Beyond Eurocentrism: Manuel Poirier’s Breton Road-film Western

In this paper on Manuel Poirier’s 1998 film Western, I explore the Peruvian-born director’s construction of Europe as a ‘home’ for non-European immigrants and Europeans alike. Through his appropriation and creative re-signification of the conventions pertaining to the genre of the American western, Poirier projects an image of the French equivalent of the American Far West, i.e. the region of Brittany, as a micro-version of an idealized Europe in which non-European male immigrants turn into friends, lovers and hosts for their homeless, jobless and/or loveless European counterparts.