| dc.description.abstract | Frédéric Beigbeder is a talented literary figure in the community of French literature and arts. In his early career, he was a creative director in a global advertising agency. His creativity in advertisement had been widely acknowledged. In year 2000, his autobiographical publication, 99 francs unveiled the dark side of the advertising industry. Consequently, he was regarded an infamous traitor in the advertising world. Being dedicated to writing, Beigbeder later becomes a novelist, a writer, a literary columnist, a film critic and the founder of the Prix de Flore. In year 2012, he officially entered the film industry while directing L′amour dure trois ans, an adaptation from his own 1997 novel, which was inspired by his personal experience being through a failed marriage. In the film adaptation, Beigbeder explored whether or not love can last forever. As the film was released in Canada, Beigbeder received a media interview and indicated how Marc Marronnier, the protagonist in the film was a role he found inspiration from Antoine Doinel, a highly autobiographical role created by François Truffaut. Meanwhile, his talk about how his film was deeply influenced by the dialogues of numerous French New Wave directors has also triggered our motivation to investigate the elements in Beigbeder’s first movie. This thesis not only analyzes how movie scenes and storylines in L′amour dure trois ans are inspired and influenced by the creation of Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard and Jacques Demy, but also discovers how specific scenes respond to the 2007 film 99 francs, directed by Jan Kounen. This is also an autobiographical film adapted from Beigbeder’s novel 99 francs, which heavily criticizes the advertising industry.
The thesis is divided into four parts. Firstly, we investigate how Beigbeder approached to make an autobiographical movie as Truffaut did in his L′amour en fuite, which put emphasis on books, literature and the male protagonist’s passion for writing. Like Truffaut, Beigbeder not only loves literature and writing passionately, but also makes a highly autobiographical film. Both directors embodied themselves in their films, and expressed their personal experiences in life and love. In Part 1, we outline the similarities of the two movies and the two protagonists. Based on two leading roles’ common passion for literature, books and writing, we analyze the two films to understand how Beigbeder expressed the strong cultural ambience in L′amour dure trois ans, as if he was following the suit of Truffaut in creating L′amour en fuite.
Other than Truffaut, Godard is another New Wave director full of enthusiasm for literature, philosophy, reading and books. His movies are often interlaced with rich and abundant philosophical or literary references, dialogues and narration. His characters often read aloud the words from books in hand. Nevertheless, we find that Beigbeder did not make a concrete and specific connection with Godard’s movies in this aspect. In Part 2, we analyze why and how Marc and Alice’s intimate scene was a representation of homage to Godard’s adaption movie, Le Mépris, written by Alberto Moravia. First of all, we explain how Godard infused the personal sentimental dilemma into the storyline of Le Mépris, and how he overcame the pressure from the American producer who was attempt to manipulate the storyline, and eventually made the movie one masterpiece with both artistic and commercial values in the film history. Next, we discover how Beigbeder arranged an outdoor scene, in which Alice the photographer experiences a role swop from “subject” to “object”. This scene was actually a homage to the well-known opening of Le Mépris. Lastly, we identify how Beigbeder was inspired by an intimate scene from Le Mépris. Through the intimate talk between Marc and his lover Alice after their first sex, people cannot help but relate it to the dialogue of “I don’t know” between Brigitte Bardot and Michel Piccoli. Such arrangement subtly pinpoints the uncertainty of love.
In Part 3, the thesis discovers how Beigbeder expresses his homage to Michel Legrand and Jacques Demy by incorporating their co-working musical films, Les Parapluies de Cherbourg and Peau d′âne into his creation. Part 3 is further divided into two sections. First, we focus on the introduction of Legrand’s importance in the New Wave film music history, his brotherhood and partnership with Demy, as well as how the duo successfully completed Les Parapluies de Cherbourg, which features operatic, with the plot advanced entirely through dialogue sung with accompanying music. And, we identify the theme song of Les Parapluies de Cherbourg, “I will wait for you”, and discover how the song has strongly influenced the couple’s relationship in the two scenes of L′amour dure trois ans. This song not only helped Marc get back on his own feet from the divorce, but also made Alice to determine to leave her husband and returned to her loved one, Marc. At the end of this section, we investigate Guy and Geneviève, the leading characters of Les Parapluies de Cherbourg about the context as they sing this moving farewell love song. In addition, we also analyze the possible relatedness between the love of Guy and Geneviève and that of Marc and his wife Anne. In the second section of Part 3, we identify the connection between L′amour dure trois ans and Demy’s Peau d′âne. In the beginning, we elaborate how Demy was influenced by Jean Cocteau’s La Belle et la Bête, Disney’s cartoon Blanche-Neige and Pop Art in the 1970s, and subsequently directed Charles Perrault’s novel Peau d′âne in an innovative approach, incorporating with Legrand’s creativity and made it a successful adaptation musical film. Following a short introduction of the storyline of Demy’s Peau d′âne, we then analyze why the two scenes in L′amour dure trois ans have a direct connection to Demy’s Peau d′âne. First, in a conversation, Marc and Alice realized that they not only appreciate the music of Legrand, but also love Peau d′âne. As a result, something has come out between the two. We highlight the comments of Marc on La Fée des Lilas, the moral defender in Peau d′âne, and discover his perspective that moral should not override love. Second, when Marc expresses his love to Alice on TV, an illusion rises in his head, fantasizing Alice’s return for his utterance. Here we analyze why Beigbeder chose to use a music score of Peau d′âne as the background music in this scene. At the same time, we review the lyrics of the music score, and identify the similarity of the love values believed by Beigbeder. Whenever there is a conflict between sentiment and moral compliance, men and women may take different attitude and approaches. We also analyze how Beigbeder resonates the romantic affair of Marc and Alice to the incest tendency of the king and his princess daughter in Peau d′âne; how the two films echo each other in the presentation of sentiment relationship displayed in sense and sensibility interchangeably.
Lastly, we investigate the relatedness between L′amour dure trois ans and 99 francs. In L′amour dure trois ans, Marc gives an awkward speech in the wedding of his best friend, Pierre and Kathy. The speech here strongly indicated and reminded the audience the fact that Marc used to work in an advertising agency. At the end, the researcher highlights how writers and advertisers work differently in thinking and approaches by analyzing Beigbeder’s use of identical background music and single-scene approach to present the scene of Marc’s home alone writing and the scene of Octave Parango who punches his colleague hard in the advertising company in 99 francs.
| en_US |