The French are back in town

The Cannes Film Festival is many things; spectacle, charade, always contentious and a cultural event that bathes, as it does, on the shoes of the Mediterranean, in lively, often scandalous and always guaranteed contentious discourse.  Yet, for the most part, what films the festival loves are not always ones an audience does.  However, in my view, it is always worth seeing as many films that have won gongs at Cannes as one can and the latest to hit our screens is a film that has had critics unable to agree on just how good or just how predictable it really is. Girlhood, (a questionable translation by the distributor of the French title Bande de Filles which literally translates as girl gang, is the latest work by the remarkable Céline Sciamma – who came up with the title Girlhood where ‘hood’ refers to the cité where the heroines of her story live – so make your own mind up!)
Sciamma is one of a powerful new wave of film-makers in France who for the last twenty years or so have been making a style or is it a new genre, Banlieue cinema.  In the mid 90’s the French director Mathieu Kassovitz made La Haine, which at the time was likened to the works of Spike Lee, John Singleton and others, being stylistically similar in the portrayal of the social and racial tensions in France at the time.  Other French box-office successes followed – many first seen at Cannes – and we have been able to see some remarkable performances by a new generation of black French actors – most notably for me, Omar Sy in Les Intouchables – a comedy which was the launchpad for a career in Hollywood.  As for gritty realism, Banlieue cinema has found its way onto television.  If you haven’t watched Spiral (Engrenages) on BBC4, I strongly recommend you get all four – or is it five – series out on DVD.  They are an education in themselves into the workings of the French judicial system and a timely observation of the ‘liaison dangereuse’ between politics and the judiciary – much as The Wire was for its portrayal of the social and moral bankruptcy of Baltimore made at the start of this century.
Girlhood, with its all-black cast and unknown female leads plucked straight from the same cités in which they live feels very different from the more aspirational and feel-good all-black movies from across the Atlantic.  I think especially of Waiting to Exhale , Forest Whitaker USA 1995, with a stellar cast of four of America’s biggest names,  Whitney Houston, Angela Bassett,  Loretta Devine and Lela Rochen.  These two movies illustrate the fundamental difference between the place of African American talent both in front of and  behind the camera in American cinema and the situation in France.  Yet, when it comes to creating some of the most powerful drama which portrays the reality of life for African minorities in France, Jaques Autiard’s brilliant A Prophet, made in 2010 exists within the Banlieue Cinema tradition for its sense of realism and observation of the racial divide in France – albeit within a story about gangsters.
There is a huge debate about the opportunities for black and Asian talent to have a voice in visual culture both here and in France and the success especially of black actors in the USA – so why can’t we achieve the same here?    There is a lengthy article in the Observer about the making of Girlhood and the roots of its inspiration as well as the lives of the principle protagonists.  However, as well as reading it and other related material, might I suggest you head out to your local arthouse cinema next month when Girlhood goes on general release and get out a DVD of Waiting to Exhale and A Prophet in the meantime for some truly enjoyable prep.