Abstract
Roch Stephanik's 2000 film 'Stand-by' recounts the story of Helene, a thirty-something woman so traumatised by her husband's dumping her before they are to board a flight to Buenos Aires that she cannot bring herself to leave Orly airport. In the months that follow, Helene transforms herself into Helena, a prostitute who takes her clients to nearby airport hotels. In this article, I will read Helene in relation to other mobile urban women in French literature and cinema, from Baudelaire's flaneur poetry to the mobile cinematic characters in films such as Agnes Varda's 'Cleo de 5 a 7' and Claire Denis's 'Vendredi soir'. More specifically, I will examine the recurrent motifs of glass and/or mirrors in 'Stand-by' and in those two films, and their relationship to notions of mobility, identity and transformation. I will argue that Orly airport functions not as a space of transit, but as a space of transition and of re-birth. With reference to the work of Ross Chambers, Marc Auge and Michel de Certeau, I will examine how role-play is a major factor in Helene's self-empowerment, a transformation which will eventually allow her to leave the airport on her own terms.
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