Studies in French Cinema Volume 8 Number 3 2008 Intellect Ltd Article. English language. doi: 10.1386/sfc.8.3.

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Unhappily ever after: visual irony and feminist strategy in Agns Vardas Le Bonheur
Rebecca J. DeRoo Washington University in St Louis Abstract
Although Agns Varda is recognized as an early avatar of feminist film-making, her 1965 film Le Bonheur remains a misunderstood work, frequently criticized for its ostensibly anti-feminist message. This essay excavates specific sources of imagery from French womens magazines that idealized the daily drudgery of the housewife and explains how Varda applied this imagery to her characters to challenge feminine ideals. This essay shows that Le Bonheur expands visually and thematically on two influential texts: Simone de Beauvoirs The Second Sex (1949) and Betty Friedans The Feminine Mystique (1963). As a director making feminist films in an unreceptive climate, Varda employed a sophisticated strategy of visual irony in Le Bonheur that disputes the films narrative and conservative notions of domestic harmony. We can thus discern new depths in post-war feminism and appreciate Vardas contribution to a complex, trans-Atlantic dialogue about the structure of domestic life.

Keywords
Varda feminism New Wave Le Bonheur womens periodicals visual irony

Agns Varda has been making films in France for over half a century, a number of which have received international recognition. Recently, she found herself the recipient of further international accolades, with a 2006 exhibition at the Cartier Foundation in Paris, work included in the 2004 Taipei Biennial and awards for her documentary Les Glaneurs et la glaneuse/ The Gleaners and I (2000). Whereas several of her films have been the subject of sustained scholarly dialogue, her career as a whole has yet to receive the same intensity of investigation. Last year, the Criterion Collection released four of Vardas most important films on an English-language DVD, 4 by Agns Varda, making her 1965 film Le Bonheur/Happiness newly available, and reconsideration timely. Although Le Bonheur won the Silver Bear at the 1965 Berlin Film Festival and the 1965 Louis Delluc Prize, it remains Vardas most misunderstood film, disparaged for its seemingly antifeminist themes and opacity. In brilliant, highly saturated colour, Le Bonheur presents a blissfully happy familys life, in which a housewife, Thrse, is completely and earnestly satisfied with her humble domestic duties (Figure 1). Her husband, though happy too, soon begins an affair; when he reveals his adultery to his wife, she commits suicide that same day. For viewers, an even greater shock comes when, approximately three months after Thrses death, Emilie, the mistress, accepts Franois proposal and seamlessly takes Thrses place, and the familys life continues as

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Figure 1: Le Bonheurs opening credits: the happy family strolling in the countryside. Cin-Tamaris, Film by Agns Varda, 1965.
1. See also Sadoul 1965: 8; RoparsWuilleumier argued that the prettiness of Vardas images are undercut by Le Bonheurs cruel ending (RoparsWuilleumier 1970: 172). 2. For a critical assessment of Vardas reception as a feminist film-maker, see Hayward 2000. On Vardas feminist activism, see Smith 1998: 8, 9, 103, 104. 3. See also S. 1965: 118. 4. Flitterman-Lewis groundbreaking text asserted that the films cyclical structure conveyed a critique of patriarchal social relations (Flitterman-Lewis 1996: 234).

