L' L'Homme blessé (Volume 1) (Queer Film Classics) - Softcover

Payne, Robert

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0228011043 ISBN 13: 9780228011040

Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2022

Synopsis

Drawn into the circuit of men cruising for sex in and around a train station, restless adolescent Henri begins a frenzied pursuit of a dangerously charismatic older man, with sometimes violent and ultimately tragic consequences. Premiering at Cannes in 1983, Patrice Chéreau’s L’Homme blessé (The Wounded Man) was one of France’s first major cinematic releases to depict homosexual desire and queer sexual cultures in an unapologetic and complex way. It is a film that continues to resonate to this day.L’Homme blessé generated controversy with its dark tone and its treatment of an adolescent’s obsessive homoerotic desire, as well as Chéreau’s denial that the film is about homosexuality. Robert Payne guides readers through the powerfully erotic underworld of L’Homme blessé, where the film sidesteps fixed identities and draws viewers into the ambiguous spaces of queer desire, and argues that its visual composition depicts queer ways of seeing and generates queer ways of feeling. A look into the production’s historical and cultural backdrop uncovers a behind-the-scenes story of power and desire between its two screenwriters and the presence of HIV/AIDS hovering ominously and inevitably off screen. Original interviews trace the lives of L’Homme blessé across three continents and three decades and measure the film’s enduring value beyond its prestigious debut.Payne cements L’Homme blessé in its rightful place within queer cultural history and introduces the film to a new generation of viewers.

About this title

About the Author

Robert Payne is associate professor in the Communication, Media, and Culture Department at the American University of Paris.

From the Back Cover

Series Editors: Matthew Hays and Thomas Waugh

The enduring commercial success of LGBTQ2I films over recent generations offers proof of widespread interest in queer film within both pop culture and academia. Not only are recent works riding the wave of the new maturity of queer film culture, but a century of queer and proto-queer classics are in busy circulation thanks to a burgeoning online queer cinephile culture and have been brought back to life by omnipresent festivals and revivals. Meditations on individual films from queer perspectives are particularly urgent, unlocking new understandings of political as well as aesthetic and personal concerns.

Queer Film Classics at McGill-Queen's University Press emphasizes good writing, rigorous but accessible scholarship, and personal, reflective thinking about the significance of each film - writing that is true to the film, original, and enlightening and enjoyable for film buffs, scholars, and students alike. Books in the series are short - roughly 40,000 words - but well illustrated and allow for considerable depth. Exploring historical, authorial, and production contexts and drawing on filmic analysis, these open-ended essays also develop the author's personal interests or a subjective reading of the work's sexual identity discourses or reception. The series aims to meet the diversity, quality, and originality of classics in the queer film canon, broadly conceived, with equally compelling writing and critical insight. Books in the series have much to teach us, not only about the art of film but about the queer ways in which films can transmit our meanings, our stories, and our dreams.

Edition details

• Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press
• Publication date: 2022
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0228011043
• ISBN 13: 9780228011040
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 144