Page 87 - Alternative Europe Eurotrash and Exploitation Cinema Since 1945

FIGURE 10 S. finds comfort with Marie

when her former boyfriend has anal sex with another woman. It is no coincidence that S. films her
home videos in the bathroom and on the toilet, cultural places dedicated to the transfer between the
inside and outside of human bodies.
There is only one occasion when S. is not entirely on her own in the film, when she trusts
another person/body, and that is when she falls in love with another woman. With her own body,
S. also explores that of her girlfriend, Marie, with whom she has a short but intense love affair. S.'s
reunification with Marie, at the very end of the story, is by far the only bright spot (literally) in the
film. Similarly, S. longs for the love of another woman, Angie, throughout the film, only to find
that love unrequited. In a remarkable comment on this lesbian motive, Henderickx claims that S.
is not lesbian by choice, she has to become one. 10 Only in the body of another woman can S. find
comfort, physically and culturally - only through another female body can S. become a culturally
acceptable (and accepted) subject herself. Together the three female bodies form the last stronghold
against complete disintegration. Fundamentally then, S.'s cultural identity, even her chances for
survival, almost entirely depend on how she deals with her changing body and its physical and
cultural limits.

S., ABJECTION AND DUTROUX

Through its positioning of the body at the centre of attention and action, S. becomes an almost
perfect illustration of the specific concept of abjection in representations commenting on the loss
of social order and its symbols. In Powers of Horror Julia Kristeva, building on work by René Girard

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