Scan barcode
A review by miikov
Suite for Barbara Loden by Nathalie Leger
5.0
"To sum up. A woman is pretending to be another, in a role she wrote herself, based on another (this, we find out later), playing something other than a straightforward role, playing not herself but a projection of herself onto another, played by her but based on another."
Damn, I took my sweet time with these 123pgs.
To my embarrassment, I have seen many Godard movies but little else of the 1960s-70s art house films. While I have not seen Wanda (and honestly I am happy I did not, I love seeing the film through the author's lens; Nathalie Léger does a fantastic job describing the film's key aspects), elements of the film reminded me of Godard's own Vivre Sa Vie. Yet, Léger's book (essay? nonfiction? I feel she deserves her own genre like Capote's True Crime Fiction, Art Essay Fiction? idk) mediates between Loden's life and her lone directorial work, collapsing the space for readers to find the miracle that Duras described. Whereas Vivre Sa Vie captivated, but ultimately left me empty, Léger's account of Barbara Loden's Wanda deeply satisfied my need to understand the woman who abandons everything. Léger digs deeper, interrogating her research and creating her own portrait of women in art and as the art we make.
Damn, I took my sweet time with these 123pgs.
To my embarrassment, I have seen many Godard movies but little else of the 1960s-70s art house films. While I have not seen Wanda (and honestly I am happy I did not, I love seeing the film through the author's lens; Nathalie Léger does a fantastic job describing the film's key aspects), elements of the film reminded me of Godard's own Vivre Sa Vie. Yet, Léger's book (essay? nonfiction? I feel she deserves her own genre like Capote's True Crime Fiction, Art Essay Fiction? idk) mediates between Loden's life and her lone directorial work, collapsing the space for readers to find the miracle that Duras described. Whereas Vivre Sa Vie captivated, but ultimately left me empty, Léger's account of Barbara Loden's Wanda deeply satisfied my need to understand the woman who abandons everything. Léger digs deeper, interrogating her research and creating her own portrait of women in art and as the art we make.