Maïwenn’s Fragmented Self: Unveiling the Author

by: Zelal Berfin Tataroglu , November 10, 2025

Maïwenn is perhaps one of the most intriguing and controversial women directors in contemporary French cinema. Both her self-portraiture filmmaking and her much-scrutinised career call for critical attention. Before her directorial debut, Maïwenn began her film career as a child actor, encouraged and, in fact, pushed by her mother, who was also an actor. Maïwenn describes her childhood as traumatic; her early acting career was driven by a desire to please her mother (Médioni 2009), but to the outside world, it appeared to be a great success. In 1990, when she was only thirteen, she became the cover girl of French teen magazine 20 ans. Two years later, at sixteen, Maïwenn was in the spotlight in France thanks to the critical recognition she earned for her role in La gamine (1992). That same year, because of her marriage to Luc Besson, she attracted even more sensationalist media attention. Soon, her brief but memorable role as Diva in Besson’s Hollywood production, The Fifth Element (1995), also brought her significant international recognition and fame. According to Cybelle H. McFadden, the media primarily portrayed Maïwenn as ‘youthful and sexualised,’ emphasising her physical appeal that paralleled her ‘coquettish Lolita’ role in the film (2014: 189), yet she was not happy and had an ambition not only to be in front of the camera but also behind it, to call the shots.

Following her divorce from Besson, which concluded the formative period of her life marked by an apparent lack of autonomy, Maïwenn returned to France to explore her own creative potential. In 2001, she wrote and directed a one-woman show, Le Pois Chiche, based on her childhood. It was a turning point for Maïwenn and a shift from solely being an actor to embracing her creative drive. She later adapted the show into a short film, I’m an actrice (2004), in which she cast herself as the mother, and her real-life daughter as herself. This strategy of fictionalising autobiography using self-casting laid the groundwork for Maïwenn’s future filmmaking.

To date, she has directed six feature films, four of which—Pardonnez-moi (2006), Le Bal des actrices (2009), Polisse (2011), and ADN (2020)—draw on her autobiography and feature her as the protagonist. These films share some common traits, including recurring cinematic techniques, themes, motifs, and character types. The director portrays herself as a wilful character, driven by self-determination, which often affects her relationships with other characters who perceive her as cold, unapproachable, and challenging. Formally, Maïwenn tends to opt for cinematography relying on handheld and Steadicam shots to signify unstable emotional relationships. The heavy use of dialogue further contributes to a turbulent and enervating mood in her screen narratives, which often feature vulnerable adults and children in dysfunctional families—characters pursuing complex romantic relationships, and dealing with tantrums, past traumas, and loss.

To examine Maïwenn’s authorship, I will draw on a methodology suggested by Catherine Grant, which extends the scope of analysis from filmic texts to extratextual materials, including directors’ biographies and interviews (2001: 124-5). Grant’s approach is particularly productive in reading Maïwenn’s work because her biography, public image, and the reception of her films and her directorial persona intersect with her cinematic output. As will be analysed in the first section, Maïwenn self-reflexively refers to her public reception as an actor in her earlier films. I will reveal how as a director Maïwenn refers to her identity as an actor, which has been shaped and limited by inherent sexism in the media and film industry. Personal agency emerges as a persistent theme throughout Maïwenn’s filmography, serving as a key to self-discovery and self-expression.

On the other hand, Maïwenn’s authorial position tends to be contested by tabloids and entertainment journalism. In an interview, she expresses frustration with these portrayals, stating: ‘I am still hurt by articles I have read about myself. I realised that I am too mainstream for the intellectuals and too intellectual for commercial cinema. I don’t fit either category’ (Chèze 2023). This intriguing depiction of being in-between highlights her exclusion from the auteur canon and the tension between her authorial identity and its reception. The press often characterises her as anti-feminist or narcissistic. For instance, The Daily Telegraph (UK) frames her as ‘The MeToo-hating Director who Dared to Cast Johnny Depp’ (Larman 2023), while The Independent (UK) describes her self-casting as a ‘laughable exercise in self-glorification’ (Loughrey 2024). Such criticisms often undermine Maïwenn’s agency and fail to engage with the intellectual and thematic depth of her cinematic work, which explores agency and female authorship. While harsh, negative judgments of Maïwenn have been widespread, scholarly analysis of her films is still limited. Here, I seek to fill that gap by discussing her films alongside her career trajectory. By doing so, I hope to demonstrate the feminist value embedded in her work as she continues to develop her directorial voice.

I position Maïwenn as an auteur of feminist self-portraiture. Contrary to her media depiction, she engages in topics that align with feminist film theory, including the gaze, subjectivity, women’s authorship and autonomy. First, I will examine Pardonnez-moi and Le Bal des actrices, in which she uses self-reflexivity to transform her image from actor to director, in doing so reclaiming her agency. Her use of autobiography and self-casting will be discussed in relation to authorial desire, identity, and the link between gender and the mode of filmmaking. Later, I will focus on Polisse and ADN.  In these ‘social’ films, identity is still a self-defined notion, yet class and racial factors are foregrounded. My discussion examines Maïwenn’s portrayal of affective and ethical encounters, her reflection on the distant author, and the ethics of the gaze. Through self-portraiture, her cinema becomes a journey of self-discovery and self-definition, as she reflects on her experiences to construct her identity cinematically.

