Levinasian Responsibility in Le Fils
Chapter 2 considers the Dardennes’ 2002 film Le Fils, a dramatic story of Levinasian responsibility for the Other based around a teacher and his pupil and a key exemplification of the Dardennes’ film style. It assesses the film in the light of Jacques Derrida’s notion of ‘originary performativity’, as seen, for example, in his 1976 analysis of the American Declaration of Independence. Derrida argues that originary performativity occurs when a work performs its own creation – such as happened when the founding fathers of the United States signed a document that already spoke of an American people, a people who were brought into being by the very document that spoke of them. It is the power of an artwork to create a rupture in the order of the world, to originate a new type of world. This chapter reads the Dardennes’ use of style in Le Fils as a filmic type of originary performativity, both presenting the world as it is and showing a world as it could be. Through this, the film powerfully evokes a Levinasian responsibility for the Other as embodied in its protagonist, Olivier (Olivier Gourmet).