Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 Sexuality and Obscenity: From Catherine Breillat to Lisa Aschan
- Chapter 2 On Not Looking Away: Rape in the Films of Jennifer Kent and Isabella Eklöf
- Chapter 3 The Provocations of the Pretty: The Films of Lucile Hadžihalilović
- Chapter 4 Pursuing Transgression: Claire Denis’s Taboo Intimacies
- Chapter 5 Posing as an Innocent: Irony, Sincerity and Anna Biller
- Chapter 6 Vaguely Disturbing: Humour in the Films of Athina Rachel Tsangari
- Conclusion
- Filmography
- Bibliography
- Index
Chapter 5 - Posing as an Innocent: Irony, Sincerity and Anna Biller
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 November 2023
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 Sexuality and Obscenity: From Catherine Breillat to Lisa Aschan
- Chapter 2 On Not Looking Away: Rape in the Films of Jennifer Kent and Isabella Eklöf
- Chapter 3 The Provocations of the Pretty: The Films of Lucile Hadžihalilović
- Chapter 4 Pursuing Transgression: Claire Denis’s Taboo Intimacies
- Chapter 5 Posing as an Innocent: Irony, Sincerity and Anna Biller
- Chapter 6 Vaguely Disturbing: Humour in the Films of Athina Rachel Tsangari
- Conclusion
- Filmography
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
In an interview after the release of her debut feature Viva (2007), American writer-director Anna Biller admits there exists a layered co-presence of sincerity and irony in her work:
As a filmmaker, I like to pose as an innocent, the same way my character poses as innocent in the film. (Although I am always aware that it’s a pose, so perhaps this really makes it a form of irony.)
Based in Los Angeles, Biller has made two features so far in her career, Viva and The Love Witch (2016), as well as four short films: Three Examples of Myself as Queen (1994), Fairy Ballet (1998), The Hypnotist (2001) and A Visit from the Incubus (2001). In over twenty-five years of filmmaking, her reputation has grown from that of an underground filmmaker to a noted independent auteur. In 2019, the speciality distributor Criterion released Biller’s short films on its streaming service, an act that firmly situated her oeuvre within an art cinema context. In an article accompanying the release, Hillary Weston notes that Biller had ‘emerged from the underground’ following her second feature The Love Witch, achieving widespread recognition. Biller’s films are indeed idiosyncratic and immediately recognisable for their retrospective aesthetics. The Love Witch and Viva meticulously recreate the performance styles, sets, lighting design and costumes of bygone eras and genres, such as melodrama and sexploitation. Biller is also famed for her artisanal approach to production, which lends her films a handmade quality that is apparent in her mise en scène. She not only writes, produces and directs her films, she also oversees the art direction and production design, sews costumes, edits, decorates sets, creates and sources props and composes music and lyrics for her films. Alexandra Heller-Nicholas describes Biller as an ‘all-round Renaissance woman’, while Kim Morgan calls her ‘every inch the auteur’.
Though frequently positive, the reception of Biller’s work has been varied. Critics are divided over the tone and meaning of her films; specifically, whether she is, to use Biller’s terms, a ‘poser’ or an innocent.
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- Information
- Provocation in Women's FilmmakingAuthorship and Art Cinema, pp. 121 - 142Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2023