Reinterpreting Cinematic Utopia in Coline Serreau's Chaos (2001)

One of French filmmaker Coline Serreau's first endeavors was to portray a feminine Utopia: "Je voulais faire un film qui se serait appelé Utopie, dans lequel les femmes auraient décrit très concrètement la société qu'elles rêvaient" (Rollet 8). Although this first feature-length film-a documentary Serreau eventually entitled Mais qu'est-ce qu'elles veulent? (1977)-does not present a clear vision of this idyllic space, it does give voice to French women "de tous les milieux sociaux, ouvrières, paysannes, bourgeoises, et de tous les âges" (8), whose stories had seldom been told. As Rollet states, the filmmaker's exploration of Utopian societies permeates her entire corpus: Serreau endlessly rewrote and re-created her ideal communities from one film and one play to the next. Throughout the last two decades, she has successfully managed to confront accepted ideas and stereotypes about class, gender and ethnicity, and has tried to offer something else. (71-72).