Page - 46 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 02/02

46 | Stefanie Knauss www.jrfm.eu 2016, 2/2, 45–66 INTRODUCTION The films of Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne stand out for their complex, multi- dimensional female and male characters whose representation disrupts gender stereotypes in numerous ways, both in how the characters themselves are de- picted and how they are shown to relate to other individuals and their social context. Consequently, it is somewhat surprising that the category of gender has not been used more extensively in the analysis of their films before.1 There- fore, in this contribution, I will explore the themes of self, relationship, solidar- ity, family and work – all of them recurring issues in the films by the Dardennes – using gender, understood as “a field of social power with which people es- tablish relationships of great complexity”,2 as my primary category of analysis, and focusing in particular on the treatment of these themes in Rosetta (FR/BE 1999) and Deux jours, une nuit (Two Days, One Night, BE/FR/IT 2014). As I will show, the analysis of these two films, in the context of the larger work of the Dardennes, offers a number of interesting insights. First, it is noticeable that the films do not treat gender in isolation – and this might partially explain the lack of studies focusing on this aspect so far – thus underlining the idea that identity and relationships need to be analyzed with attention to the intersec- tion of various factors in addition to gender, such as ethnicity, nationality, and class. Second, the films remind us of the need to maintain the dialectical tension between individual self-determination and the impact of context: they show, on the one hand, that an individual, his or her thoughts, feelings, experiences, and actions, can never be fully defined through identity categories such as gender but is a surprising, singular, mysterious reality;3 on the other hand, the films also acknowledge that the larger social context, shaped as it is by the predominant gender binary, has a strong impact on the individual’s existence. Third, the films’ images and stories develop a vision of subjectivity as relational autonomy that contributes to feminist endeavors to think subjectivity and relationship in a way that enables the good life of women and men and promotes the common good. The theoretical framework for my analysis is shaped by feminist theory and gender studies, feminist ethics and Christian social ethics. Feminist theory and gender studies have underlined the importance of acknowledging the full equal- ity of women and men, promoting women’s agency and including women’s ex- periences in all reasoning.4 Recent developments have complicated these com- mitments by calling attention to the diversity of women’s experiences around 1 To my knowledge, McMahon (2012) is alone in using gender as a central category of analysis as she focuses on relationships between fathers and sons in her discussion of the deconstruction of the political in the films of the Dardennes. 2 Williams 2000, 258–259. 3 Cf. Mai 2010, xiii. 4 Cf. Cahill 2014, 28.