apparently happily as before (Figure 2). A recent review in the New York Times described how: Still confounding critics more than forty years after its making, Le Bonheur could qualify as either the most drippingly sentimental film ever made or the most dryly ironic. Internally, the film offers no clues (Kehr 2008: B3). Although written in the last year, this review is emblematic of the films critical reception over the past four decades. Critics have condemned the films aesthetics: the insipidness of its colour, banal dialogue and sickly-sentimental characters (Sguin 1965: 56 7).1 In the last twenty years, even as feminist film historians have recognized Varda as a pioneer feminist film-maker,2 Le Bonheurs storyline has presented a problem with its unforgivably cruel treatment of the main female character, which continues to offend by its uncritical portrayal of a patriarchal family structure and love affair, and has conferred upon Varda a reputation for idealism and conventionality an inability to be socially critical (Forbes 1992: 87).3 Critics and film historians have focused primarily on the storyline of Le Bonheur, either praising the film for its beautiful tragic-romantic celebration of extramarital love or condemning the film for its disregard for conventional morality (Chevassu 1965: 95 7; Baroncelli 1965: 14; Charest 1965: 48; Anon. 1965: 48; Corbin 1965: 40; Armes 1985: 197). While critics and scholars have noted the possibility that the film might be ironic, their focus has primarily been on the ironies on the surface of the film (its clearly controversial happy ending and the assorted clichs in its sentimental dialogue) (Flitterman-Lewis 1996: 232; Hottell 1999: 61; Lejeune 1987: 214; Biro 1997: 7 8).4 What continues to be neglected in the study of Le Bonheur is a sustained examination of Vardas visual
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strategies and how they challenge not only the films plot but also its ostensible subject the enduring nature of domestic love. This essay will argue that Vardas irony is visual rather than narrative; Le Bonheurs visual rhetoric dismantles its sentimental storyline. When Le Bonheur was released, the daily toil of the French wife and mother had been glamourized by popular periodicals such as Elle and Marie Claire. This essay uses archival excavation of imagery from these magazines to explain how Varda applied their imagery to the subjects, characters and poses of Le Bonheur in order to interrogate myths of domestic harmony (Figures 3 and 4). Vardas innovative visual rhetoric silently challenges the dominant narrative and constructs the films ironies, prompting spectators to actively question feminine ideals. Varda also engages with two influential texts: Simone de Beauvoirs The Second Sex (1949)5 and Betty Friedans The Feminine Mystique (1963, translated into French in 1964),6 references that have not been previously noted.7 Varda employs explicit imagery from these texts in order to explore, like Beauvoir and Friedan, the dangers of pursuing feminine fulfilment through traditional routes. Beauvoir and Friedan examined the hidden politics of private life; they addressed womens return to the home and the rising birth rate after the Second World War, and revealed the power dynamics at work in the distribution of household labour that were ignored in popular representations of marital and maternal bliss. But Le Bonheur expands on these texts, considering the ways that social class as well as gender constrained the choices available to women, particularly housewives. Of course, in subsequent decades Beauvoir and Friedans texts were widely critiqued. But Vardas involvement with them in the mid-1960s was both politically radical and aesthetically innovative and until this point, unacknowledged. As a feminist film-maker working in the context of the New Wave whose aesthetics, Genevive Sellier has argued, were often gendered masculine (Sellier 2005: 17 9) Varda used a sophisticated, subtle strategy, veiling her feminist critique. This essay uncovers her strategy as well as uncharted territory in feminist film of the 1960s, perceiving new complexities in the feminist positions of the period and recognizing Vardas participation in a sophisticated, trans-Atlantic discourse that investigated the organization of domestic life after the Second World War.

5. Varda has recently named The Second Sex as an influence. Agns Varda, interview with the author, 29 June 2006. 6. Varda is fluent in English and thus had access to The Feminine Mystique before it was published in French. 7. Varda recounts that she wrote the script for Le Bonheur in four days and filmed between July and November 1964 (Varda 1994: 238).

The serving hand: the ideal and the reality

To understand the underlying critique of popular representations of womanhood that is woven into Le Bonheur, a close examination of the films imagery is required. To begin, let us focus on a short sequence of brief shots of closely-cropped images of Thrses hands as she carries out portions of her daily routines. Although the sequence lasts less than a minute, it has a tremendous impact on the overall significance of the film. It occurs twenty-one minutes into the film, following longer scenes of Franois at work (who is, notably, filmed in three-quarter shots, as an integral person) (Figure 5). The sequence focuses on Thrses arms and hands as she conducts her daily work: rolling out dough, ironing her sons clothes, putting the children to bed and so forth (Figures 6 8). The film cuts from task to task, showing approximately two to three seconds of each activity. Upon first viewing, this sequence might seem unremarkable a representation of her daily domestic work, evoking the passage of time and Thrses
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Figure 2: The final scene of Le Bonheur: the reconstituted family visits the countryside again. Cin-Tamaris, Film by Agns Varda, 1965.

Figure 3: With a moments pause, Thrse (Claire Drouot) reads her magazine. Cin-Tamaris, Film by Agns Varda, 1965.
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Figure 4: Marie Claire cover featuring Claire and Jean-Claude Drouot (the hero of the television series Thierry La Fronde). The accompanying article portrays them as a model couple and happy family. Their children, Sandrine and Olivier Drouot, play their children in Le Bonheur. Les Thierry La Fronde, Marie Claire, 117 (July 1964). industriousness. But the similarity of Thrses hands to the imagery in womens magazines is striking, and once the connection is made it becomes evident that the films agenda in using this imagery is entirely different: where the magazines sought to glamourize domestic chores and represent an ideal to emulate, Le Bonheur interrogates such idealizations of happiness, exposing the detrimental effects of housework on women.
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Figure 5: Franois (Jean-Claude Drouot) working in his uncles carpentry shop. Cin-Tamaris, Film by Agns Varda, 1965.

