Cinematic rewriting in contemporary French cinema

This thesis will explore the connection between cinema and literature in contemporary French cinema, focusing specifically on two types of film adaptations: films which claim a literary source but ultimately bear little resemblance to the cited text, and films that do not claim to be adaptations but are obviously indebted to a literary source through formalistic and intertextual means. Drawing from the work of Marie-Claire Ropars, Gilles Deleuze and Umberto Eco, the concept of "cinematic rewriting" will be utilized to analyze the ways that literary texts are radically transformed in three contemporary French films: Beau Travail (Claire Denis, 1999), Innocence (Lucile Hadzihalilovic) and Dans Paris (Christophe Honore, 2006).