Cinema and the Republic: Filming on the Margins in Contemporary France

FRENCH AND FRANCOPHONE STUDIES

Cinema and the Republic

Series Editors

Hanna Diamond (University of Bath)

Claire Gorrara (Cardiff University)

Editorial Board

Ronan le Coadic (Université Rennes 2)

Nicola Cooper (Swansea University)

Didier Francfort (Université Nancy 2)

Sharif Gemie (University of Glamorgan)

H. R. Kedward (Sussex University)

Margaret Majumdar (University of Portsmouth)

Nicholas Parsons (Cardiff University)

Max Silverman (University of Leeds)

FRENCH AND FRANCOPHONE STUDIES

Cinema and

the Republic

Filming on the Margins

in Contemporary France

JONATHAN ERVINE

CARDIFF

UNIVERSITY OF WALES PRESS

2013

© Jonathan Ervine, 2013

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any material form (including photocopying or storing it in any medium by electronic means and whether or not transiently or incidentally to some other use of this publication) without the written permission of the copyright owner except in accordance with the provisions of the copyright, designs and patents act 1988. Applications for the copyright owner’s written permission to reproduce any part of this publication should be addressed to the University of Wales Press, 10 Columbus walk, Brigantine place, Cardiff, CF10 4UP.

www.uwp.co.uk

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN978-0-7083-2596-4

e-ISBN978-1-78316-553-7

The right of Jonathan Ervine to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 79 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Cover illustration: On n’est pas des marques de vélo(2002), directed by Jean-Pierre Thorn.

Contents

Series Editors’ Preface

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Chapter One:     Cinema and the Republic

Chapter Two:     The Sans-papiers on Screen – Contextualising Immigrant Experiences in Film

Chapter Three:   Double peine: The Challenges of Mobilising Support for Foreign Criminals via Cinema

Chapter Four:    Challenging or Perpetuating Clichés? Young People and the Police in France’s Banlieues

Chapter Five:     Challenging Stereotypes about France’s Banlieues by Shifting the Focus?

Conclusion

Notes

Filmography and Bibliography

Series Editors’ Preface

This series showcases the work of new and established scholars working within the fields of French and francophone studies. It publishes introductory texts aimed at a student readership, as well as research-orientated monographs at the cutting edge of their discipline area. The series aims to highlight shifting patterns of research in French and francophone studies, to re-evaluate traditional representations of French and francophone identities and to encourage the exchange of ideas and perspectives across a wide range of discipline areas. The emphasis throughout the series will be on the ways in which French and francophone communities across the world are evolving into the twenty-first century.

Hanna Diamond and Claire Gorrara

Acknowledgements

Writing a book can, as with shooting a film, involve a long journey. The journey that has ultimately produced this book is one that began thanks to the inspiring French classes of Mr Grove and Mr Jessop whilst I was a school pupil at Madras College in St Andrews. It was then that I was introduced to French cinema and politics before deciding to study French at the University of Leeds. I would like to express my gratitude to several former colleagues at Leeds, and especially Diana Holmes and Jim House for supervising my doctoral studies. Many others provided support and advice along the way, including Margaret Atack, David Looseley, Kamal Salhi and Max Silverman. For their answers to questions, feedback on conference papers, help in finding difficult-to-obtain films, insight, knowledge, advice and providing accommodation on research trips to France, thanks are also due to many colleagues, friends and people whose work I studied: Mogniss Abdallah, Sylvie Agard, Maggie Allison, Moustapha Amokrane, Saër Maty Bâ, Patrice Bouche, Olivier Esteves, Aline Goudenhooft, Owen Heathcote, Will Higbee, Cristina Johnston, Geoff Medland, Martin O’Shaughnessy, Joel Saurin, Carole Sionnet, Carrie Tarr, Jean-Pierre Thorn, Carol Tully and Isabelle Vanderschelden.

