Girls in hoods, not veilsTWENTY years ago, a raw angry film burst on to the big screen and into the French mind. “La Haine” (Hatred), written and directed by Mathieu Kassovitz when he was just 26, was a stylised black-and-white drama about youth, guns and police brutality that opened French eyes to the rage on the housing estates of the country’s banlieues. Although nothing since has quite matched its dramatic power, “La Haine” opened the way for a generation of French film-makers, who have turned their backs on the elegant salons and leafy boulevards of Paris for the tense, angular vibrant world of the banlieue.
Even today, “La Haine” is worth watching again. Its haunting opening voice-over, relating a story about a man who falls from a skyscraper and tells himself as he plunges to the ground, “So far, so good; so far, so good,” sets the movie up for its shocking end. It also acts as the film’s central metaphor. The simmering rage of Saïd (of Arab origin), Vinz (a Jew) and Hubert (an African), three young drifters whose friend, Abdel, dies after being detained by the...
from The Economist: Books and arts http://ift.tt/1QMwTd5
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