Pardonnez-moi (2006)

Pardonnez-moi [1] features Violette, a pregnant actor who wants to make a film about her family so her child can ‘know the truth,’ as well as to avoid passing on her childhood traumas. Throughout the film, Violette confronts her parents, particularly her father, for their abusive behaviour, and her partner for letting her go through an abortion alone. Maïwenn’s camera alternates with that of Violette, culminating in a film-within-a-film. In her directorial debut, Maïwenn explores the inherent imbalance of power in relation to gender in filmmaking.

Pardonnez-moi essentially compares two different modes of filmmaking. It is fiction, however the film-within-a-film that Violette makes is a documentary. Maïwenn challenges Violette’s documentary approach toward seeking the truth by revealing the complexities of spectatorship. In this regard, the film shows Violette’s two failed confrontations. In the first scene, she and her friend raid her father Dominique’s house to reenact his past physical abuse using a large doll, with her friend recording the performance. Violette has prepared meticulously for the scene. She draws a beauty mark on the doll so that it resembles Violette/Maïwenn, and places condoms filled with juice on the doll’s head and genitals to give the impression of blood and urine. Despite Violette’s detailed preparations and emotionally compelling performance, Dominique remains unresponsive and refuses to apologize for the past. The scene highlights the limitations of representation. Even though the director juxtaposes and controls the representation, her control over the audience response remains limited. The second failed attempt occurs when Violette’s partner implies that she might have ‘exaggerated’ or ‘made up’ what happened in the past. His disbelief stems from her sisters’ differing accounts of Dominique and their childhood experiences. This further undermines the narrator’s limited ability to persuade her audience, by reinforcing the idea that truth is subjective. Thus, the film underlines that the spectator’s identity, perspective, and relationship with the narrator shape how they interpret any representation.

On the other hand, the fiction allows Maïwenn to manifest her authorial subjectivity and desire. In contrast to the disbelief of Violette’s partner and the unresponsiveness of Dominique, the audience of Pardonnez-moi is able to empathise with Violette and Maïwenn. Unlike Violette, Maïwenn blurs the line between fiction and reality, integrating her desire into the film. For instance, the film depicts two subjective scenes that represent Violette’s desires. The first is Violette’s dream, in which Dominique applauds her after her show, screaming ‘bravo’ and ‘I love you,’ expressions of approval and love that she never got from him in reality. The second is Violette’s daydream after her partner expresses his unwillingness to marry her. In the daydream, the couple marries, and her partner promises to fully commit to her. Violette’s confrontational approach engenders antagonism. By contrast, the creation of fictional narratives enables Maïwenn to embed her desires into the film through fantasy and dream sequences. This, in turn, benefits from the audience’s emotional engagement.

Maïwenn’s reflection on this mode of filmmaking also distances it from documentary and offers a gender critique. In a reflexive scene, Violette enters an equipment store to purchase a handheld camera. She describes her vision of the film as a documentary, where the camera is unnoticeable, the movements are shaky, and the subjects act naturally. Violette emphasises that her purpose of filming is not to create a home movie, but ‘something intended for cinema.’ However, the salesman mocks her approach and recommends that larger, more professional cameras are better suited for cinematic productions. In a sardonic remark, Violette quips that she has no intention of making Star Wars.

This poignant scene reveals Maïwenn’s commentary on gender and filmmaking. First, it addresses the sexist treatment of women filmmakers in the industry, exemplified by the shopkeeper’s condescending attitude. The scene might initially seem to reflect only the general attitude of the shopkeeper. However, his patronising demeanour is clear to feminist audiences as it diminishes the authority of women directors. This resonates with the director’s first directing experience in I’m an actrice. In an interview, she recalls how other crew members had power over her, impeding her creativity and imagination (Mastermind Paris 2023). The scene can be interpreted as a refutation of her former powerlessness through Violette’s undeterred attitude towards the shopkeeper.

Violette/Maïwenn has no intention of making mainstream cinema. However, Maïwenn seems to eschew the periphery of documentary that has something to do with gender and her public persona. This intertwined link between autobiography, documentary, and gender resides in the notions of agency and subjectivity. In an interview, Maïwenn explicitly addresses the link between gender and reception of her films. She states, ‘The term autobiographical is quite limiting, degrading which I’m systematically exposed to whereas all these other directors aren’t given this label … I don’t like to make a connection so often between how I’m treated and the fact that I’m a woman but I do have the impression that there’s some misogyny at play here’ (Adams 2016). Her statement resonates with Domna S. Stanton’s observation of gender-biased criticism in women’s autobiographical work. Stanton highlights how critics ascribe to male authors the capability of ‘intellectual and aesthetic command to make their lives richly self-reflexive, to assess the problematic nature of self-knowing and self-telling.’ In contrast, such works by women are perceived as incapable of transcending the concerns of the private self, thereby devaluing their writing (Stanton qtd. in Smith and Watson 2006: 12). From this perspective, the periphery Maïwenn avoids becomes clearer. By fictionalizing domestic abuse and framing it with the filmmaking arc, Maïwenn distances the film from sensational media headlines in which she could be presented as a victim without agency.