There are innumerable others who also provided help and advice, not least at several conferences organised by the Association for the Study of Modern and Contemporary France. The School of Modern Languages at Bangor University has provided a highly convivial environment in which to work over the last six years and I am extremely grateful to my numerous colleagues whose presence creates such a positive atmosphere. I would very much like to express my gratitude towards University of Wales Press for its encouragement and support, especially to the anonymous reader for their constructive feedback and suggestions, and also to Sarah Lewis and Siân Chapman for coordinating everything in such an efficient and helpful manner.

My parents have also been a source of limitless support and encouragement over the years in ways that are far too numerous to list here, and this is something for which I will forever be grateful. Finally, I would like to thank Viv for her support, encouragement and good humour while I have been finalising this work.

Jonathan Ervine

March 2013

Introduction

The year 1995 was highly significant for both political protest and political cinema in France. Whilst the mass demonstrations that took place in this year initially focused primarily on opposing pension reforms, the movement swiftly sought to provide a more generalised criticism of Alain Juppé’s government. Martin O’Shaughnessy argues that ‘it was the mass mobilisations of 1995 which signalled a change of the socio-political climate in France, and which created the conditions for the rebirth of a committed cinema and for subsequent mobilisations such as that around the sans-papiers’.¹ This newly re-engaged model of film-making lacked a unifying political discourse. This constituted a significant difference from earlier political cinema in France, but its lack of homogeneity did not obscure the fact that it was nevertheless characterised by an identifiable spirit of ‘revolt’.² This revolt has often involved directors filming people who live, or are perceived to live, on the margins of French society due to factors such as their status as immigrants or the fact that they have grown up on suburban housing estates known as banlieues.

In order to trace the processes that explain how and why immigrants and banlieue residents are often seen as living on the margins in contemporary France, 1 will focus on the period since 1995. This time has been punctuated by major socio-political events to which both protesters and film-makers have sought to respond. In addition to the mass public-sector strikes already mentioned, 1995 also saw Jacques Chirac become French president after fighting a campaign in which he often evoked the theme of la fracture sociale (social disintegration). Ten years later, the deaths of two young men in a police chase in Clichy-sous-Bois provoked widespread protests in France’s banlieues. A year and a half later, Nicolas Sarkozy became France’s head of state and his presidency saw the ruling centre-right UMP ( Union pour un mouvement populaire, Union for a Popular Movement) party take an increasingly tough approach to controlling immigration and policing France’s banlieues. This occurred against the backdrop of the far-right Front National remaining a significant and powerful force in French politics following both Jean-Marie Le Pen’s coming second in the 2002 presidential elections and his daughter Marine Le Pen’s subsequent inauguration as its new leader in 2009. Marine Le Pen’s leadership of the Front National, and particularly her campaign for the 2012 presidential elections, have seen the party present itself as being more modern and mainstream. Following Sarkozy’s defeat in the presidential elections and the potential for splits within his centre-right UMP following its poor showing in the 2012 legislative elections, the Front National may well continue to play an ever more important role in shaping right-wing politics in France.

As the years following 1995 have seen both left- and right-wing governments in power, this period permits comparison of how filmmakers have sought to represent socio-political issues in France in differing political contexts. In this book, I will study works that involve directors filming people who are perceived to be living on the margins of contemporary French society. This will entail focusing on how and why certain immigrants are unable to access the full range of rights that are granted to French citizens and also the processes of exclusion that often stigmatise residents of the banlieues.

I will provide close analysis of films that address four specific politically resonant issues that concern how these often marginalised groups interact with the state and the media in France:

1.The status of sans-papiers (undocumented migrants) in France.

2.Attempts to defend foreign nationals subjected to the double peine (double penalty) law.

3.Relations between young people and the police in France’s banlieues.

4.Representations of communal activities and daily life in France’s banlieues.

