It felt to me like Acker and Despentes were jutting out their chins trying to prove they could produce work that was as ugly and aggressive as a man’s, in a bid to be taken more seriously and to prove how edgy they were (and, by extension, how much edgier they were than these other women, who sleepwalked through the patriarchy). The other seemingly takes pleasure in breaking down taboos but remains staunchly within dominant discourses of misogyny. Apocalypse Baby, described as ‘part thriller, part road movie, part romance’ (I mean, seriously, what more could you want? You could also try Wetlands by Charlotte Roche, a filthy entertaining romp through the anatomy of the main protagonist, haemorrhoids and all, although be warned it may change the way you look at avocados forever….Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com. In France we are … “Girls are never, never taught to be violent,” Despentes tells,“Makes Thelma and Louise look like a Merchant-Ivory film”,“Makes Thelma and Louise look like a lighthearted Disney movie”,“Thelma and Louise with actual penetration”,“Thelma and Louise without Hollywood sentiment”,It’s not that Despentes thinks women should be more violent in real life (though come to think of it, she might). This is my gun. blog; Authors > Virginie Despentes; Virginie Despentes. Throughout her work, she counters two dominant tendencies in contemporary French letters when it comes to gender and sexuality. Much of this reputation rests on her first novel,But it wasn’t the violence or the graphic sex that stopped me from reading her work.

Virginie Despentes. This one’s for fun.”,In the past few years, everyone here in Paris has been reading Despentes again. The journey to find Valentine, a beautifully tragic girl with mayhem on her mind, takes Lucie from Paris to Barcelona and back again, all the while accompanied by the Hyena, a tough, street smart hellion with sex, drugs and trouble never far behind.It seems appropriate to start this blog with a review of anything by Virginie Despentes. As a strong feminist, her work appeals to me greatly and her ability to write about women and sex, death and morality is always breath taking. Sign up to our … Whilst her work may be considered shocking by some, for me it is brave and funny and deliciously depraved.The story itself moves at breakneck pace and there is a sense of tragic inevitability about the outcome for Valentine, although, without giving too much away, Despentes has produced a finale which will undoubtedly jolt the reader into a nightmare of chaos and alarm. Despentes sums up the collapse of the marriage simply: What must be admired about Despentes is her fearless approach to feminism and womanhood. There’s violence, heaps of it, but it’s never mere spectacle. Virginie Despentes is a bit of a UFO in the French literary landscape: born in 1969, she’s worked as a writer, filmmaker, sex worker, journalist, and sales clerk, among other things. One strays from political issues, embeds any talk of sexuality into Catholic shame and guilt, and prudishly remains within “safe” ideological bounds.

Tag: Virginie Despentes Spotlight | Staging France: Beyond Words Festival of French Literature, London SW7. I’ve translated it for you. They mess … That is where my problems with Despentes’s work originated, and I’m not sure they’ve been entirely resolved by.The film, like the book, leaves this question open.Apart from the bleak realities of its protagonists’ lives, the world of.Adapting the artificial world of the novel to the screen, Despentes and Trinh Thi commit to a gritty reality that comes through on a technical, formal level—the film was made for next to nothing, and so it looks like something you’d watch late at night on home-access television—as well as through the decision to include real, unsimulated sex acts, even in the rape scene.