Betwixt and Between: Julie Delpy as Liminal Artist

As a French-American artist working since her early career in mainstream and auteur French cinema—as well as European cinema—and Hollywood and American indie cinema, we can position Julie Delpy as a liminal artist of non-belonging, at home fully neither in France nor in the United States, instead constantly acting, writing and directing from a position in between. Delpy’s insider/outsider status speaks to her liminal status in the French, European and American film establishments. Liminality is, however, less an incidental by-product of a precarious transnational location; it is rather the defining feature of Delpy as an artist, which makes her work difficult to categorize. This article argues that Delpy is a liminal artist in the following ways: her French-American hybrid cultural identity, her work in several industrial contexts and her use of autofiction and genre hybridity in her film and television work.