Furthermore, she self-reflexively expresses her desire to emotionally engage with the audience in a scene where Violette/Maïwenn reads: ‘In an autobiographical one, the movie asks a question: can the masses be interested in a story that only affects you? Spontaneously, I would say that personal stories are universal at the same time. So yes.’ The scene asks the viewer to empathise with Violette, rather than Maïwenn as an actor. The universality of her story, namely the physical and emotional abuse she suffered and the subsequent lack of acknowledgement, is highlighted to foster a sense of feminist solidarity. Maïwenn later explores in greater depth how her identity as an actor impedes her self-expression. In Le Bal des actrices, she portrays the film industry’s lack of interest in actors’ subjectivity beyond their objectified and commodified image.

Le Bal des actrices (2009)

Le Bal des actrices [2] follows Maïwenn, who is directing her second film. The envisioned film-within-a-film, also called Le Bal des actrices, consists of portraits of eleven French women actors intended to reveal their fears and desires. All the characters in the film retain their real names. This mise-en-abyme structure allows Maïwenn to contemplate her acting identity while offering a critique of the film industry, in which women actors are objectified and commodified.

The eleven portraits Maïwenn creates generally depict the actors as hysterical women obsessed with beauty and youth. Each of them share a common fear of being displaced by the others. In McFadden’s analysis of the film, she writes that Maïwenn portrays acting for women as ‘professional objectification,’ a profession that is ‘first and foremost a form of currency’ (2004: 207). For instance, the film depicts Romane Bohringer as an actor struggling to get parts in films and involved in product promotions for money and visibility. The scene illustrates the tension of receiving an undercover payment in an envelope after the gig, which is reminiscent of prostitution. Later, we see Bohringer replacing Melanie Doutey for a role, while Doutey herself turns to product promotions.

This professional objectification becomes evident as a systemic problem in the scene where Maïwenn pitches her idea to her producer. She pitches the film as a musical comedy in which actors talk about their desires and fears. However, the producer fails to see the value in such a film. Instead, he suggests making a documentary or romantic comedy, which outrages Maïwenn. The producer’s lack of interest is further elaborated later when he correlates the success of an actor with their popularity. Maïwenn sees Julie Depardieu as popular because she has won two Césars. By contrast, the producer defines a popular actor as a cover girl in top-selling magazines such as Paris Match and Gala. This idea of an actor as a profitable image recalls Laura Mulvey’s reference to ‘the cult of star’ as a way of dealing with castration anxiety by the male gaze. Mulvey posits that female stars are over-valued on the basis of their physical beauty, which reduces them to ‘mere looks’ and to satisfying images itself (1999: 840). The producer’s approach in the scene is indicative of the prevailing sexism systemic in the industry as it is apathetic to actors’ subjectivity outside of commodified images and tabloid news.

The film exposes how this profession is cyclical and precarious for women, reducing them to commodities without autonomy. The film thus becomes a feminist project that aims to reverse this sexism by giving voice to actors. Lourdes Monterrubio Ibáñez interprets Le Bal des actrices as Maïwenn’s expression of feminist resilience, describing the film as ‘a clear expression of sorority’ (2021: 557). This particularly becomes evident in the eleventh portrait of Estelle Lefébure, which was included in the project as a condition for funding. Maïwenn resists the idea since Estelle is not an actor but a top model. Yet she develops sympathy for Estelle, as she does for the other actors. In common with the other actors in the film, Estelle, is subjected to objectification and criticism while striving for acceptance in the industry. Maïwenn extends the same solidarity to Estelle as she does to other actors.

On the other hand, Charlotte Rampling is distinguished from the other ten actors, as she does not share the same fears and maintains her agency. She is the only actor who challenges Maïwenn about the purpose of her project. In a pivotal conversation, Rampling asks if she is also an actor, which momentarily triggers an identity crisis for Maïwenn, before admitting that she is. Considering her on and off-screen transition away from acting, her hesitation reflects the inner turmoil. Nevertheless, Rampling catches the subtle articulation of authorial desire. She states that filmmakers cannot avoid ‘talking about themselves’ once they are in a film, whether they direct it, write it, or work on it. Strikingly, Rampling assumes the role of a spectator who recognises ‘the authorial desire that flows inside the text’ (Silverman 1988: 203). Maïwenn intends to distance herself from her film-within-a-film to convey her-story mediated by the actors’ contradictions and psyches. Yet, as Rampling recognises, the eleven portraits reflect Maïwenn’s inner conflict regarding her dual identity and her desire to establish herself as a director.