Figure 6: Thrses hands as she rolls out dough. Cin-Tamaris, Film by Agns Varda, 1965.
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Figure 7: Thrses hands as she irons her sons clothes. Cin-Tamaris, Film by Agns Varda, 1965.

Figure 8: Thrses hands as she puts the children to bed. Cin-Tamaris, Film by Agns Varda, 1965.
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8. According to a survey done by Elle magazine, by 1955, one in six women read Elle (Ross 1995: 209).

For viewers in the 1960s, the images of hands in this sequence would have been oddly familiar from other contexts. A number of critics recognized that the film adopted popular culture aesthetics, with its highly saturated colour and images of happiness evoking advertising and womens magazines. Jean-Louis Bory contended that one would think [Varda] made the film for the readers [lectrices] of Elle magazine (Bory 1973: 299). Pierre Philippe, writing for Cinma, saw Varda striving to emulate high-art motifs and colour palettes in the films aesthetic, but unconsciously falling into crass, feminine, commercial genres: department-store window displays and the Bon March department-store catalogue (Philippe 1965: 108). In contrast, Susan Hayward has persuasively argued that Vardas stylized use of colour was subversive and deliberate (Hayward 1992: 32; Hayward 2005: 220). Indeed, Varda wanted to critique Elle magazine, not glorify it. Particular sources for these images exist, what I will term the image of the serving hand: the hand of the mother and wife, cropped from the complete body of the woman. This serving hand was frequently used for advertising domestic products in womens magazines, such as Elle and Marie Claire. As Evelyne Sullerot and Kristin Ross have demonstrated, these magazines enjoyed thriving success in this period (Sullerot 1963: 83; Ross 1995: 78).8 Their articles and advertisements often featured a middle-class housewife who had married early, borne her children young and become consumed in providing a smooth and serene home environment for her family. Although often appearing in subservient roles, these womens hands and by implication, their owners were intended to represent the fulfilment available to women in domestic life. None of the critical literature on Le Bonheur connected the film sequences of housewives hands to one of the dominant advertising devices of the day or tried to reconcile them with the films content. In fact, the film borrows the image of the serving hand for an ironic purpose; it serves as the key to Vardas visual counter-narrative, which contests the conservative notions of domestic harmony that the film seems to support. In order to understand how Varda manipulates the motif of the serving hand, it is vital to examine how these ads operate visually. These magazine ads make a direct appeal to the reader as an individual, emphasizing the positive effects of the product when used for the readers own family. The advertisements imply that the woman who chooses the product demonstrates love for her family. A 1963 General Electric (GE) advertisement from Elle magazine, for instance, juxtaposes a close-up image of a womans hand ironing with a blurred image of a child playing in the background, suggesting that the mothers work is done out of devotion to her family (Figure 9). Frequently, the advertisements illustrations and text appealed to womens sense of discrimination and savoir faire. A 1962 Gervais ad from Marie Claire, for example, in which a mothers hand feeds her smiling baby a spoonful of soft cheese, illustrates that the mother is making her child happy and also knows what is best for him or her (Figure 10). This is reinforced by the ads caption, which emphasizes nutritional benefits and implies that the mother must have taken great care in selecting the best product for her child. To complement this advertising, the magazines often featured articles that emphasized housewives skills by again using the convention of close-up images of womens hands to demonstrate the series of
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Figure 9: General Electric Iron Advertisement featuring the housewifes serving hand. Elle, 905 (1963), p. 194. Courtesy of the Bibliothque Forney, Paris.

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Figure 10: Gervais Cheese Advertisement, utilizing the mothers serving hand, Marie Claire, 92 (1962), p. 186. Courtesy of the Bibliothque Forney, Paris. steps involved in cooking a meal or completing odd jobs around the house. For example, a December 1961 article on making candy describes the detailed steps necessary to prepare the recipe properly (Figure 11). Illustrations demonstrate the housewifes specialized skills and suggest that she derives a feeling of accomplishment from completing these tasks: precisely the myth of domestic labour that Beauvoir attacks in The Second
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Figure 11: Feature recipe showing the detailed work of the housewifes hands, Bonbons au fondant, Elle, 836 (1961), p. 65. Courtesy of the Bibliothque Forney, Paris.

