Domination Despite Liberation in Jean-Luc Godard’s “Breathless” Lily Gross College

The Liberation of France offered a new freedom that French New Wave cinema aims to exemplify through the casual nature of polyamory and female characters that are unconstrained by traditional morality or bounds of marital pressure. Jean-Luc Godard’s “Breathless” depicts these complex ideas of freedom through the relationship between the protagonist, Michel, and his lover, Patricia. The film is noted for its feminist themes that reflect new liberation values of freedom as it focuses on Patricia’s internal struggle to navigate life as an independent woman while also being in love. Geneviève Sellier’s “French New Wave Cinema and the Legacy of the Male Libertinage” deals with love and relationships by questioning the role sexual liberation plays within a larger realm of patriarchal values. Sellier’s critique of New Wave cinema offers a lens to regard Godard’s “Breathless" as an exemplary film of patriarchal values that can only express female liberation insofar as it pits women against one another. Further, the values of independence can only be recognized through the disempowerment of other female characters.

In “French New Wave Cinema and the Legacy of the Male Libertinage”, Geneviève Sellier complicates the notion of French New...