French Cinema

V

Recent Developments

In recent years, films from Hollywood, which in France are traditionally exhibited in both dubbed and subtitled versions (the latter in specialist or upmarket cinemas), have become increasingly dominant at the box office. France has tended to counter this with bigger-budget, more commercial packages, and has succeeded up to a point, with films like those of Luc Besson, such as Le Grand Bleu (1988) and The Fifth Element (1997). Although these are often successful at the international box office, the passion, excitement, and experimentation that distinguished the masterpieces of the Golden Age and the period including and following the New Wave are rare. Even many of Godard’s more recent experiments, or a highly personal project such as the Bertrand Tavernier film Daddy Nostalgie (1990; These Foolish Things), seem emotionally bland by comparison.

Part of the problem is that exhibition patterns changed in the 1980s, with the adoption in France as in other countries of Hollywood marketing policies: a large publicity budget and simultaneous release in up to 50 cinemas. Thus, throughout the world there is now less space for the more risky and personal film to build up its audience gradually, during a long run and as a result of good reviews and word of mouth. Gérard Depardieu is a star, and has achieved international success in a diversity of roles, from his early work for Duras, Resnais, and then Truffaut to more recent successes, such as Rappeneau’s Cyrano de Bergerac (1990), based on the play by Edmond Rostand. However, stars contribute to great films, they do not create them. Although throughout his career Depardieu has been prepared to take risks by accepting roles in projects that are other than safely commercial, even these receive less exposure in France and abroad than they would have had in, for example, the 1960s and 1970s. Only occasionally do triumphs such as Rivette’s La Belle Noiseuse (1991; Beautiful Troublemaker) break through to reach the audience they deserve.

Mathieu Kasovitz’s La Haine (1995; Hatred) proved, however, to be the first international success of a series of increasingly controversial French films. Its action commences the morning after a night’s rioting. In the week of its release similar riots occurred in three areas of urban France: a Paris suburb, Le Havre, and Rouen. Its account of disaffected youth from a racially mixed suburb, who respond to police violence with violence of their own, is shot in the style of popular American television series such as NYPD Blue, but following the antagonists rather than the police. It offers an image of impending crisis, which has touched sensitive nerves in British and American, as well as French, viewers.

La Haine was followed by a series of controversial low-budget international successes whose provocation derived more from explicit violence and sex than from an obvious engagement with social concerns. These included Catherine Breillat's Romance (1999), Virginie Despentes and Coralie Trinh Tri’s Baise-Moi (1999; Fuck Me), Jean-Claude Brisseau’s Choses Secrètes (2003), and Gustav Noé’s pair Seul Contre Tous (1998; I Stand Alone) and Irréversible (2002). Many admirers of Seul Contre Tous found Irréversible unacceptable for the violence of the revenge killing with which it opens (this is, in fact, the climax of the story, which is told in reverse), and for the treatment of the nine-minute rape scene that motivates this revenge.

In the new millennium, French film-makers have been in the forefront of experiments with high definition digital technology. New Wave veteran Eric Rohmer used it to shoot exteriors in his story of revolutionary Paris, L'Anglaise et le Duc (2001; The Lady and the Duke) while Vidocq (2001), starring Gérard Depardieu, was the first 100 per cent digitalized mainstream feature.

VI

The Future for French Films: The End of an Era?

For the first two years of the 21st century, French cinema seemed to be going from strength to strength. However, its economic infrastructure had developed in ways that suddenly put the whole project at risk.

During the 1990s, French diplomats, prompted by the active campaigning of their country's actors and film-makers, with Depardieu in the vanguard, had been able to ensure that cultural productions, including films and television programmes, were not made subject to the free trade provisions underpinning the World Trade Organization. This agreement, the 'cultural exception', ensured that the systems of support for film production operating in France and many other European Union countries remained intact.

The first shock came when Jean-Marie Messier, chairman and chief executive of Vivendi, publicly stated in December 2001 that the 'cultural exception' was 'dead'. In 2000, at the same time as it bought the Seagram Universal conglomerate, Vivendi had effectively become the owner of the pay television channel Canal Plus, taking a 49 per cent holding. At the time of Messier's bombshell, the Canal was investing, through its production wing Le Studio Canal, in 80 per cent of all French films, making it a major pillar of the 'cultural exception'. Moreover, it had also established itself as a major player in international co-production. Worse was to come when, in April 2002, Messier fired Pierre Lescure, the Canal’s founding chief executive, provoking immediate protests from staff, in the middle of a programme while on air, and from many leading actors, film-makers, and footballers. At the same time, Vivendi Universal's stock suffered a major fall in value and, shortly after, Messier himself was dismissed from his post. Several divisions of Vivendi Universal were then put up for sale and Canal Plus's future seemed far from certain.

Though President Chirac has often voiced his support of the 'cultural exception', some believe that, had Lionel Jospin won the presidency in the 2002 election, he would have been more active in promoting the survival of Canal Plus in something similar to its present form, and in support of the existing agreements with the World Trade Organization.

As of February 2003, the words of a film-maker from the other side of the Atlantic, David Lynch, spoken a few weeks before he headed the Jury at the 2002 Cannes Festival, summed up the unresolved situation: 'France has an incredibly strong tradition of film-making, helped by a regulatory system that has permitted it to retain a local industry... If I were French I would be scandalized to see that system come under threat.'