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Sex. According to Beauvoir, the accomplishment derived from these tasks was fleeting, meaningless and even dangerous, because it implied that a housewife could only find happiness through pleasing her husband and children. The character of Thrse in Le Bonheur differs from the model middleclass housewife portrayed in the magazines: she is working-class and works from home as a dressmaker. Nonetheless, in many respects, she resembles the ideal homemaker: her life revolves around caring for her family. The connection between the film and the womens magazines is seen not only in the construction of the character of Thrse, however, but also in the specific images through which her character is portrayed. In the striking sequence of brief shots of Thrses hands, the film subtly deviates from the magazine images it references (see Figures 68). For instance, the film shots depict simple activities, not the detailed, complex steps portrayed in magazine features. Whereas the hands depicted in the Elle articles use a variety of implements to blend ingredients and prepare a recipe, in the film, Thrses hands enact basic gestures. Also, in the series of shots, the same gesture is often repeated: for example, Thrses hands roll the rolling pin back and forth several times over a lump of dough. By depicting the repetition inherent in the activity, Varda presents the tasks as dull and unfulfilling. Whereas the magazine text and images imply the womans responsibility and know-how, the film portrays only simple duties with no such flattering commentary. Furthermore, all but one of the shots omit the images of smiling family members that are used in the magazine ads to convey the housewifes success: the evidence of a job well done. Varda borrows the gesture of hands at work, but by isolating them withholds their emotional appeal, creating the effect of hollowness rather than happiness. Lastly, Vardas serving hand imagery jumps from one activity to another in a sequence of shots that show no beginning or end to each task and thus convey the sense of continually rushing from chore to chore. For example, the film cuts abruptly from Thrses hands watering a plant to her hands ironing her sons clothing. Instead of glamourizing housework as the advertisements do, these filmic techniques underscore the constant, perpetually unfinished nature of domestic work, undermining any sense of accomplishment and affirming the very aspects of housework that the advertisers sought to conceal. Friedan, who had been studying the rhetoric of comparable advertisements in 1950s and 1960s America, explained that such ads were designed to make a housewife feel like a noble protector of her family and make housework a matter of knowledge and skill, rather than a matter of brawn and dull, unremitting effort (Friedan 1963: 206). Yet advertisers themselves privately noted, as seen in the following quotation from Friedans interview of an anonymous advertising executive, that a housewifes work often promised little esteem and few rewards: her time-consuming housekeeping is not only endless, it is a task for which society hires the lowliest, least trained, most trod-upon individuals and groups. Anyone with a strong enough back (and small enough brain) can do these menial chores (Friedan 1963: 205). The films focus on Thrses hands when conducting these repetitive, banal chores with the rest of the woman notably absent from the screen suggests her mental vacancy during domestic routines.
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Figure 12: Shots of Emilies daily work (after she has joined the family) that echo the images of Thrses hands: ironing the daughters dress. Cin-Tamaris, Film by Agns Varda, 1965.

Significantly, this focus on housewives hands is repeated in the last five minutes of the film. When Emilie, Franois mistress, takes Thrses place in the home, she is similarly represented by a sequence of shots of anonymous hands fulfilling domestic chores that strikingly resemble those of the first wife. For example, Emilies hands iron the daughters dress, feed the son and tuck the children into bed (Figures 1214). This sequence occurs between other scenes of happy family life and work, and thus ostensibly conveys a return to order and tranquillity. Yet what this return baldly implies that Thrse and Emilies roles in this family are similar to the point of being indistinguishable is surprising (if not shocking) given the films storyline. The first wife (a supposedly integral feature of the family) is replaced easily, with hardly any disruption of domestic harmony. Here the dialogue between the magazine ads and the film is striking and Vardas critique of popular images of femininity deepens, extending from exposing the strenuous nature of housework to suggesting how this work and more specifically, the glamourization of this work may hinder the development of an individual identity. To trace Vardas broader critique, we must again return to the ads that the film references. Take, for example, the depersonalization that is a common feature of these ads, which withhold the identity of the owner of the serving hands. One could argue that this depersonalization has a specific purpose: to promote the viewers identification. For instance, the hand in the GE iron ad conveys that the housewifes lovingly performed tasks enable her family members lives and encourages readers to pursue this
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Figure 13: Shots of Emilies daily work (after she has joined the family) that echo the images of Thrses hands: feeding the child. Cin-Tamaris, Film by Agns Varda, 1965.

