“Femina feminae lupa est” : L’enclave comme pseudo-refuge social dans deux adaptations cinématographiques contemporaines, The Virgin Suicides et Cracks

Abstract

This article focuses on the feminine violence which occurs in the closed private spaces of two contemporary film adaptations: The Virgin Suicides (1999) by Sofia Coppola and Cracks (2009) by Jordan Scott. Combining the visual and textual analyses of these movies and of the novels they are based on, I will concentrate particularly on the Lisbon house (The Virgin Suicides) and St. Mathilda’s girls boarding school (Cracks) as independent microcosms which, nevertheless, encapsulate and highlight some wider external social dynamics (fear of the unknown, of the unconscious, of diversity). Because of their confinement, these two private spaces can also be considered as enclaves, and more specifically as refuges or prisons, where the disciplinary power of their matriarchal hierarchies imposes itself through the dual relationship of transgression and punishment that reflects Hobbes’s idea of society (and legitimate government) as a Leviathan.