Bande De Filles Analysis

The marginalization and objectification of women, often at the hands of men, manifests in life and cinema. Cinema’s representation of females is frequently placed in the hands of studios and directors (usually male lead) who continually undervalue their perspectives. Bande de filles, directed by French filmmaker Celine Sciamma, portrays the female narrative in a nuanced and complex form, using an all black ensemble as its starting point. The film centers on Marieme’s (later known as Vic) transformation from a timid teenager to a self assured women. The transformation is heavily influenced by Marieme’s new friends, an all girl gang, consisting of Lady, Fily and Adiatou, which the protagonist later joins. The relationship between females becomes

As throughout Bande de filles the presence of male characters is one primarily focused on eliminating female solidarity, power, and, humanity. While female solidarity and partnership is at the center of Bande de filles, throughout the film, male opposition stands as its dividing factor. The benefits of women helping and building up other women become instrumental to the progressions within Bande de filles on multiple occasions. Sciamma (the film’s director) understanding that “[s]ame-sex friendships [provided] a dedicated space for women to give each other mutual support on gender issues…[and that] these friendships provide support during the process of breaking with gender conventions… [diminishing] women’s feelings of isolation or marginality (Bachmann 177)” became pivotal to individual and the collective female growth in Bande de filles. Furthermore, female solidarity allows for individual growth and exploration in a safe and understanding space, lead and directed by women for women. Throughout

Power, especially in the hands of females, can be a force for immense societal changes. Director Sciamma plays with the role of power in the lives of the four girls, predominantly in the character of Lady. Lady’s sense of control, stems from winning hand on hand fights, but the opinion of the men around her lays the foundation of this empowerment. The more fights Lady wins, the more the men appear to respect her, yet as feminist Simone de Beauvoir explains “[n]o matter how kindly, how equally men treated me when I tried to participate in politics, when it came right down to it, they had more rights, so they had more power than I did (Simone de Beauvoir - The Second Sex- ix),” the “power” Lady obtained was provisional. Lady’s power was directly tied to the opinion of the men around her, in this scene, a portion of the boys sits on stairs physically higher than Lady, invoking a sense of power hierarchy and control. The boys only valued Lady when she successfully participated in the their world of violence, but this participation came with boundaries as “[w]omen can never become fully socialized into patriarchy- which in turn causes man to fear women and leads then, on the one hand, to establish very strict boundaries between their own sex and the female sex (Feminist theory 142).” The men had never truly incorporated Lady into their group, she had just