This proposal has a fundamentally pedagogical orientation that arises from my repeated use of this film in intermediate and advanced courses for undergraduate French majors and minors. As part of the presentation, I will offer the audience a dossier of materials I have developed for use in the classroom. I will show short scenes from the film, suggesting how they may be used to support and promote francophone studies in an undergraduate French Studies program. I will also comment on Claire Denis's exquisite and artful use of the camera for the visual communication of complex attitudes.

This semi-autobiographical film offers a deft visual rendering of important themes in colonial and postcolonial francophone culture: the confrontation of religious, cultural and racial differences; the taboo of interracial sexuality and desire; racism; respect for human dignity; tolerance of difference; the question of identity and belonging; the structuring and exercise of power; economic exploitation; tensions between indigenous and colonizing cultures; fear of the other. The film takes the form of a flashback to childhood experiences of the central white character, France, in colonial Cameroon in the late 1950s. This tale, the heart of the film, is framed by the encounter of France (as an adult) with a black American expatriate living in Cameroon, William J. Park, who offers her a ride, flirts with her, then briefly tells his own story. In both parts of the film, the cental leitmotif is that of France's relations with a black man. During the flashback, eight-year-old France's relationship with the family's boy, Protée, has a parallel in her mother's ambivalent but growing attraction for the African who takes care of her daughter.

The film offers a superb resource for sensitizing students to the many tensions and questions which underlie the field of francophone studies. The goal of my presentation is to point out how the film can be used in the classroom to stimulate reflection and discussion among intermediate- to advanced-level undergraduates as well as prepare students for advanced work in francophone culture and literature and lead them to a more complex and nuanced understanding of diversity.