Un regard lucide sur l'état du cinéma français

[Walden]

(article du International Herald Tribune en vo, of course)


International Herald Tribune
In France, it's the cinema of denial
By Michael Kimmelman
Tuesday, November 4, 2008

PARIS: 'W.," Oliver Stone's biopic about the outgoing American president, has just opened here. So has a French film about Coluche, the country's most popular postwar comedian, Michel Colucci, who became a kind of anarchic candidate for president in 1981, an opponent of anti-immigrant sentiment, a champion of the poor.

The French movie hardly bothers with politics, dwelling on Coluche's love life instead. Cultural gulfs can sometimes reveal themselves in these small details. France, it turns out, remains, even all these years later, not insignificantly caught up in the cinema spawned by the Occupation, offering diversion, self-flattery and escapist fiction about itself.

Serious-minded Americans traditionally love to idealize the French movie industry, but as French cinephiles tend to see it, it's their own filmmakers, unlike those in the United States, who shy away from tackling head-on tough issues like contemporary French politics, scandals and unrest. Contrarians will note "La Haine" (Hate), a much-talked-about movie anticipating the violence that exploded three years ago in some of France's poor immigrant suburbs. But "La Haine" was released in the mid-1990s.

Meanwhile, never mind poor box office results, the United States keeps churning out ambitious pictures with big stars or directors, like "In the Valley of Elah," "Lions for Lambs," "Rendition," "Redacted" and "Body of Lies," questioning U.S. policy in the Middle East or otherwise seizing on the headlines. France hasn't made a significant movie yet about the 2005 riots.

The country has censored politically charged films, including Jean-Luc Godard's "Petit Soldat" (made in 1960 but not released until 1963), a rare French picture about the Algerian war of independence. "The Battle of Algiers," the greatest film about that war, was an Italian-Algerian production, not a French one, directed by an Italian. It was banned for many years after its release in 1966.

The closest thing to a French "Apocalypse Now" or "Platoon" about Algeria is "L'Ennemi intime," made last year, close to half a century after the war ended. As for a French version of "W.," any film skewering a sitting French president "would be nearly impossible to make here," said Caroline Benjo, echoing what other French filmmakers contend.

They cite a mix of politics, stylistic habits perpetuating the national "brand," financing and a collective anxiety about postwar French identity. The problem, you might say, goes back to de Gaulle's selling the country on the idea that it won World War II, along with the culture of denial that that mindset promoted.

Benjo is a producer of "Entre les Murs" ("Within the Walls," marketed in English as "The Class"), which won the Palme d'Or at Cannes this year. A drama about schoolchildren from a multiethnic neighborhood of Paris, it has so far done well at the French box office. Like the promiscuously awarded "La Graine et le Mulet" (marketed in English as either "Couscous" or "The Secret of the Grain"), directed by Abdellatif Kechiche, which is about a community of immigrants in a seaside town in the south of France, "Entre les Murs" is "l'exception culturelle."

That phrase ordinarily connotes not "exception to the rule" but the exceptional status of culture here. Money for French films comes partly from a percentage of ticket sales for American blockbusters, and from French television networks, which by law must underwrite films.

Public television is government-run, of course, and the country's most popular network, TF1, happens to be owned by Martin Bouygues, a close associate of the president, Nicolas Sarkozy. "Naturally television executives try to influence content," Jean-Michel Frodon, the editor of Cahiers du Cinéma, noted.

That said, France likes to boast, for good reason, that with more than 220 films made here a year, the country's movie industry lags behind only those of India and the United States. Among these 220 movies, a modest number of high-quality documentaries or fictional dramas detailing poverty or immigrant life here are released, but they're generally "small films made in the shadows," Frodon said.

The most popular film ever made in France was released this year, "Bienvenue Chez Les Ch'tis" (Welcome to the Land of the Sh'tis), a harmless comedy about a postal employee from the South forced to work in the North. The two main stars of the movie, imitating regional clichés, both happened to be Frenchmen of North African descent.

On the other hand, newspapers were full of stories the other week about the burning of cars belonging to Luc Besson's film crew. In Montfermeil, a poor town outside Paris, Besson has been shooting a big-budget American-style thriller with John Travolta. But it's not about the riots in that neighborhood in 2005.

For that, French people these days must turn to programs like "La Commune," a dark television drama that ran this year on Canal Plus. Its inspiration was not French cinema but U.S. cable series like "The Wire" on HBO. "La Commune," glowingly received by French critics, was canceled when the network decided its audience wasn't large enough.

Abdel Raouf Dafri, the show's writer, shook his head in disgust. "The real-life characters in the series were blacks and Arabs, traditional conservative Muslims, leaders after the white policeman in the neighborhood had given up," he said, "and France doesn't like to look in the mirror except to see itself as the most beautiful nation."

Dafri lately wrote the screenplay for "L'Instinct de mort" ("Killer Instinct," to be marketed in English as "Public Enemy Number One") which just opened to good reviews. About a real-life gangster of the 1960s and '70s, Jacques Mesrine, a kind of populist outlaw, the movie has a definite political undercurrent. Dafri said he looked to Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese, to "Prison Break," "24" and "The Sopranos."

Back at the offices of Haut et Court, the production company for "Entre les Murs," Carole Scotta, another of the film's producers, said: "Look at the French films that sell on the international market, and you'll also see they aren't always the best ones, but they're the ones that fit the expectations of French cinema." She added: "We're prisoners of these expectations."

"It took a long time for politicians here to admit France bore responsibility for the years of collaboration during World War II, and still Sarkozy likes to say we were a nation of resistance. The most successful films in this country reflect our collective projection of France as we wish it to be. We prefer to live in a dream."
Correction:
Notes:
International Herald Tribune Copyright © 2008 The International Herald Tribune | www.iht.com

[Emissary]

Cela dit, les films d'Oliver Stone ou de Michael Moore ne sont pas moins "harmless" que nos comédies franchouillardes.

[Kfigaro]

Par rapport à "La bataille d'Alger", j'ajoute qu'en dehors de la censure officielle, le film a mis encore plus d'années avant d'être enfin accepté et programmé à la télévision ! sa diffusion télévisuelle est toute récente si mes souvenirs sont exacts et sauf erreur de ma part...

Sinon oui, pour le peu que j'en ai lu, ils ont hélas raison (je n'ai lu que le début de l'article pour le moment), la France ne produit plus de films politiques et dénonciateurs depuis longtemps, exit les Boisset, la meilleure période des Costa-Gavras, les Heynemann ou les "films dossiers" façon Francesco Rosi.

[Julien]

Moi j'arrive même pas à me souvenir quel était le dernier film français que je suis allé voir en salle. Ça doit remonter à des lustres.

[DarkCat]

Et bien moi, je me souviens encore que c'était "la parenthèse enchantée". Oui, je sais, ça me fout la honte , mais j'avais des circonstances atténuantes. A l'époque, j'avais des places gratuites, et comme je me suis retrouvé seul dans la salle diffusant le film qui m'intéressait, j'ai dû choisir un autre film. Et comme je ne voulais pas avoir fait une trentaine de bornes pour rien, j'ai choisi le seul film que je n'avais pas encore vu. Et ce fut hélas celui-là...

[Emissary]

Moi j'arrive même pas à me souvenir

Ne dis pas des choses comme cela, Kfig' va t'accuser de mentir.