In La città delle donne (1980), Federico Fellini presents his protagonist—played by Marcello Mastroianni—as a man who, after a chance encounter on a train, finds himself at a surreal feminist conference. In a succession of dreamlike scenes, he is presented with a series of female archetypes: seductress, mother, aggressor, whore, victim and elusive ideal. The film unfolds as a fantasy landscape in which the female figure does not appear as an individual, but as a projection screen for male fears, desires and misunderstandings.

It is precisely this dynamic that makes the film particularly relevant within Pauline Curnier Jardin’s universe, in which representations of femininity—and the mechanisms that produce those representations—are critically exposed.