by JON FROSCH
Upcoming French movies explore some of the country’s current woes — racial unease, economic despair, sexual misbehaviour among elites — with an unflinching gaze that feels new. France24.com’s film critic takes a closer look.
Contemporary French cinema, for all its virtues, has not been particularly adept at shedding light on contemporary French problems.
Despite France’s current “malaise” (documented with glee by The New York Times’ editorial page) and its symptoms — economic woes, political dysfunction, racial and religious discrimination — most French filmmakers have turned a blind eye; France’s cinema is dominated by frothy comedies filled with chit-chat and country homes, hushed dramas of domestic or romantic turmoil, nostalgic period pieces and crime thrillers — films that often excel at examining individual crises, but rarely bother to link them to the broader predicaments of French society.
Even when French filmmakers address their country’s imperfections, the results tend to be tinged with self-congratulatory uplift and packaged for the masses. A recent example, “The Intouchables” (2011), about a wealthy, wheelchair-bound white man and his black caregiver, was a crowd-pleaser that celebrated a boundary-crossing bond without taking a hard look at the boundary. Audiences ate it up.
Over the next several weeks, however, a handful of French releases – Claire Denis’ “Bastards” (“Les salauds”), Thierry de Peretti’s “Les Apaches”, Rebecca Zlotowski’s “Grand Central” and Serge Bozon’s “Tip Top” – expose what one might call the grimy underbelly of present-day France.
France 24 for more