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

central to the film as well as to Marieme’s growth, yet the role of men throughout Bande de filles, becomes a driving force against this new found empowerment, not only to Marieme, but to the other female characters. The public and violent humiliation of Lady, the confident leader of the gang, becomes her point of weakness and vulnerability, a “down fall” reinforced by the men in her life. Lady’s “fall from grace” leads to her loss of power in the eyes of the men surrounding her and showcases Bande de fille’s perspective on the male role in the female psyche.

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

Bande de filles the four girls work together to build each other up, understanding that their individual successes and failures become representations of their group. Yet when Lady is humiliated (in front of her friends) by a group of boys after losing a fist fight, this female solidarity becomes virtually nonexistent. The scene begins as the four girls, Lady, Marieme, Fily and Adiatou, walk in unison towards the group of boys. The partnership and unison between the girls begins to vanish as the boys throw nasty and demonizing words at Lady. The camera angles also shift from a medium shot of all four girls to a single close-up of a shot of Lady’s face. This change signals a larger shift from collaboration between the girls, to Lady’s own and personal humiliation at the hands of the men. Neither Marieme, Adiatou, or Fily come to Lady’s defense as her sense of power and confidence at the hands of men begins to fade. Why did the girls not come to Lady’s defense? The power, whether through sear physical force or presence, that the men possessed is a possible answer. But just as relevant is the invisible societal control and ability that the men have, which the girls do not. Marieme, Adiatou, and Fily remained quiet because the they felt they had no control and that their own voices against that of the men could cause no change or affects. Thus, the apparent female solidarity disappears as the men divide the group and diminish their sense of control.
Female power and authority in Bande de filles dissipates through the vile words and actions of male characters.

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

been “playing the warrior in the hood,” she was a joke to them then and most definitely now. Cinematically the loss of control and authority is witnessed when Lady bows her head in an almost submissive manner as the men look down on her from their raised stairs. The qualities that made Lady “powerful” were directly linked to the traits often associated with men, alluding to power through assimilation to the mainstream masculine culture. Lady’s feelings tied back to “[f]emale students… [who] also thought they were similar to men in the sense that they had character traits that were deemed masculine such as: strong-willed; courageous; aggressive and independent; stronghearted; brave; and steel-minded (117 Mejiuni).” The power Lady had was granted by the men around her, as long as she succumbed to their ideals of control and when Lady failed to do so, her humanity began to fall away in their eyes.
As the men of Bande de filles disempowered Lady, they also scrape away at her self-assurance and humanity. When Lady’s role in the male world of violence was no longer viable, the boys began to turn her into an object to humiliate and dehumanize. Throughout the first half of the film, Lady is portrayed as strong, confident, and as a assertive female yet this significantly changes during her encounter with the boys. When creating characters director Sciamma sets out “ to try to make plural portraits of the same girl, being in contradiction, in paradox and not being one thing (Wakefield 28-29),” Lady is a prime contradiction, as she was both strong and weak throughout the film and this particular scene. As the boys, call her “dirty” or reminded her of being “on all fours in [her] bra,” Lady remains poised but the words are directed to hurt her self-esteem, her self worth. Because Lady does not fit into the box the boys wanted her to live in she is now “just a chick,” this was meant as loaded insult meant to reinforce that “humanity is male and men defines women not on herself but relative to him (Beauvoir xxii).” Because Lady is no longer part of the male group, she is no longer a full individual but an object to be commented on as “for him she is sex- absolute sex, no less. She is defined and differentiated with reference to man and not he with reference to her; she is the incidental, the inessential as opposed to the essential. He is the Subject, he is the Absolute- She is the Other (Beauvoir - xxii).” Lady is no longer a Subject in the eyes of the men, she is the Other, no longer fully a person, as her presence does not neatly fit into the often narrow male world and perspective.
The relationship between women and men in film can often become a complex dynamic. Celine Sciamma’s Bande de filles portrayal of the power imbalance between the genders provides a vivid representation. Though Lady’s character development does not begin or end, with the dehumanizing encounter, it does periodically halt. Lady’s time spent building a sense of female cohesion, self authority and own feeling of personhood, is derailed by the unnecessary words and actions of a group of men. Lady’s disconcerting scene with the boys becomes a significant moment for Bande de filles as it sets the tone of the relationships and encounters between the men and females throughout the film. Though Bande de filles does incorporate particular moments of women and men working and building each other up, it does display the immense power struggles between the genders. Creating male and female characters who equally grow and develop alongside one another, rather than compete for control or hierarchy, demands to be further explored within various film genres. As complex and imbalanced relationship between men and females demands further cinematic exploration, as perhaps new points of partnership, collaboration and trust can be built from there.