Lesbian Cinema after Queer Theory

## A sustained analysis of twenty-first century lesbian cinema through a queer theoretical lens The unprecedented increase in lesbian representation over the past two decades has, paradoxically, coincided with queer theory’s radical transformation of the study of sexuality. In __Lesbian Cinema after Queer Theory__, Clara Bradbury-Rance argues that this contradictory context has yielded new kinds of cinematic language through which to give desire visual form. By offering close readings of key contemporary films such as __Blue Is the Warmest Colour, Water Lilies__ and __Carol__ alongside a broader filmography encompassing over 300 other films released between 1927 and 2018, the book provokes new ways of understanding a changing field of representation. Bradbury-Rance resists charting a narrative of representational progress or shoring up the lesbian’s categorisation in the newly available terms of the visible. Instead, she argues for a feminist framework that can understand lesbianism’s queerness. Drawing on a provocative theoretical and visual corpus, __Lesbian Cinema after Queer Theory__ reveals the conditions of lesbian legibility in the twenty-first century. ## In-depth case studies include: * __Mulholland Drive__ (David Lynch, 2001) * __Nathalie...__ (Anne Fontaine, 2003) * __Chloe__ (Atom Egoyan, 2009) * __Circumstance__ (Maryam Keshavarz, 2011) * __Water Lilies__ (Céline Sciamma, 2006) * __She Monkeys__ (Lisa Aschan, 2011) * __Blue Is the Warmest Colour__ (Abdellatif Kechiche, 2013) * __Carol__ (Todd Haynes, 2015) ## Key features: * Explores lesbian cinema in the context of political, social and cultural transformations in LGBT civil rights while challenging the assumed relationship between visibility and progress * Explores the gendered invisibility instituted in critical discourses of sexuality by queer theory’s departure from identity politics * Proposes the mutual, rather than synonymous or substitutive, use of “queer” and “lesbian” to describe sexuality on screen * Situates contemporary lesbian cinema in the history of the image of the woman as theorised by feminist film theory * Brings together psychoanalysis, affect theory and theories of space and time in cinema to explore the range of ways in which contemporary cinema makes desire legible