From experimentations with genre and intertextuality to new visions of queerness and relationships, ReFocus: The Films of François Ozon captures the unique spirit of one of France’s most idiosyncratic directors. Loïc Bourdeau’s edited volume is intellectual yet creative, cohesive yet wide-ranging, inventive yet steeped in a rich cultural tradition. Much like François Ozon’s cinema itself.
Gemma King, The Australian National University
By now a familiar fixture in contemporary French cinema, the prolific auteur François Ozon seems to have grown in stature over the last decade. Loïc Bourdeau has assembled an exciting and eclectic collection of original essays that combines a welcome return to the perverse queerness of the filmmaker’s early work with a full examination of the later more ‘mature’ Ozon including a timely focus on the sexual politics of abuse. This is an impressively wide-ranging collection that will no doubt contribute to a fuller critical understanding of one of 21st century cinema’s important directors.
Nick Rees-Roberts, Sorbonne Nouvelle University