martha-31669

At times during this film, I wondered if Téchiné had set out specifically to construct a world in which conventional gender expectations were turned upside down. I have appreciated across Téchiné's body of work a sense that, because heteronormativity is not assumed, alternatives to heteronormativity are, well, normalized. Although this analysis makes Téchiné's work sound didactic or agenda-driven, it is not. It's a breath of fresh air to spend time in a filmmaker's universe that doesn't adhere to gendered relationship conventions so commonplace and routine that we don't even notice or question them. When filmmakers construct a universe (in which some things exist and others do not exist), it is frequently the case that the only female characters who inhabit the constructed world are, on some level, concubines, whether outright prostitutes, objects of desire, wives, or girlfriends. In this common construction of the writer/director's film universe, the woman (or women) possess very few assets of worth: sex, youth, and beauty. The story, to the extent that it concerns the female characters, is about how women deploy their limited set of assets to attract male attention and the attendant benefit: material security. (In these constructed universes, women are uninteresting or irrelevant if they have the means to achieve material security without its being conferred as a consequence of their attachment to an entitled male character.) Given the popularity of this particular constructed universe in film stories, it's interesting to occasionally encounter film universes that deviate from this tired formula. Why is this conventional constructed film universe so popular? Perhaps because it caters to the a male fantasy of desirability as an extension of power? Téchiné's Hôtel des Amériques is so radical in its construction as to explore the possibility of a world in which expected roles are almost completely transposed. As a thought-experiment, it is fascinating and merits close watching.