Figure 14: Shots of Emilies daily work (after she has joined the family) that echo the images of Thrses hands: tucking the children into bed. Cin-Tamaris, Film by Agns Varda, 1965.
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model (see Figure 9). In Le Bonheur, Varda portrays a similar depersonalization via the replacement of Thrses hands with those of Emilie. But in the case of the film, the anonymity is staged and false, since the viewers know who conducts the tasks in the early sequences (Thrse) and who carries them out later (Emilie). The film not only exposes the false nature of this depersonalization (that someone real is always doing these menial tasks), but also the hidden subtext of these types of ads: the implication that these activities do not in fact require unique, individual skills and that anyone can do them. Here, Varda draws attention to the strangeness of using a pair of disembodied hands to represent a whole woman, and so the repetition of the imagery at the end of the film, in which the hands now stand in for Emilie instead of Thrse, conveys a cynical critique: the importance of a woman in a family is tied to her role, rather than her individuality. By examining this lack of individuality, Varda connected with a line of feminist thought pioneered by Beauvoir. In The Second Sex, Beauvoir conveyed the disappointment that developed when women internalized their expected roles as housewives and mothers. In these roles, a woman suffers from being reduced to pure generality. She is the housekeeper, the wife, the mother. But modern Western woman wants, on the contrary, to feel that people distinguish her as this housekeeper, this wife, this mother (Beauvoir 1971: 519). In sum, women could express little of their individuality within the roles of wife and mother. According to Vardas film, the message propagated by womens magazines that family life was the path to love and satisfaction was not only problematic but dangerous, because a woman who strove only to achieve family life could lose herself to such an extent in her role that she could one day be easily replaced. In Le Bonheur, if Thrse corresponds to the traditional homemaker, then Emilie represents what was termed in womens magazines of the late 1950s and 1960s the modern woman, an evolution of the housewife seen as free from the drudgery of the previous generation: she had a career, embraced popular culture and was more sexually liberated.9 Emilie identifies with popular culture: on her apartment walls she displays posters of movie stars, including Brigitte Bardot and Marilyn Monroe (Figure 15). Furthermore, she works outside the home, lives independently in an apartment and pursues an affair with a married man, with no promise of marriage. As Thrses opposite, Emilie appears to be her own woman, with an independent mind and a sense of her own desires. When Franois asks her to marry him, she hesitates, explaining that she is afraid of taking someone elses place. But after a moment of doubt, Emilie accepts his proposal, with the words: You are my happiness. You and your life. Le Bonheur implies that romantic love is a sham for the modern woman, requiring a sacrifice of self that leads to the same destiny and drudgery as for the traditional homemaker. The repetition at the end of the film underscores this destiny, creating a cyclical plot structure and enhancing the films irony. The final scene of the film echoes and inverts the first image of the film, presented during the opening credits: the happy family holds hands, walking towards the audience, with summer sunflowers blossoming in the foreground (see Figure 1). The final scene portrays the family (with Emilie, rather than Thrse)
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9. On the figure of the modern woman, see Weiner 2001. On the 1960s increase in married French women working outside the home, see Guilbert and Colin 1962: 271.

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Figure 15: Franois (Jean-Claude Drouot) and Emilie (Marie-France Boyer) meet to pursue their affair; pop culture posters decorate her apartment. Cin-Tamaris, Film by Agns Varda, 1965.

Figure 16: Contrasting domestic responsibilities: Franois shaves while Thrse feeds the children dinner and clears the table. Cin-Tamaris, Film by Agns Varda, 1965.
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holding hands and walking into the distance, surrounded by the brilliant colours (and dying leaves) of autumn (see Figure 2). The films final scene is suffused with gold: the couples golden sweaters echo the sunlight on the autumn leaves. There is a literal and figurative gilded quality to the familys life, rendering visually Beauvoirs abstract concept of gilded mediocrity:
[W]hat bourgeois optimism has to offer the engaged girl is certainly not love; the bright ideal that is held up to her is that of happiness, which means the ideal of quiet equilibrium in a life of immanence and repetition. A gilded mediocrity lacking ambition and passion, aimless days indefinitely repeated, life that slips away toward death without questioning its purpose this is what they meant by happiness.
(Beauvoir 1971: 447)

Varda also suggests the duplicitous nature of the gilded, proper domestic life. The counter-narrative silently undermines the golden quality of the final scene because Varda has portrayed the results of this type of unquestioning happiness.

