Jan Baetens, Une fille comme toi and The Film Photonovel: J A Cultural History of Forgotten Adaptations, reviewed by Susana S Martins

Abstract

Imagine you open a thin, large-format book in your hands, eager to discover the story it tells. The title, Une fille comme toi, is not particularly revealing. After a discreet white cover, you suddenly encounter an uncanny visual archive: on the second page, a colour-saturated Brigitte Bardot looks you in the eye, and you recognize old visual codes. It looks like the cover of a popular vintage magazine. You continue further, discovering several pages in which photographic images and text are organized in a familiar grid layout. Your common sense tells you that you must be holding a photonovel. But the title corrects you: it is a film photonovel. But which film is it about? Things get a bit more confusing as you turn the pages trying to find out. Ingrid Bergman here, Jean-Paul Belmondo there; Rita Hayworth, Tippi Hedren, Marcello Mastroianni, all sharing the same fictional space.