Deconstructing Gender: Laurence Anyways and the Mise-En-Scene of a Transition

Abstract

Can the cinema, in 2015, contain the rejection and ostracism that suppose the non-representation of the difference? Basing the analysis on Xavier Dolan's third full-length film Laurence Anyways, and its mise en scene of the main character's odyssey to become a woman and the struggles she had to overcome in order to find his true identity; the intention is to unveil the relations between the film, its context and some gender theories [specially Judith Butler’s], touching subjects such as the need for freedom to the individual in order to reach empowerment, freedom only possible under the others acknowledgement of the difference. All the above trying to remark the importance of questioning the hegemonic- binary divided society at all fields: politics, education and art. This short dissertation is an analysis of how the film propose both aesthetically and plastic portrait of the transgression of the rule, not only by portraying a character who refused to follow the binary division between men and women, male and female, but also, by proposing a transgressive and rebel poetic in various and complementary levels such as its narrative, tale and frame composition. By stylizing a bygone era- the nineties- with flamboyant ballroom dancing scenes, and sequences that looks more like music video-clips inlaying into it’s almost three hours of length, the film main value it to put the spectator in the obligation to see, acknowledge and understand the painful reality that those in this condition have to go through.

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Author Information
Mariana Gil-Arboleda, Manuela Beltran University, Colombia
Angela Urrea, Manuela Beltran University, Colombia

• Category: Film Criticism and Theory

Posted by James Alexander Gordon

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