Diane Kurys

Carrie Tarr's analysis of the cinema of Diane Kurys is the first full-length study of this director, whose delightfully unsentimental reconstructions of the lives of girls and women in post-war France have established her as a distinctive presence in contemporary French film-making. Tarr traces Kurys' trajectory from actress to author, director and producer of her own films and situates her work within debates on women's film-making and female authorship. The book includes detailed readings of each of Kurys' films to date, from the evocation of growing up in the 1960s in "Diabolo Menthe" to the dilemmas facing contemporary women artists in "A la Folie." The conclusion defines Kurys' "authorial signature" and discusses the extent to which she has been able to create a space for female subjectivity within the constraints of contemporary French culture.