Domestic labour versus paid labour

Visual juxtapositions throughout the film reinforce the disparities between Franois and Thrses work. For instance, in one view of life at home, a sliding door functions as a split screen, dividing the image in two (Figure 16). On the left (in the bathroom), Franois is shaving, preparing for a night at the movies with Thrse; on the right (in the dining room), Thrse finishes feeding the kids their dinner and clears the table. She then comes into the bathroom and (rather than tending to herself ) puts away Franois toothbrush, toothpaste and cup and hangs up his washcloth and towel. This simultaneous depiction of their activities contrasts their different domestic roles and emphasizes that the home is not a domestic retreat for women, but a site of labour and a continuous second shift after the workday has finished. The film goes on to assert that not only is the nature of the husband and wifes work starkly different, but that their different working conditions promote a supportive environment for the husband and a detrimental one for the wife, hindering the development of her individual identity. (Franois is shown working in three-quarter shots, as a complete person (see Figure 5); in contrast to Thrse and Emilie, his hands are not severed from his self.) The film makes direct comparisons between Franois and his wives labour by cutting back and forth between them. In one scene at the carpentry shop, Franois and his colleagues chat and have lunch. The next scene shows Thrse at home interrupting her sewing to check on her children. By juxtaposing Franois and Thrses work, Varda underscores the difference between the types of labour and work situations: Franois carpentry is public, he has colleagues and he has structure: leisure with lunchtime and time off at night. The scenes of Thrse (and later Emilie) illustrate what Friedan and other feminists at the time called life behind the scenes or the invisible labour of housework. The work takes place in the domestic sphere, it is isolating and, often, not socially recognized or valued.
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10. See the documentary on the making of Le Bonheur (Bergeret 1964). 11. Hayward explains that Varda did not receive the same sort of backing as the other [New Wave] film-makers (Hayward 1992: 31). On Bodards decision to produce Le Bonheur, see Bodard 1964: 5.

Yet Varda departs from Friedan and Beauvoir by maintaining the need, if not value, of housework. Both Friedan and Beauvoir were unapologetic in their dismissal of housework and were implicitly writing for educated women for whom a career offered an escape from domestic duties. Varda broadened these contemporary arguments by depicting working-class women and addressing the matter of the double shift. Moreover, Vardas argument is a nuanced midpoint between magazines messages that housework and childcare constitute housewives identity and lead to unquestionable happiness and Beauvoirs scathing critique that housework is merely maintenance and bears no greater social good. Varda demonstrates how popular representations of housework dangerously circumscribe womens identities, but she also acknowledges the social necessity of their labour. The character of Franois has a belated recognition of the importance of Thrses home maintenance and care-giving: just after her death, Franois talks with his relatives at the wake, and they all decide that he will be unable to raise his children without a wife (the children will go to live with their aunt and uncle instead). Whereas Franois recognition is belated (perhaps in keeping with his character), the film has implicitly argued all along for the importance of housework by allotting it so much screen time. Throughout the film, Varda allows the camera to linger on scenes that would typically be omitted from a love story because they would be considered trivial or inconsequential: Thrse shopping, cooking, tending to the children. In fact, by cutting back and forth between shots of Franois and Thrses (or Emilies) work, the film shows womens invisible domestic labour and insists that the activity be considered on a par with, or at least compared with, paid work outside the home.

