Loving a Film About Hate

After being trounced by the French New Wave yet again over the weekend, I stumbled across a more recent piece of French cinema that I promptly fell in love with: Matthieu Kassovitz's "La Haine."

Vincent Cassel, Saïd Taghmaoui, Hubert Koundé play three friends, Vinz, Saïd, and Hubert. They are of Jewish, Arab, and African descent respectively, all hostile, restless young men in their twenties without many prospects for the future, and all inhabitants of a banlieu on the edge of Paris, the equivalent of council housing in the United Kingdom or a housing project in the US. The film gives us a look at twenty-four hours in their lives, the day after a riot in their neighborhood left one of their friends in the hospital, near death, and put one of the three in possession of a policemen's firearm. We follow them through their daily routines of casual vandalism and petty crimes, brushes with the police, and a failed attempt to visit the hospital. They make a trip into Paris to collect on a debt owed by a friend (François Levantal), but become stranded there after missing the last train, and have to make an arduous trek home.

Our protagonists aren't easy to sympathize with at first. They're the embodiment of everything we're taught to be wary of - aggressive, directionless young men who arrogantly break the rules and challenge authority, often for their own amusement. Their conversations are laced with obscenities and threats of violence, and trouble follows in their wake. Soon it becomes apparent that Saïd, the youngest, only talks big to build himself up and hide his insecurities. Hubert, a small time drug dealer and the smartest of the trio, hates the oppressiveness of the banlieu and longs for a way out. Vinz is the most openly anarchic, swearing he'll put a bullet in a policeman if their friend in the hospital dies, but it's not so clear if he'd actually go through with it. As we learn more about their lives and families, and watch them interact with each other, they emerge as distinct, vibrant personalities. The turning point of the film comes with the trip to Paris, where they're thrown out of their element in the big city and we see how they're treated by the police, local gangs, and ordinary people.

The obvious progenitor of "La Haine," which translates as "Hate" or "Hatred," is "Boyz in the Hood," which tackled similar social ills by examining the lives of young African-Americans in South Central Los Angeles. However, "La Haine" is a much slicker piece of work, shot in gorgeous black and white, with characters who are a little sharper, a little colder, and more acutely aware of their limited circumstances. Kassovitz is much more ambitious with the camera, giving us 360-degree pans, dolly zooms, and a famous helicopter-assisted shot that travels from a DJ's widow out over the banlieu, giving us a bird's eye view of the neighborhood below. Pop culture also permeates much of the film. Vinz sneers a Travis Bickle impression into the bathroom mirror, and the guys discuss "Batman" and "Tom and Jerry" cartoons on the way back from Paris. The Levantal character is nicknamed Asterix, after Asterix the Gaul (the Criterion subtitles call him Snoopy).

There's a wonderful energy to "La Haine," a sense of raw, unfiltered realism in spite of the film's stylistic conceits. The unspoken threat of violence hangs over every frame, keeping the mood tense, but this is not a dark or joyless picture. The three leads are casually charismatic, and the script gives them a lot of memorable bits of business, like Vinz seeing cows when he's high, Saïd's touchiness about his sister, and a random encounter with an elderly Holocaust survivor in the washroom. The crew of the film lived and worked in the neighborhood featured in "La Haine" for the duration of the shoot, and did their best to integrate themselves into the community. The extra effort comes across onscreen, where the setting is a tremendous influence on the feel and the verve of the film. The camera may turn cartwheels, but nothing about the performances feels staged or affected.

As an American viewer I can't say much as to the controversy that surrounded the film in France when it was released, about the perceived political messages or anti-police sentiments. It's clearly a film with a strong point of view in a particular context, but the messages are universal. Matthieu Kassovitz was only twenty-seven when he accepted the Cannes Prize for Best Director for "La Haine," and I wonder if an older director could have made this movie, taken all the chances and all the risks to bring this story to screen. The leads all were unknowns, the subject matter was difficult, and the budget was minuscule. And yet here it is, fifteen years later, still as relevant and timely as ever.

I think my luck has changed with French cinema. I'll try a few more modern films before I go back to Godard and Truffaut. Next up: Michael Haneke's "Caché."