The Nature of Queer Desire in Céline Sciamma’s Filmography

This thesis explores Céline Sciamma’s five feature films Naissance des pieuvres (2007), Tomboy (2011), Bande de filles (2014), Portrait de la jeune fille en feu (2019) and Petite Maman (2021). Central to this thesis is Sciamma’s focus on queer narratives, as she demonstrates the fluidity of queerness as characters grow and explore themselves. Thus, this thesis uses cultural studies to focus on themes of gender, sexuality, queernesss, desire and nature. Ultimately, this text considers how Sciamma uses nature as an allegory for queerness. Split into four chapters, this thesis uses the four elements (water, earth, air and fire) as a framework, proposing that Sciamma uses each of these elements allegorically throughout her films. The thesis argues that Sciamma uses the four elements to naturalise queer desire as it explores the intersection between ecology and queerness through a close textual-analysis and reading of Sciamma’s films.
The first chapter investigates Sciamma’s use of water, examining its symbolic use to display the fluidity of queerness in addition to the performative nature of gender within spaces of bathrooms, swimming pools and lakes. Chapter two studies the element earth to explore Sciamma’s use of rural and urban spaces, examining how she creates queer chronotopes within her films. This thesis then moves on to analyse the role of air. To do this, the chapter acknowledges how pain and eroticism are displayed through the breath and then examines how sound and silence play an important role in Sciamma’s representation and naturalisation of queerness. Finally, this thesis focuses on the element fire by considering the creative and destructive dichotomy of the element, in addition to discussing the manifestations of fire through lighting, food, warmth and passion.