“On ne peut rien contre une fille qui rêve”: Teenage Pregnancy as Maternal Empowerment or Maternal Entrapment in '17 Filles'

Abstract

17 Filles (2011), the first feature film of French directing sisters Delphine and Muriel Coulin, draws inspiration from a 2008 incident in Gloucester, Massachusetts, in which 18 high-school girls committed to a “pregnancy pact”, with the aim of conceiving almost simultaneously. The Coulins transpose these events to Lorient in northern France, and the film follows a group of lycéennes who agree to get pregnant at the same time, in a bid to reclaim control over their bodies and their futures. This article examines the ways in which the pregnancy plot of 17 Filles seeks to interrupt and transgress the trajectory towards “successful” womanhood prescribed by society for young girls. The article further interrogates the positioning of motherhood in the film as an act of corporeal empowerment and female emancipation. In so doing, the authors problematise the feminist undertones of the film by exposing the extent to which the plot, at times, becomes entangled in the norms of the very institution that it seeks to subvert: namely, patriarchal motherhood.