3,330. This figure represents the number of close-ups I found in Denis Villeneuve’s oeuvre, from Un 32 août sur terre (1998) through to Blade Runner 2049 (2017) – roughly 1,026 minutes of moving images. Although several critics have focused on Villeneuve’s penchant for the macro – Joanne Comte even dubs him the ‘macrophage’ (11) – no one has as of yet endeavoured to explain the recurrence of closeups within his films, nor spoken about their impact on the spectator. Yet, from the blatant clues disseminated in his thrillers – Polytechnique (2009), Prisoners (2013), Enemy (2013) and Sicario (2015) – to the lingering on actors’ beautiful faces in Un 32 août sur terre, Incendies (2010), and Arrival (2016), to the recurrence of an ominous ‘Entity’ in Maelström (2000), emerge a variety and depth with regards to this cinematic technique which brings to mind Gilles Deleuze’s focus on the ‘imageaffection’. Deleuze considers that the close-up induces an ‘affective reading’ (97) of the film and states that as a polysemic formal choice, it can work autonomously or institute a dialogue with other shots in the movie, while linking to a deep intertextual web spanning the entire cinematic medium.

Analysing Villeneuve’s perspective on this type of shot relates to both a cinematic and a historical context, as one first needs to elucidate the important terminological difference between languages, rightly highlighted by Gilles Thérien and Mary-Ann Doane: whereas the French phrase gros plan focuses on the largeness of the filmed object, the English term ‘close-up’ emphasises the short distance between the latter and the camera. This discrepancy foreshadows a philosophical opposition engaging the transcendence or possession of the filmed object, and is crucial when focusing on the impact of close-ups in a specific cultural context. As a Quebec director who turned to the Hollywood market, Villeneuve promises to be the perfect example of such cultural differences.