food in film: bande à part

Bande à part (1964)



there's no shortage of French films with scenes staged in cafés. but this scene is one of my favorites. in a movie that clocks in at only 97 minutes, four of them are spent watching these three young people dance. it's not that they're doing anything spectacular: the dance is repetitive, certainly not flashy. and no one is looking at them: the camera is the only viewer, and a partial one at that. unlike most dances, this one isn't staged to give the privilege of spectatorship to anyone; instead, it insinuates itself into the limited available space such that we can't always see their whole bodies at once. we're too close, there's stuff in the way. this dance is for the dancers only.

what does this have to do with food? absolutely nothing. it's that absence of food that interests me in this scene. the three of them occupy the café and transform it into a venue for their own performance, stripping it of all vestiges of food and eating. they're too young, beautiful and tragic to eat, so they abandon their Coca-Colas and dance instead. the waiter, the diners, the drinks on the table are all part of a different world, a world where bodies consume; our heroes have other plans for the brief period they get to inhabit their bodies.