Communication sur « Jean Reno and French Comedy in the 2000s » dans le cadre d’un Panel sur « Stardom and National Identity in Contemporary French Comedy », Colloque international NECS 2014 « Creative Energies. Creative Industries », Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan, Italie, 21 juin 2014.

Présentation du Panel

Chair : Belén Vidal (King’s College)

Comedy has consistently been the most popular genre in France, with (usually male) comic stars traditionally embodying aspects of national identity, normally for domestic consumption. In today’s context, when French cinema is striving for a global reach on the one hand, and addressing an increasingly multi-cultural audience on the other, important shifts in comic genres have been linked to the – gender, ethnic, cultural and national – identity of the stars. This panel examines a range of strategies used by French comic films to engage with this evolution, from the relationship to Hollywood to the integration of multi-ethnic topics and actors.

Paper 1 – Mary Harrod : « Boy Meets Girl Meets Nation : Trans-national Stardom Trends in Contemporary French Romantic Comedy »

Paper 2 – Thomas Pillard : « Jean Reno and French Comedy in the 2000s : A National Genre in Transition ? »

Paper 3 – Raphaëlle Moine : « The Frenchness of the male comic star in a national/global context : Jean Dujardin from Brice de Nice to The Artist »

Paper 4 – Ginette Vincendeau : « Trans-national Stardom and the French “Comedy of Ethnic Integration” »

Sujet de la communication:

« Jean Reno and French Comedy in the 2000s. A National Genre in Transition? »

Jean Reno has developed a transatlantic filmography since the turn of the 2000s, alternating between French and American cinema, and between comedies and action films. As both Hollywood’s favorite Frenchman and French international star, his persona appears « inescapably in dialogue with both Atlantic coasts » (Cristina Johnston, 2007). But while his action roles have been linked to a « multinational entertainment cinema » (Dana Polan, 2002), little has been said about Reno’s long standing involvement in French comedy. With the aim of questionning some of the recent developments of this popular genre, this paper examines how the actor’s transnational identities are used in two different types of Hollywood-inspired comedy which rose to prominence in the 2000s : the action comedy (Wasabi, 2001) and the romantic comedy (Décalage horaire, 2002). Does the use of the french/transnational star in those new trends signal a « globalisation » of comedy as a national genre ?