The film’s ending refers to this ‘author talking about herself’ in a multilayered way. In a private screening, the actors watch the film-within-a-film. Maïwenn appears on-screen at the end, talking about the lack of financial and professional support she encountered when she decided to make her first film. The objective of the film-within-a-film becomes clear. It reveals Maïwenn’s desire as an author to confront her actor identity, using the eleven portraits to express her reasons for wanting to leave acting. The film she mentions recalls Pardonnez-moi and, once again, reality intertwines with fiction in this moment of mise-en-abyme. In the scene Maïwenn says, ‘I had the feeling that it was my right to give up being an actor.’ Her choice of words indicates Maïwenn’s agency and autonomy in her self-determination. Additionally, the actor identity is implied to be a sort of hindrance for self-definition as a director. This tension is reflected in a scene where Romane Bohringer auditions for a role while Maïwenn is filming it. The male director asks Maïwenn to take her camera to film and audition her since she is also an actor. Maïwenn tells him that she is the one directing now. This symbolic exchange between the two points to the difficulty of moving beyond the actor identity, and how Maïwenn’s authority as a director is challenged. In a sense, the actor identity becomes ‘sticky,’ to use Sara Ahmed’s term (2004). Some labels, as Ahmed explains, stick to certain individuals, and ‘sticking is dependent on past histories of association that often work through concealment’ (2004: 12). In this context, the history of objectifying women in cinema sticks to Maïwenn. Even the label, ‘actor-turned-director’ that is often used to introduce Maïwenn indicates the stickiness of her actor identity, and objectification concealed by it.

The actors are outraged after the screening, as the film-within-a-film turns out to be about Maïwenn and not them. The ending alludes to the narcissism associated with actors, as well as Maïwenn’s autobiographical filmmaking. The actors’ response mimics the reception of Le Bal des actrices—and to some extent Pardonnez-moi—as both are autobiographical works featuring Maïwenn. There is a contrast between their outrage and Rampling’s assertion that the authorial desire is always present in work. The irony in the scene is that they cannot see beyond Maïwenn’s presence in the film, and thus fail to see her feminist solidarity with women in the film industry.

In both Pardonnez-moi and Le Bal des actrices, Maïwenn seeks to identify narrative and narrational strategies that enable her to convey her story while aiming the emotional engagement with the audience. However, Maïwenn’s screen presence appears to provoke a somewhat adverse perception. This can be discussed from two perspectives: the forms of authorial inscription and autobiographical filmmaking. In her book on the female voice in cinema, Kaja Silverman describes a form of authorial inscription that achieves the cinematic equivalent of the pronoun ‘I.’ This form is the director’s on-screen presence with synchronized image-sound totality, in which the viewer matches these audiovisual representations with the director behind the camera (1988: 213). Maïwenn’s self-casting exemplifies such authorial inscription, assuring the viewer that it is her voice and her subjectivity narrating the story. However, Silverman also warns that the use of the ‘I’ pronoun might be mistaken for ‘an ontological extension of the material reality it mimics’ (1988: 213). This misreading, she argues, may lead to misrecognition of the pronoun ‘I’ as ‘narcissistic idealization’ (1988: 213). While this perspective sheds light on how the reception of these films question the authenticity of autobiography, it also implies something beyond a mere self-telling. Both Pardonnez-moi and Le Bal des actrices are autobiographical. However, the blurred line between reality and fiction serves to question representational practices: it serves to critique the gender biases in the film industry that extend beyond Maïwenn’s biography.

The scholarship on women’s autobiographical work shifts the debate from authenticity and tends to focus more on the director’s identity than in writing about comparable works by men. Wendy Everett notes that autobiography is essentially a ‘continuous exploration of the self’ and ‘a desire for understanding, reparation or reconciliation.’ Since cinema is a visual medium, Everett draws a phonetic correlation between ‘eye’ and ‘I,’ between seeing and identity (2007: 128). While the camera functions as the filmmaker’s eye, the film is able to reproduce their vision and how they perceive the world. Agnès Calatayud similarly emphasizes the question of identity in autobiography. She argues that autobiography ‘probe[s] the nebulous territory of the Self where personal experiences are interwoven with social, political and cultural events’ (2011: 210). In this context, the autobiography in Pardonnez-moi and Le Bal des actrices serves as a means of reconciliation with the past, and of self-definition. In both films, Maïwenn’s experiences are interwoven with the social and cultural in terms of gender criticism. In the films that analysed in the next section, the use of self-portrait and autobiography continues to function as self-discovery. However, Polisse and ADN focus more on the sociopolitical aspect of the director’s identity as they delve into class and racial demarcations in French society.

Social Turn & the Ethical Self

The films to be analysed in this section differ from their predecessors in their approach to identity. In the earlier films, Maïwenn reflects her inner motivations to become a director and navigates her experiences within the industry that had shaped her public persona. The notion of identity appeared as something the director could self-define. The world depicted in the earlier films was limited to familial and professional circles. Thus, the interactions were between more-or-less equal subjects in terms of class and race, while the social critique was limited to gender.

