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tim palmer
as an art form and a professional prac- poraries (Neupert 299–304), however, this is a
tice, cinema thrives on its ability to induce group connected more loosely, through com-
forceful, vivid sensation—a tendency that in monalities of content and technique. The recent
some cases is taken to extremes. Yet while the work of Denis, Dumont, and Noé, a trio best
majority of world film engages its viewers to thought of as filmmaking figureheads or cata-
convey satisfaction or gratification, there occa- lysts, offers incisive social critiques, portraying
sionally emerges an opposite tendency, aggres- contemporary society as isolating, unpredict-
sive and abrasive forms of cinema that seek a ably horrific and threatening, a nightmarish
more confrontational experience. It is in this series of encounters in which personal relation-
context that we can begin to gauge the impact ships—families, couples, friendships, partner-
of a group of high profile French-language film- ships—disintegrate and fail, often violently. But
makers, notably Claire Denis, Bruno Dumont, at the center of this cycle, a focal point most
and Gaspar Noé. Polarizing recent films such famously emblematized by Trouble Every Day,
as Denis’s Trouble Every Day (2001), Dumont’s is an emphasis on human sexuality rendered in
Twentynine Palms (2003), and Noé’s Irrevers- stark and graphic terms. The filmmaking agenda
ible (2002) have, in fact, already become icons here is an increasingly explicit dissection of the
of notoriety in international film culture. To body and its sexual behaviors: unmotivated or
some, this group and the related projects of predatory sex, sexual conflicts, male and female
certain French contemporaries embody film- rape, disaffected and emotionless sex, ambigu-
making at the cutting edge: incisive, unflinch- ously consensual sexual encounters, arbitrary
ing, uncompromising. To others, such cinema sex stripped of conventional or even nominal
is as indefensible as it is grotesque, pushing gestures of romance. Forcible and transgressive,
screen depictions of physicality to unwelcome this is a cinema of brutal intimacy.
limits, raising basic issues of what is accept- But there is more to this cycle than the sheer
able on-screen. Either way, forty years on from depiction of sexual and social dysfunction. As
the New Wave, French cinema is once more in we will see, although considerable critical en-
the global critical spotlight. ergy has been focused on evaluating this new
Unlike the movement embodied by Godard, French cinema, few have recognized its col-
Truffaut, and their Cahiers du cinéma contem- lective ambitions for the medium itself, as the
means to generate profound, often challenging
tim palmer is assistant professor of film studies sensory experiences. In the age of the jaded
at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. spectator, the cynical cinéphile, this brutal in-
His essays on French, American, and Japanese
timacy model is a test case for film’s continued
film have appeared in Cinema Journal, Studies
in French Cinema, and Film International. He is potential to inspire shock and bewilderment—
currently writing Brutal Intimacy: Contemporary raw, unmediated reaction. For these narratives
French Cinema for Wesleyan University Press. of the flesh, the projects of Denis, Dumont, Noé