Vardas filmic and feminist strategies

In order to understand Vardas filmic and feminist strategies, it is vital to examine her position as a film-maker and the context in which she worked. By 1965, when Le Bonheur was released, Varda had directed four short films and two feature-length films (the most recent of which, Clo de 5 7/Cleo from 5 to 7 [1961], had garnered considerable critical acclaim), and held exceptional status as one of two or three female film-makers in France who were gaining prominence.10 She was thirty-seven years old, and married to film-maker Jacques Demy. Although Varda was certainly influenced by, and contributed to, the New Wave (Vincendeau 2007: n.p.), she was in fact marginalized from the movement for multiple reasons: her films were not produced during the heyday of the movement (1958 to 1962), she did not participate in the theoretical debates of the Cahiers du cinma and, as Sellier and Hayward have argued, as a female director, she received an ambivalent reception and had difficulty obtaining funding for her films (Sellier 2005: 57; Hayward 1992: 31).11 Although Varda used methods of the New Wave, including visual juxtapositions and a nonlinear narrative, critics from the 1960s to the present have largely remained silent on the commentary that these methods convey: namely, a resistance to the notion of uncomplicated happiness for women. Le Bonheurs similarity to films by other New Wave directors has remained unacknowledged. In 1964, Jean-Luc Godard also addressed the
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plight of the contemporary housewife in Une femme marie/A Married Woman. Sellier has argued that male New Wave film-makers, such as Godard, asserted themselves as creators of an elite culture, tacitly gendered masculine, over and against mass consumer culture, which was portrayed in their films by the figure of the alienated woman (Sellier 2005: 17, 19, 64, 188). In Une femme marie, Godard filmed the main character as if recording her social and sexual alienation. As in Le Bonheur, womens magazines were invoked Godards main character also reads them but, as Sellier underscores, the New Wave had an ambivalent relationship with feminine periodicals: when critics wanted to condemn a film, they repeatedly referenced romance stories and womens magazines (Sellier 2005: 64). Godard highlighted the gap between the magazines and reality, and, most significantly, how the magazines operated to produce feminine alienation. If one accepts the dominant narrative or overlooks the irony in Le Bonheur, however, Varda seems reverently to do precisely that which Godard and other members of the New Wave interrogated, both in terms of her aesthetic (which critics saw as crassly commercial, emulating advertising and womens magazines) and the sentimental subject of the happy family (which is the stock material of feminine periodicals). Whereas Godard appears as a detached observer, Varda seems to participate fully, inhabiting this feminine, popular culture in order to uncover its failings. Because Varda entered myths of domesticity in order to challenge them, Le Bonheur has been dismissed as a product of the feminine culture it questioned. Critic Philippe went so far as to call the film the most recent, ignoble work de dame Varda, implying that this was an ouvrage de dame, a pejorative term for womens work, suggesting it belonged to a minor, feminine genre (Philippe 1965: 109). If critics such as Philippe did not recognize the films visual irony, Varda herself has done little, until recently, to evoke the films surprising radical subtext.12 In the 1960s, Varda even denied her feminist approach. In this era preceding the Womens Liberation Movement, film had not been widely used in France as a medium for addressing feminist issues. When asked whether the title of her film was ironic, Varda baldly refuted the claim, insisting that the film simply explored individuals aptitudes for achieving happiness (Baby 1965: 12; Bergeret 1964). She was clearly reluctant to discuss the feminist subtext of her film. Irony thus functioned as a sophisticated strategy in a climate where there was little support for feminist issues to be openly presented in fiction film: Varda criticized the narrow parameters of feminine satisfaction while avoiding the negative repercussions of such a radical viewpoint. Yet this tactic of avoidance opened the possibility that Le Bonheurs feminist counter-narrative could be overlooked. Even those familiar with contemporary feminist conversations may not have recognized that Vardas vision was more inclusive than some of the most prominent feminist texts of the time: she directed attention to the precarious position of working-class women within the organization of the household. To the very end, however, the films working-class women appear happy and do not acknowledge the irony of their situations: it is for the viewer to recognize the distinction. As a result, viewers then and now have mistaken the films interrogation of the status quo for an endorsement of it.
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12. She recently admitted in an interview with the author, I wanted to critique the idea of happiness in Elle magazine (DeRoo 2006).

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13. I would like to thank the Institut National dHistoire de lArt, Paris, for supporting archival research for this article. A portion of this paper was presented at the 2007 College Art Association Conference; I thank the session coorganizers, Norma Broude and Mary Garrard, and members of the audience for their valuable comments. Saher Alam, Anton DiSclafani, Andrea Friedman, Joe Loewenstein, Bill Paul and Alicia Walker offered excellent suggestions on drafts. All translations, unless otherwise indicated, are my own.

