Subverting The Graduate: An Irigarayan Analysis of Vernoux's Bright Days Ahead

Aiming to contribute to feminist film theory, this paper provides a close reading of Marion Vernoux’s romantic comedy Bright Days Ahead (Les beaux jours) using ideas of the French feminist, Luce Irigaray, as distilled by Lucy Bolton to test how well the ideas apply to creating a feminine film, or a film that takes a woman’s point of view. The paper analyzes Bright Days Ahead as a feminine subversion of Mike Nichols’ The Graduate. In each film, an older woman has an affair with a younger man, but in Bright Days Ahead, it is the younger man who seduces the woman. This reading looks for feminine subversions of The Graduate within Bright Days Ahead to find possibilities for new and creative ways to present a woman’s perspective in film.