Caroline Bainbridge’s book, A Feminine Cinematics: Luce Irigaray, Women and Film (2008), discusses traditional theories of the screen and the ambiguous relationship the figures of women have within and in viewing cinema. Her book attempts to deal with the way in which, in classical cinema especially, women are part of a paradigm that simultaneously privileges masculinity and phallocentric symbolic practices of representation but configures women in terms of ‘lack’ as both figure and also in a spectatorial capacity.

Bainbridge utilises key ideas in Irigaray’s work as strategies, which considered on their own terms, should be reclaimed and re-thought in order to deal with the dilemmas of representing women and the feminine in contemporary cinema. Among the ideas Bainbridge utilises are: the phallocentric notion of the specular economy of the same; parler femme/speaking (as) woman enunciation; mimesis as a political tool; the importance of female genealogies - including that of reconfiguring the maternal relationship in an effort to postulate a female imaginary - and sexual difference as a position from which to articulate a feminine subjectivity. Bainbridge is concerned to subvert and disengage with previous monolithic ideas in film theory that privilege notions such as the male-gaze and the masculine phallocentric paradigms provided to us by traditional perspectives, in order to forge and articulate new ones.

In doing this, Bainbridge focuses on a small selection of films, which broadly come under the category of feminist film making, as a way of glimpsing what she terms a ‘feminine cinematics’ at work. Bainbridge’s book is useful in that it not only focuses on textual analyses of films but also scrutinises the broader context in which these texts are produced. Among the films and directors utilised by Feminine Cinematics are the familiar names of Sally Potter and Orlando (1992) and Jane Campion’s The Piano (1993), alongside less familiar titles such as Marleen Gorris’ Antonia’s Line (1995), Liv Ullman’s Faithless (2000) and Moufida Tlatli’s The Silences of the Palace (1994).

The appeal of Bainbridge’s book is that it offers a sustained approach to the use of Irigaray as a lens through which to articulate the attempts at embodying or representing the feminine in cinema. Her suggestion of a renewed attempt to theorise a female genealogy and the creation of a female economy, in the chapter on The Silences of the Palace, Antonia’s Line and Faithless is persuasive and focuses on the problems of reassessing the possibility of a female imaginary. Centring on the relationship between mother (Khedija) and daughter (Alia) servants, Bainbridge argues that the film focuses on the silence surrounding both female experience and notions of subjectivity, symbolised by the mystery identity of Alia’s father. In setting the action as a struggle between women, not only in terms of Khedija and Alia, but also in the separation between the female servants downstairs and those women upstairs, as well as using flashbacks and non-linear narrative to tell the story, Bainbridge argues that the film raises a number of Irigarayan questions regarding barriers to speaking (as) woman, the importance of the maternal relation and the need to create a female genealogy/community and a non-patriarchal, non-phallogocentric cinematic form.

Similarly, in the chapter on Orlando, Bainbridge successfully engages with the cinematic narrative structure and formal features used by Potter to interrogate, challenge and subvert notions of gender and indicate the nature of femininity as continually in the process of becoming. She discusses Potter’s use of the direct ‘look’ to the camera and the negotiation of space-time in Orlando’s trajectory towards womanhood/femininity. In Bainbridge’s chapter on The Piano there is a compelling analysis of the relationship between Ada and her piano as embodying a subjectivity of her own, which comes under threat from the masculine economy pressed upon her by a masculinist world. This chapter considers important questions that are raised in the so-called ‘multiple endings’ of Campion’s cinematic text regarding the consequences of articulating the feminine and attempting to privilege a feminine subjectivity, which seems to mimic the notion of the importance of multiplicity and plurality in Irigaray’s own ideas.

One of the main problems of Bainbridge’s arguments and the book, as a whole, is that she makes no bones about the fact that Irigaray’s work is often viewed as heterosexist and essentialist. While Bainbridge acknowledges this fact, she asserts that the project of her book is not to defend or contradict these accusations but suggest a way to use Irigarayan perspectives “on their [her] own terms” (18), in order to think about the potential its use would have in locating, and furthermore articulating, a feminine cinematics. However, her swift dismissal of this issue in order to move ahead with her project and her use of ‘feminine’ interchangeably with ‘woman’ is problematic.

Lurking somewhere at the back of the reader’s mind are the multitudinous discourses of postmodernity and the assessment of gender as more mobile and fluid, rather than as inflexibly linked to sex. This is not to say Bainbridge’s project is not worthwhile, but delimiting femininity as the exclusive province of women seems to cloud issues raised in previous feminist scholarship and its more current transition to gender studies. Similarly, the text spends what seems an inordinate amount of time setting up the theory and reviewing the literature, before arriving at the practice of Irigarayan analyses of these films that she suggests are part of a female directed corpus concerned with locating the feminine in cinematic representation, and as embodying a way of enunciating the feminine.

While there is a variety of literature regarding the application of Irigarary’s ideas to feminist film theory, as Bainbridge herself states in her meticulous survey of the literature, it has mainly utilised only certain aspects of Irigarayan thought in relation to various films. This book adds to this literature in its use of a greater selection of Irigarayan thought, and in its application to specific, key films and female directors of our contemporary era. It takes these ideas for a ‘test run’, providing a new framework and mode of analysis regarding cinematic texts concerned with the representation of feminine subjectivity.

Bainbridge’s book is one that is clearly aimed primarily at academics and advanced postgraduate researchers. Those interested in film theory, Irigarayan thought, feminist film, gender theory and film, as well as Hollywood, Independent, European and Middle Eastern Film and women’s cinema, would all find something of worth in Bainbridge’s writing. However, it is a book that suggests the need for a keen familiarity, not only with the films discussed, but also with Irigaray’s oeuvre as a whole, and its theoretical complexity means it is not a text for those unfamiliar with the slippery nature of Irigaray’s thought. Similarly, Bainbridge’s text cannot be easily delved into at will, but rather needs to be read as a whole, step-by-step, in order to maximise the impact of its thesis, which is a cumulative project and in the process of ‘becoming’.

Alexia Bowler, Swansea University