9 Great French Films From the Cinema du Look
Leon, Les amants du Pont-Neuf, Subway, Betty Blue, Diva and More
May 8, 2009
Cinema du Look was a name coined to group together certain French films during the 1980s and early 1990s. The movement didn't encompass strong political views like their famous New Wave predecessors, but did focus on stories of alienated young people, marginalised by the powers that be. Cinema du Look was characterised by slick, music video style visuals, and cool young actors portraying lives lived under the radar. The emphasis was on relationships within peer groups, rather than family life, and the films were scattered with references to art and pop culture.
The Films of Jean-Jacques Beineix, Luc Besson and Leos Carax
The movement was spearheaded by three directors; Jean-Jacques Beineix, Luc Besson and Leos Carax, who all had the uncanny ability of making 1980s France look like a very cool place to live. Even if you were barefoot, hungry and homeless like Alex (Denis Lavant in Les amants du Pont-Neuf), or apprentice to a hitman like Mathilda (Natalie Portman in Leon), life in the gutter had a distinct romanticism when viewed through the lens of Cinema du Look. This set it a million miles away from the dowdy kitchen sink dramas of classic social realism, despite characters which, superfluously, moved in the same social strata.
9 Great French Films Which Exemplify Cinema Du Look
A look at 3 examples each of excellent films from Cinema du Look's leading directors, starting with Jean-Jacques Beineix:
- Diva (1981). Generally credited as beginning the Cinema du Look movement, Diva is a highly stylised thriller about an opera loving postal worker who bootlegs a concert of his favourite diva, and is then pursued across the country as the cops think his tape implicates the chief of police in dirty dealings with the mob.
- Betty Blue (aka 37º2 le matin), (1986). The film in which the beautiful Beatrice Dalle exploded onto the screen as the tempestuous Betty, turning the life of her laid-back handyman boyfriend upside down.
- Roselyne et les lions (1989). Although not as well received as his previous two films, this movie about two young trainee lion tamers who fall in love is the perfect late night movie to stumble across by accident and love forever more.
Moving on to Leos Carax:
- Boy Meets Girl (1984). The first of three Carax movies starring Denis Lavant as a character called Alex (the next two follow), this film is a monochromatic, poetic musing on love lost, found and yearned for.
- Mauvais sang (Bad Blood aka The Night is Young), (1986). Alex is recruited to help two aging thieves pull off a job. He falls for Anna (Juliette Binoche) the young mistress of one, and cartwheels down the street to the strains of Bowie's "Modern Love" in a stand-out moment of romantic fantasy. She remains in love with her veteran gangster, thus continuing Carax's examination of love without romance in his films.
- Les amants du Pont-Neuf (The Lovers on the Bridge) (1991). Juliette Binoche and Denis Lavant are re-united in this film as vagrant lovers, with a dangerous, at times brutal passion. The fear of desertion leads to obsessive, controlling behaviour, a far cry from the candy cane romance of Hollywood movies, but interesting nonetheless.
And finally, perhaps still the most famous internationally, Luc Besson:
- Subway (1985). Starring Christopher Lambert and Isabelle Adjani, the film is set in the underground Parisian Metro system, and it is, like much of Besson's work, at times surreal and over the top. The film emphasises Cinema du Look's obsession with underground society by focusing on characters who live in the subway.
- La Femme Nikita(aka Nikita), (1990). Probably the most well known of all the cinema du look films is this stylish, action packed movie about a reluctant female assassin.
- Leon (1994). A late addition to the Cinema du Look canon, Leon embraces many of the conventions associated with the movement, but transposes the action to Little Italy in New York. Jean Reno, who plays Leon, featured in previously in both Subway and Nikita, but Leon provides him with the lead. The film is exiting, with the emphasis on slick visuals rather than realism. It also paints a very cynical picture of the police, another motif common to Cinema du Look. Leon was also the film debut of Natalie Portman, as a 12 year old wannabe 'cleaner'
Cinema du Look and Hollywood
The films of the Cinema du Look movement are sometimes, rather unfairly, held up as examples of style over content. The flashy visuals, the thrills and spills, have more in common with Hollywood blockbusters then French art-house cinema. France has a long and proud tradition of political film-making, which explains why many academic critics took exception to Cinema du Look. But France has always had a cyclical relationship with Hollywood. Its directors from the French New Wave onwards continually being both inspired by blockbusters and inspiring them. The influence of the Cinema du Look is noticeable in America's decision to re-make Nikita (as The Assassin and as a TV series), and in the narrative style and pop culture references of directors such as Quentin Tarantino, or even Michael Bay. The movement's influence can also be seen in modern French films. Amelie, for example, uses colours in the way Besson does to enliven the film and reflect the underlying emotions. Amelie also features moments of surreal expression that are very similar to Alex's spontaneous dancing in Mauvais sang.
The Cinema du Look films are generally speaking much darker in tone than their American counterparts, but blessed with the most gorgeous cinematography, and populated by strange and interesting characters. The films offer cinematic spectacle, but also a depth of emotion that is impossible to ignore. Never mind style over substance, Cinema du Look is most definitely all about the content portrayed in the most attractively cinematic way possible.
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