ABSTRACT
Diane Kurys’s semi-autobiographical films use period reconstructions and close social observation to evoke childhood, adolescence and family breakdown from a female point of view. After eight years as an actress, in 1977 Kurys wrote and directed Peppermint Soda (Diabolo menthe) about growing up in the 1960s. Coup de foudre (1983) deals with ambivalent female friendship in postwar France, while 1990’s C’est la vie (La Baule Les Pins) reconstructs a family summer holiday. Although Kurys does not identify herself as a woman director, her films problematize women’s subjectivity through predominantly female-centred narratives. Her study of the modern (bourgeois) woman, Après l’amour (1992) was followed by a less successful venture into psychodrama, A la folie (1994).