Class and racial divisions constitute the major turn in Polisse (2011) and ADN (2020), as the director delves into the sociality of identity. The journey of self-discovery trope continues; however, these identity crises are not caused by inner conflicts, but rather by interactions with others, particularly across boundaries of class and race. In both films, protagonists encounter characters or situations that transform their ways of being. Both protagonists, respectively Melissa and Neige, are unable to remain indifferent to these encounters in their journeys and so respond to them. This responsiveness evokes Levinasian ethics, in the sense that the encounter with the Other prompts the subject into self-questioning (2007: 171). Maïwenn’s ethical approach is evident both in the narrative as the manifestation of character responsiveness, and also the films’ central interest in the ethics of gaze.

Polisse and ADN exhibit feminist overtones. The self-portraiture works to politicise the personal and problematise the conventional notions of home, identity, and belonging. Maïwenn highlights these notions as something felt, chosen, and practised. The equilibrium depicted at the beginning of these films is not equal at all, and the protagonists reach a sense of balance through a journey of self-discovery in both. Moreover, Polisse represents a turning point in Maïwenn’s cinema as she cinematically articulates her Algerian identity for the first time. ADN further explores the director’s mixed heritage, and Maïwenn’s cinematic body becomes a site for political conflict. These films not only represent a thematic shift in her work but also alter her public perception, changing her image from a white-passing director to a non-white French director (de Reviers 2024: 11).

Polisse (2011)

In Polisse [3], a photojournalist, Melissa/Maïwenn, follows the Belleville Child Protection Unit (CPU) with a Leica camera in hand as part of a project for the Ministry of Interior. The film’s episodic structure shows various aspects of police work, the dynamics between the officers, and their personal lives. The film opens with the statement, ‘based on real-life cases handled by the Paris CPU,’ which immediately blurs the line between reality and fiction. The central theme of child abuse echoes Maïwenn’s first feature, Pardonnez-moi, yet this time the personal story is extended to a larger social issue.

Melissa is introduced as an upper-class woman. She raises twin daughters with her Italian partner, Francesco. Their bilingual home environment is portrayed as a status symbol, rather than a source of discrimination, as in many CPU cases involving immigrant families. For an undisclosed reason, it is implied that there is a distance between the couple as they live separate lives. Their relationship is polyamorous, and they live in separate apartments across the street from each other. The couple no longer seems to communicate or share anything in common. Melissa seems to be alienated from their relationship and lifestyle, though not entirely detached at the beginning of the film. The class difference between Melissa’s privileged status and the socioeconomic realities she encounters at the CPU is emphasised. When she is introduced to the CPU, Melissa refuses the croissant offered to her because she ‘only eats organic.’ The officers laugh at Melissa’s answer, and their laughter creates a palpable distance between them, highlighting their class differences.

From the start, Melissa is an outsider. Her presence with the camera causes discomfort. Early in the film, Fred, played by Joey Starr, expresses his discontent by pointing out that Melissa photographs crying children whenever a tragic scene occurs. The scene epitomises Maïwenn’s shift to social issues. The question of authorship— ‘who is looking’—now transforms into an ethical inquiry: ‘who is looking at whom, and how?’ (Downing and Saxton 2010: 20). The director self-consciously critiques her position through her textual marker, Melissa. This confrontation is a result of a tension raised in the previous scene, where the police squad conducts a raid on a Romany camp. The team apprehends some parents on charges of inciting minors to engage in criminal activities as a gang and takes their children to an orphanage. Another type of photography appears in the form of headshots, with children holding a blackboard for identification. While Melissa photographs the scene, Fred pushes her aside. This moment foreshadows his comment in the next scene: ‘When it is gritty and despairing, she is there.’ The scene juxtaposes two photographic acts: one for documenting and identification, and the other to evoke emotions. Melissa’s gaze is problematised because it indicates her privileged vantage point, aiming to see without being seen (Chaudhuri 2014: 4). By hierarchically positioning the photographed children, this photographic act potentially evokes emotions in the viewer, while simultaneously commodifying them for media consumption. The scene is self-reflexive in a sense. Maïwenn reveals her awareness of her authorial position. She also grapples with how to navigate an ethical gaze towards the subject without becoming objectifying.

Maïwenn initially exposes the author and her vulnerabilities. Polisse introduces Melissa as a different and distant figure to the subjects of her photographs due to her upper-class status. This distance is later overcome as Melissa develops a closer relationship with the team, with Fred in particular. In a scene where the team celebrates having saved a child’s life, Fred asks Melissa for a dance. Then he realises that the glasses Melissa wears are a prop, and that she only wears them to be taken seriously. This sensual moment marks the beginning of their intimacy, where Fred strips off her masks.

The scene recalls Mary Ann Doane’s seminal work (1982) describing women wearing glasses and the moment of removing them. According to Doane, the image of women wearing glasses is often associated with ‘repressed sexuality, knowledge, visibility and vision, intellectuality, and desire’ while the act of removing them signals a transformation into beauty (1982: 82). This transformation is depicted as effortless and natural. Doane highlights the strong link between glasses and gaze, noting that women wearing glasses threaten conventional representational practices by possessing an active gaze. In other words, through the visual prop of glasses, women emphasise the act of seeing rather than being seen. Thus, the removal of glasses ‘acts as a mechanism for the naturalization of sexual difference,’ a process linked to the dynamics of seeing and being seen (1982: 83).

