2049 - Kingsley Marshall

12. Shortening the Way: Villeneuve’s Dune as Film and as Project - Trip McCrossin

About the contributors

Jeri English

Jeri English is an Associate Professor of French and Women’s & Gender Studies at the University of Toronto Scarborough (Canada). Her teaching and research areas include feminist literary, film and cultural theories, contemporary French cinema and 20th and 21st century French women writers. She recently published a chapter in Screening Youth: Contemporary French and Francophone Cinema (EUP, 2019), and has an article appearing in a forthcoming issue of Dalhousie French Studies. Her current research project examines the monstrous, the abject and the uncanny in contemporary Science Fiction films.

Marie Pascal

Marie Pascal is an Assistant Professor of French and Québec literature and film at King’s University College at Western University (Canada). Her research deals with the questions of the Other and abjection in the arts. She has also written on the reception of cinematographic adaptations – which she calls ‘transcreations’ – in the Québec canon. She has previously published works in Revue d’études cinématographiques, and ReFocus: The Films of Xavier Dolan (EUP, 2019). She is currently directing an issue of Dalhousie French Studies dedicated to the concept of abjection in literature and cinema and recently founded Transcr(é)ation, a journal dedicated to adaptation and transmediality.

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