A challenge in writing Ambiguous Cinema, one that often rears its head in the field of film-philosophy, lay in crafting the right balance between an exposition of philosophy and its relevance or application to the study of cinema, and our lived experience with the moving-image. How much philosophy is too much? When and where is the right moment to introduce and engage with film? If the project is to break new ground, or illuminate a fresh or overlooked philosophical approach, where should the emphasis lie? In the outline of philosophical concepts? In the illumination of how such concepts can help us think more ethically or morally with film as exemplar? Or in demonstrating that films themselves are works of philosophy, which, when merged with the right tools (or philosophical thinkers), make it possible to twist our eyes and bodies to more reciprocal and moral perspectives and/or behaviours? There will be the desire to find a neat and tidy definition of ambiguity in the opening pages of this book, but I encourage the reader to resist that yearning and accept a slower working through of Simone de Beauvoir's idea so that the entire notion of ambiguity can become a more personal, embodied, debated, self-defined concept and experience as it relates to the study of one's relationship with film.

However, it is worth highlighting the several interconnected themes that operate throughout this book as a way to ameliorate the frustration a suspended definition incurs. At times, the elaboration of Simone de Beauvoir's philosophy of ambiguity (and the philosophy of other thinkers) takes centre stage, delaying a discussion of the selected film. This might seem as though the film part of ‘film-philosophy’ is left behind but given that Beauvoir's philosophy has had slight attention within the field of film studies, I felt it necessary to spend time establishing the different inflections of how her notion of ambiguity evolved, rather than provide a strict, and therefore limiting, definition. This is so readers might determine for themselves the ways in which Beauvoir's thinking impacts their own film experience alongside the films I have elected to examine.