The function of the glasses might be applicable to Melissa, considering how the film portrays her alienation to her relationship, her desire to be taken seriously, and her need to prove herself. The difference between Doane’s filmic samples from 1940s Hollywood and Maïwenn’s Polisse is that ‘woman as subject of the gaze’ is not an impossible sign. The transformation still marks a sensual moment of ease and naturalness, but it also indicates a moment of self-acceptance. Moreover, Melissa is Maïwenn’s self-referential marker in the filmic text. The scene points to earlier films, particularly to the scene where Violette purchases a camera in Pardonnez-moi. Maïwenn genders the use of glasses in relation to women authors’ endeavour to establish their authority. She correlates the ‘seriousness’ of the author to the ‘distance,’ to look behind the frames. However, Maïwenn later abandons this idea of the distant author as the prerequisite for establishing authority. Melissa’s transformation begins with her removal of the glasses, and hence with the acceptance of sexual difference. This gesture allows her to open up proximity with her subject.

After this scene, Melissa develops a closer bond with the team, bridging the class differences that had previously created tension. Melissa’s approach to the cases also changes. In one scene, Melissa steps into a case for the first time rather than only photographing it. An African mother walks into the station with her son, asking officers to find a home for her son so he won’t suffer the same fate of homelessness. Despite the team’s effort to find a shelter for both, the child is separated from his mother. She leaves in tears while the child cries inconsolably for nearly two minutes. Fred, who identifies strongly with the child through a sense of racial kinship, walks away in distress. The child’s crying moves Fred and Melissa. Fred returns to comfort the boy, and Melissa joins him to wipe the child’s tears, whispering to him to calm him down. This interaction stands out as the film’s most affective scene. The sound of crying becomes unavoidable both for the characters and the spectator, as it halts the narrative to call upon its recipients for a response.

The narrative omits the child’s background story and his fate. Instead, it represents a non-verbal, affective encounter between the French police and marginalised others. This artistic choice foregrounds the encounter’s physical and emotional effect on Fred and Melissa. Their physical response is to first move away from the child and then to get closer to him. Sara Ahmed elucidates the complexity of such non-verbal forms of communication, suggesting that ethical communication achieved by ‘holding proximity and distance together: one gets close enough to others to be touched by that which cannot be simply got across … through getting closer, rather than remaining at a distance, that the impossibility of pure proximity can be put to work, or made to work’ (2000: 156). Rather than relying on a visual component, Maïwenn instrumentalises the prolonged sound of crying that becomes an immersive, inescapable presence to fill the space. The sound becomes a form of proximity for Fred and Melissa, as well as the audience, fostering an affective engagement with crying. In other words, the sound functions as an ethical mode that makes the encounter impossible to ignore. The child’s crying demands a response, and Fred and Melissa’s moving bodies attempt to find an ethical proximity that navigates the complex dynamics of proximity and distance.

The subsequent phase of Melissa’s transformation entails the revelation of her Algerian identity to Fred. This represents a significant moment in Maïwenn’s cinema, articulating her Algerian roots on screen for the first time. In the scene, Melissa introduces Fred to her family. Notably, the director casts her real-life father and maternal grandfather in the scene. The family home contrasts with Melissa’s modern apartment with its warm and welcoming ambiance. The family house features Maghrebi elements such as the Algerian tagine dish, wooden cabinets, and the grandfather singing an Arabic song. The neighbourhood is depicted as more of a working-class area. The balcony view shows laundry hanging across the street, and the sky is polluted by chimney smoke. In this environment, Melissa looks more cheerful and at home.

The narrative development leads to Melissa leaving Francesco and moving into an apartment in a working-class neighbourhood. The scene depicts Melissa waking up to adhan, the Islamic call to prayer, and wearing a kaftan. She goes to the balcony and photographs the people on the street, most of whom are people of colour. Melissa now photographs her subject as a member of an ethnic group, having resolved the difference and distance by returning to her roots. Although Melissa was Algerian French all along, the beginning of the film depicts her as primarily an upper-class bourgeois woman. In her intersectional identity, Melissa’s class status took precedence over her ethnic identity until she reconnected with it. Thus, through Melissa’s encounter at CPU, the film suggests that returning to one’s roots might be a remedy for alienation.

AND (2020)

The Algerian identity that was bracketed in Polisse becomes the central issue in AND [4]. The film features Neige, again played by Maïwenn, mourning her Algerian émigré grandfather. While Emir is the loving and unifying patriarch of the family, his loss brings the already conflict-prone and dysfunctional family dynamics to the surface. Neige’s grieving is found to be excessive by most of the family members, including her abusive mother, estranged sister, and absent father. Far from feeling a sense of belonging to her family, Neige embarks on a transformative journey to reconnect with her Algerian roots. For her, those roots represent the love and belonging she lost when Emir died. The film employs affective strategies that align with Sara Ahmed’s approach to emotions (2004), focusing on what grief does to the body. Grief leads Neige to learn about Algerian history and culture, which becomes an encounter to transforms her way of being. While the identity is still a self-defined notion for Maïwenn, the film focuses more on the corporeal experience of identity formation as it is felt, chosen, and performed by Neige.