By tracing the imagery in Le Bonheur to contemporary womens magazines and feminist debates, I have sought to excavate the broader themes in the film, in particular its critique of idealized notions of love and femininity. If the messages that women were receiving from the popular press were that their happiness depended primarily on love, marriage and homemaking, then Varda offers this cautionary caveat: there are no easy prescriptions for happiness; that is, happiness is not an automatic byproduct of marriage and motherhood. Nor is happiness a static state of being. Happiness is a theme that deserves, perhaps requires, examination. Le Bonheur prompts us to question ideals of feminine happiness through the image of the serving hand. If viewers did not recognize or contextualize the image, however, they might also have failed to notice that Varda employs it self-consciously and subverts it through visual irony. Since Le Bonheurs characters do not acknowledge the films irony, the film asks a great deal of its viewers, asking for their participation in deciphering what the characters cannot: a feminist critique.13 References
Anon. (1965), Le Bonheur, Variety (New York), 3 March, p. 48. Armes, R. (1985), French Cinema, New York: Oxford University Press. Baby, Y. (1965), Le Monde, 25 February, p. 12. Baroncelli, J. de (1965), Le Bonheur, Le Monde, 26 February, p. 14. Beauvoir, S. de (1971[1949]), The Second Sex (trans. H. M. Parshley), New York: Knopf. Bergeret, J.-C. (1964), Agns et Le Bonheur, France: ORTF. Biro, Y. (1997[1991]), Caryatids of Time: Temporality in the Cinema of Agnes Varda, Performing Arts Journal, 19:3, pp. 110. Bodard, M. (1964), Jai choisi Le Bonheur, La Cinmatographie franaise, 2080, p. 5. Bory, J.-L. (1973), Ombre vive, Paris: 10/18. Charest, G. (1965), Lger et grave, Objectif, 34, p. 48. Chevassu, F. (1965), Le Bonheur, Image et son, revue de cinma, 184, pp. 957. Corbin, M. (1965), Le Bonheur, Jeune cinma, 6, p. 40. DeRoo, R. J. (2006), unpublished interview with Agns Varda, 29 June. Flitterman-Lewis, S. (1996[1990]), To Desire Differently: Feminism and the French Cinema, New York: Columbia University Press. Forbes, J. (1992), The Cinema in France after the New Wave, London: British Film Institute. Friedan, B. (1963), The Feminine Mystique, New York: Dell. Guilbert, M. and Colin, M. (1962), La Rpartition par sexe, in G. Friedmann and P. Naville (eds), Trait de sociologie du travail, Paris: Armand Colin. Hayward, S. (1992), Ahistory of French Cinema: 18951991, Pioneering FilmMakers (Guy, Dulac, Varda) and Their Heritage, Paragraph, 15:1, pp. 1937. Hayward, S. (2000), Beyond the Gaze and into femme-filmcriture, in S. Hayward and G. Vincendeau (eds), French Film: Texts and Contexts, New York: Routledge, pp. 28596. Hayward, S. (2005), French National Cinema, London: Routledge. Hottell, R. (1999), Including Ourselves: The Role of Female Spectators in Agns Vardas Le Bonheur and LUne chante, lautre pas, Cinema Journal, 38:2, pp. 5271.

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Kehr, D. (2008), Critics Choice: New DVDs: 4 by Agns Varda, New York Times, 22 January, p. B3. Lejeune, P. (1987), Le Cinma des femmes, Paris: Editions Atlas. Philippe, P. (1965), Cinma, 94 (March), pp. 1079. Ropars-Wuilleumier, M.-C. (1970[1965]), LEcran de la mmoire, Paris: Seuil. Ross, K. (1995), Fast Cars, Clean Bodies. Decolonization and the Reordering of French Culture, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. S., A. (1965), Le Bonheur, Monthly Film Bulletin, 32:379, p. 118. Sadoul, G. (1965), Un rgne heureux, Les Lettres franaises, 410 March, p. 8. Seguin, L. (1965), Le Bonheur, Positif, 70, pp. 568. Sellier, G. (2005), La Nouvelle vague: un cinma au masculin singulier, Paris: CNRS. Smith, A. (1998), Agns Varda, Manchester: Manchester University Press. Sullerot, E. (1963), La Presse fminine, Paris: Armand Colin. Varda, A. (1994), Varda par Agns, Paris: Cahiers du cinma. Vincendeau, G. (2007), How Agns Varda Invented The New Wave, in 4 by Agns Varda, Criterion DVD Collection. Weiner, S. (2001), Enfants Terribles: Youth and Femininity in the Mass Media in France, 19451968, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Suggested citation
DeRoo, R. J. (2008), Unhappily ever after: visual irony and feminist strategy in Agns Vardas Le Bonheur, Studies in French Cinema 8: 3, pp. 189209, doi: 10.1386/sfc.8.3.189/1

Contributor details
Rebecca J. DeRoo is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Art History and Archaeology at Washington University, St Louis, specializing in contemporary art, photography and film. Her book, The Museum Establishment and Contemporary Art: The Politics of Artistic Display in France after 1968 (Cambridge, 2006), was awarded the 2008 Laurence Wylie Prize in French Cultural Studies. Professor DeRoo has contributed to The Oxford Art Journal, Parallax and Critique dArt. She has received fellowships from the Fulbright Commission, the Javits Foundation and the Killam Foundation, as well as an award from the National Endowment for the Humanities. She is currently at work on a monograph, Activating the Audience: The Feminist Films of Agns Varda. Contact: Department of Art History and Archaeology, Washington University in St Louis, Campus Box 1189, One Brookings Drive, St Louis, Missouri, 63130, USA. E-mail: rderoo@artsci.wustl.edu

Unhappily ever after: visual irony and feminist strategy in Agns

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