Abstract
This chapter investigates two contemporary French productions, Dheepan (Jacques Audiard 2015) and Fatima (Philippe Faucon 2016), in order to identify which national sensibilities relating to the foundational principles of the Republic are being targeted by the films and whether they offer solutions or retreat to the safety of the status quo. I will argue that while Dheepan repeats the clichéd representations of the banlieues that cinema has perpetuated, reaffirming and aggravating anxieties regarding the peri-urban space, Fatima opens a discursive space to discuss the lack of compatibility between Republican ideals and policies of integration with social reality, where a shift in perception is yet to occur.
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Notes
- 1.
All translations are mine, unless stated otherwise.
- 2.
Banlieue literally means suburb. It designates urbanised areas located outside the cities. The banlieues in France are large housing estates constructed in the 1950s, due the growing population and as a response to the housing crisis . Today, while there are some wealthy banlieues, they have mostly become a source of anxiety for French Republic ideals, where secular values have to be negotiated. The word banlieue will be used as opposed to suburb as suburb does not necessarily hold the negative connotations that banlieue does.
- 3.
As a response to the massive revolt that took place in Les Minguettes in 1981, François Mitterrand’s socialist government wanted to recognise cultural pluralism. However, instead of doing that, the differentialist policies undertook led to ethnicisation and urban marginalisation of the beur community (Echchaibi 2007: 302). Policies such as politique de la ville aimed at subsidising housing estates, but the disconnection between the central government and local authorities caused actions to not be regulated and enforced. In 2002, the Conseil Français du Culte Musulman was established and aimed to adapt Islam to Europe by managing differences. The government referred all issues relating to the immigrant community to them, wanting them to resolve and deal with problems in times of crisis . Yet, they refused to take the Conseil’s on other occasions, such as in 2004 when the ban on religious symbols was enacted. This showed finally, how little influence the Conseil has on policy.
- 4.
The film foregrounds the ethnic differences within the banlieue through a Blanc-Black-Beur trio. Kassovitz as a director is aware of the ethnicity problem in France and believes it is a question that needs to be addressed and not ignored. While the director’s motivation to make the film comes from the social reality in the banlieue, it is important to note that one of the narrative privilege is placed on the character of Vinz who is of Eastern European descent and Jewish, as opposed to the Black or the Beur characters. While Vinz does take on a hybrid identity, Kassovitz has been criticised for eclipsing the issue away from the ethnic difference. Nonetheless, Kassovitz emphasises the commonality of the experiences in the banlieue in the face of unemployment, police violence and social discrimination (Tarr 2005: 68).
- 5.
This term refers to the uniform housing estates built in the banlieues.
- 6.
A law was passed in 1905 that officially separated the affairs of the Church from the state. This law forms the basis of French secularism. The aim was to ensure freedom of conscience, while keeping state affairs “neutral”.
- 7.
During the previous months, Sarkozy had gone on a tour of the banlieues where several incidents had occurred, including the shooting of an 11-year-old boy as a result of a gang confrontation. During this tour he declared that he aimed to rid the banlieues of “the racaille...with Kärcher”, racaille, literally “scum”, being a word to designate an undesirable group of people and Kärcher, a German brand of cleaning appliances.
- 8.
This is a term, used in France to designate the division amongst members of society based on social class. The term implies a division where certain members—in essence those living in the banlieue—are excluded from society due to their low level of income and education.
- 9.
The films designated as films of the Tradition de Qualité are the mainstream, studio productions of the 1940s. The directors of the 1960s, namely François Truffaut, detested this type of filmmaking, which he described as sterile literary adaptations that did not capture the true magic of the cinema.
- 10.
Beur is the term used for French citizens of North-African descent. It entails a bi-cultural belonging and is used for second- and third-generation immigrants. It derives from the rearrangement of the word arabe.
- 11.
While at first the term beur cinéma demonstrated the agency in the production of representations that challenged the way Frenchness and otherness was represented in mainstream cinema, eventually it led to a form of separation on essentialist lines that could no longer encapsulate the difficulties in identity politics.
- 12.
Literally translating as French greatness, this term refers to France’s mythologised identity as a world superpower.
- 13.
Several laws were pushed in order to bring restriction on immigrants, such as restricting the citizenship of people born in France but coming from immigrant backgrounds.
- 14.
This is the name given to films that came out in the 1980s that prioritised style and spectacle, as the name indicates. Leos Carax, Jean-Jacques Beineix and Luc Besson are considered the pioneers of the movement.
- 15.
An important differentiation needs to be made here. La Haine was not part of the beur cinéma, but was an example of banlieue film. The banlieue film foregrounded the banlieue as a setting and how this segregated space shaped the often isolated experience of the people living within it. These films depart from the cinéma beur in that its directors are not necessarily from North-African descent. Furthermore, cinéma beur does not only talk about the banlieue experience but also engage in issues of identity in post-colonial France.
- 16.
A government financial aid instituted in the 1960s that aimed to “promote the creative renewal and to encourage the direction of first films, and to support an independent cinema, audacious in relation to marketplace norms, which could not maintain its financial equilibrium without public aid” (Palmer 2011: 16–17).
- 17.
This form of identification entails a narrow and exclusive way of French life.
- 18.
The first films of directors Mehdi Charef and Rachid Bouchareb desired to believe in the possibility of integration through assimilation of their characters and thus were hopeful films in that sense. They engaged in several strategies to reveal this hope in their films: “they stress the way beur lifestyles are similar to other young French people’s lifestyles; they construct a sympathetic understanding of the role played by drugs and delinquency in the lives of the unprivileged; and they confine the representation of Islamic believe to the older generation” (Tarr 2005: 57).
- 19.
Pieds Noir refers to the European French settled in the three North-African French colonies of Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco.
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Erensoy, Ş.F. (2018). Approaches to Othered Identities and Spaces in French Cinema. In: Harvey, J. (eds) Nationalism in Contemporary Western European Cinema. Palgrave European Film and Media Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73667-9_4
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