The first half of the film illustrates the family members’ varying degrees of reconciliation with their mixed roots. Emir is the lost unifying patriarch, but he also represents Algerian heritage which each family member has a different relationship with. At one end of the spectrum, Neige’s cousin Kevin is portrayed as the only dark-skinned, culturally assimilated, lower-class member of the family. He is a fan of rap music and smokes joints. Although Kevin and Neige seem to cherish Emir and their Algerian roots more than the other grandchildren, they are represented as existing in between Eastern and Western cultures. Similarly, Neige, with her exaggerated makeup and hairstyle, and brown contact lenses covering her blue eyes resembles Amy Winehouse, as her brother Matteo points out. She appears torn between the two worlds. On one hand, she admires Emir and takes pride in being Algerian. She even mediates between her publisher friend and Emir to facilitate publishing of a book about Emir’s life and his activism for Algerian causes. However, her brother calls out the discrepancy between Neige’s Western look and her identification with Algerian heritage. The permeability of Neige’s identity as both Westerner and an Easterner is also linked to her skin colour. Unlike Kevin, Neige passes as white (de Reviers 2024: 5). This applies to her brother Ali as well. In fact, Neige’s publisher friend confuses Kevin with Ali, assuming the colour and name match. It is ironic that Ali, the only grandchild with an Eastern name, is the family member most opposed to their Muslim Algerian identity. Yet, their absent father, Pierre, represents the ‘extreme whiteness’ on this spectrum, revealed when he admits to voting for Marine Le Pen (de Reviers 2024: 6).

Neige’s journey of self-discovery becomes a reversal of her white-passing. The transformation starts just before Emir’s death, when she encounters the book about him. After reading the parts of it, Neige removes her contact lenses, revealing her blue eyes. This act is visually and semantically striking, marking the beginning of her transformation with the eye. This gesture resembles Melissa’s removing her glasses in Polisse. One might argue that Maïwenn’s take on ethical relations begins with a change in the eyes, with the look. Following Emir’s death, Neige’s transformation deepens. She embraces a more natural look and even chooses to wear a kaftan at the funeral.

ADN refutes the ideas that identity and belonging are tied to biological and familial bonds. The second part of the film focuses on Neige’s attempts to self-affirm her Algerianness. She takes a DNA test; however, the results are disappointing as she turns out only to be 14.8% Algerian. The results are displayed on the world map as purple clouds that vaguely indicate the area of origin, representing an artificial and reductionist visualisation of her family history. Moreover, Neige’s parents are portrayed as being far from a source of belonging. In the funeral scene, Neige asks her father why he did not call to express his condolences, and he responds, ‘I will not take life lessons from a petit bourgeois.’ He seems to perceive the world through class differences and is unable to comprehend the intimacy and affect that Neige seeks. Similarly, her mother, Caroline, is depicted as physically and emotionally abusive towards Neige. Caroline interrupts Neige’s speech at the funeral and pushes her aside. In later scenes, when Caroline apologises to Neige for her action, Neige expresses that she is afraid of Caroline’s touch and finds her smell repulsive.

Touch plays a crucial role in ADN. Neige gets in touch with her Algerian roots. Some forms of touch—including Caroline’s—do not indicate belonging, comfort or warmth. Thus, the film not only refutes the fixed notion of identity as biologically inherited but also implies that such intimacies may even generate violence. Conversely, the film identifies alternative forms of touch that facilitate a sense of belonging. In the wake of Emir’s demise, Neige’s initial response is to seek physical proximity to him. She kisses his lips, holds his hand, hugs his sheets, and puts on his pyjamas. In a sense, Neige embodies Emir, the object of loss. The embodying touch confirms belonging later, in the hammam scene. An elderly woman in the hammam touches Neige’s face and asks her if she is Algerian, as if she can tell by touching. This contact affects Neige; her face becomes wet with tears. The woman consoles Neige by saying, ‘You are like me.’ The woman recognizes their alikeness through tactile contact, rather than verbal communication or visual observation. As Ahmed elucidates, overwhelming proximity and intimacy involve a ‘failure to communicate,’ which is ‘not available to understand or knowledge’ (2000: 154). The scene does not contribute to the plot development; however, it halts the narrative, leaving interpretation to the spectator, as it functions to create emotions that are not easy to verbalise. The director emphasises the role of touch in fostering a sense of belonging and camaraderie.

To get in touch with her Algerian roots, Neige performs a series of Algerian customs; wearing kaftans, drinking Arabic mint tea, using Arabic words like ‘khallas’ and ‘nanah,’ decorating her apartment with Berber cushions, and even applying for Algerian citizenship. She also explains that her name was supposed to be Nedjma, but her parents abandoned it because it was ‘too Arabic.’ Neige claims this Arab Algerian identity. The film shows her engaging with a series of readings and documentaries about Algerian history and culture. The archival footage is edited into the film, as if Maïwenn is directly addressing the audience in order for them to learn about the horrific events of the October 1961 Paris massacre alongside Neige. The scene cuts to Neige on the Pont Saint Michel, gazing over the river, as if she is communicating with the past, with the dead. She trembles, cries, stares into space, until she wakes up in the hospital after having fainted on the bridge.

The sequence first encodes identity and belonging through reading and learning. In contrast to a fixed, biological approach, ADN illustrates identity as something that can be felt, learned, and performed. Alice de Reviers writes that ‘books function as means of socialization, from which Neige configures her identity … In a sense, Neige’s Algerian way of being in ADN is prefigured by a way of reading’ (2004: 2). [5] Moreover, Neige’s bodily response to grief and learning leads to malnutrition. She stops eating until she faints at the bridge. Neige immerses herself in reading, and this act, together with her malnourishment, suggests her replacement of physical sustenance with knowledge. She consumes history as if it were a necessity, and yet, history is not easily digested. Thus, the film correlates malnourishment with struggling to process the weight of the past. The use of archival footage not only functions to educate the audience but also serves as a call of the Other. The film’s juxtaposition of these images suggests that Neige cannot help but have an affective response to what she encounters through reading.

In Polisse, Maïwenn proposes a return to one’s heritage and culture as a solution to alienation. Similarly, in ADN, a return to one’s roots is depicted as a remedy for the identity crisis. While the encounter with the Other in Polisse is conducted in a direct, face-to-face manner, it is mediated through memories of the past via archival material in ADN. Regarding class and race, de Reviers posits that ADN ‘explicitly states race as an individual, conscious, strategic process of fabrication. The racism and discrimination that structure the racial assignments, by definition, are set aside and rewritten in the past tense, in favour of the narrative of a personal quest’ (2024: 3) [6]. Class and race are less overt in ADN because the primary focus is the affective responses to the Other. As Maïwenn’s cinematic body undergoes a transformation, so does her author image. In the same year, Maïwenn appeared in Yamina Benguigui’s Soeurs and Roschdy Zem’s Les Miens, which depicts the lives of a Moroccan family. With the release of ADN, Maïwenn’s portrayal in the media undergoes a notable shift. She is no longer regarded as a white-passing director; instead, she is now perceived as a director of colour (de Reviers 2024:11). Through ADN, Maïwenn reclaims the identity of Nedjma in her full name: Maïwenn Aurélia Nedjma Le Besco.

Conclusion

Maïwenn is undoubtedly not the only female director—or actor-director—who has faced sexist media scrutiny. A more comprehensive study of women directors in this category is needed. In this article, I have demonstrated how Maïwenn’s visibility as an actor formed an obstacle in establishing her authorship. This visibility raises important institutional questions about female authorship. The first section illustrated how Maïwenn employed self-reflexivity in her earlier films to address the institutional sexism that hindered her from telling her story as a publicly known figure. If self-reflexivity allows filmmakers to reflect on their own relationship to cinema, Maïwenn uses the medium’s tools to reclaim her agency.

Maïwenn’s cinema consists of a series of self-discovery journeys. She deconstructs and fragments her identity, addressing different facets of it in each film. In her earlier works, the director explores identity through the tension between the roles of actor and director. Later, she delves into her class and racial identity. The feminist value of these films lies in Maïwenn’s politicisation of the personal. She challenges the conventional perception of home, identity and belonging, presenting them as malleable notions. For Maïwenn, identity is neither fixed nor inherited from a biological family. Instead, it is a self-defined, chosen, and felt phenomenon. Her later films emphasise how this malleability is shaped by social relations. Moreover, Maïwenn adopts an ethical stance in her social films, where she begins to represent the Others of French society. As the possessor of the gaze, she avoids objectifying Others and opens her own cinematic body to be affected by these interactions.

The feminist perspective in Maïwenn’s cinema is evident when viewed beyond autobiography and narcissistic narrative. Her authorship goes beyond a personal expression in Polisse and ADN, seeking also to be considerate of the interests of Others. While subjectivity and autonomy remain central for the director, they reflect how Maïwenn experiences and sees the world. As Silverman asserts, the appearance of the author in films indicates that identity is not only an external element but also an integral part of the text. The director finds her identity in her mirror reflection (1988: 213). Maïwenn embodies this idea as she explores her identity cinematically, gaining self-knowledge through her self-portraiture cinema.

Notes: 

[1] Pardonnez-moi (2006) trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GqtBI1kyqo (last accessed 17 March 2025)

[2] Le Bal des actrices (2009) trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_Id_AHibv0 (last accessed 17 March 2025)

[3] Polisse (2011) trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJ60lcoouvA (last accessed 17 March 2025).

[4] ADN (2020) trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xojK5fRkwwk (last accessed 17 March 2025).

[5] My translation.

[6] My translation.