The films that are grouped together within these chapters have been selected on a primarily thematic basis that brings several significant yet under-studied works to the fore. Using the themes listed above to define the corpus helps to shape what could have been a potentially vast corpus by paying particular attention to films that focus on power relations. The first two themes listed above provide a means of selecting films that are particularly relevant to specific immigrant rights campaigns and the second two make it possible to assess how the evolution of power relations issues in suburban France has been represented. These themes also provide a means of comparing works by a wide range of directors. There are those with a long history of politically engaged work (Bertrand Tavernier, Jean-Pierre Thorn) and also younger directors who are drawn towards specific issues (Carole Sionnet, Alain Gomis). There are directors who explore issues of identity relevant to their own community (Abdellatif Kechiche in L’Esquive, Alain Gomis in L’Afrance, Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche in Wesh Wesh and Bled Number One), and directors who seek to gain the trust of others whose situations they film (Bertrand Tavernier in De l’autre côté du périph’ and Histoires de vies brisées, Jean-Pierre Thorn in On n’est pas des marques de vélo, Christopher Nick in Les Mauvais Garçons). Some have produced films that constitute a crucial part of specific campaigns (Samir Abdallah and Raphäel Ventura’s La Ballade des sans-papiers, Bertrand Tavernier’s Histoires de vies brisées) whilst others have explicitly sought to make films that were not overly militant (Carole Sionnet’s Parmi Nous, Jean-Pierre Thorn’s On n’est pas des marques de vélo). Several provide a deliberately provocative vision of contemporary French society (Jean-François Richet in Ma 6-T va crack-er, Michael Haneke in Code inconnu) although the extent to which these films confirm or challenge negative stereotypes varies. What unites these works is a common focus on dominant power relations, their attempts to empower the excluded by constructing counter-hegemonic discourses and their appeal to Republican values in evoking problems or proposing solutions.

The four key themes mentioned above provide a means of negotiating a way through the broader topic of post-1995 political cinema in France. Whilst O’Shaughnessy acknowledges that ‘a key part of the return of the social in French film has been the renaissance of the documentary’, it is noticeable that most works about contemporary politically engaged cinema in France devote relatively little attention to the analysis of documentaries.³ It is precisely for this reason that just over half of the films with which we will concern ourselves here are documentaries. Although documentaries and fictions often utilise different strategies in order to advance the narrative and adopt differing cinematic techniques that define their approach to political subject matter, the inclusion of both sorts of films in this book creates exciting opportunities. These include the potential to analyse interactions and differences between the two genres, their connection to real events and also the wider question of relations between cinematic form and political message or content. This facilitates the evaluation of theories about the relationship between fictional and documentary cinema in France. These include Guy Austin’s argument that technological developments have created ‘a blurring of boundaries between the documentary, the first person narrative and fiction’, and O’Shaughnessy’s claim that fictions face greater challenges if they are to create counter-discourses.⁴

As well as focusing on both fictions and documentaries, this book analyses several films that have been made specifically for television in addition to those produced with cinematic distribution in mind. This has been done so as to avoid excluding films that are of great relevance to the issues used to define the corpus and helps to demonstrate the diversity of ways in which films reach the general public. It would be wrong to overly dissociate works made for cinematic distribution and those produced for the small screen, especially as directors such as Bertrand Tavernier have made featurelength documentaries of similar styles for both mediums. Within the context of the films studied here, deciding what does or does not count as a téléfilm is rendered problematic by the fact that Jean-Pierre Thorn’s On n’est pas des marques de vélo was released in French cinemas several months after it had been shown on French television by Arte. Television channels play a major role in supporting film production in France and have helped to fund several of the works studied here. French television culture is very important when it comes to how immigrants and banlieue residents are represented in the media. Certain films analysed here criticise television for its failings (for example, Christophe-Emmanuel Del Debbio’s Banlieues: sous le feu des médias) whilst others demonstrate that it is also a medium by which it is possible to correct or challenge stereotypical discourses (for example, Philippe Triboit’s L’Embrasement and Hugues Demeude’s 93: l’Effervescence).

Recent studies of contemporary French political cinema provide a variety of ways to trace the evolution of this genre. O’Shaughnessy assesses how political changes in France (such as the structure and ideological basis of the French left) have influenced how filmmakers have approached political issues, and locates this within the context of the increasingly pervasive nature of neo-liberalism and global capitalism. Several of his recent works on this theme elucidate strategies that film-makers have adopted in order to make sense of this socio-political climate.⁵ Tarr has a more specific focus and devotes less attention to working conditions and responses to neo-liberalism, although it is apparent that these phenomena shape the lives of the protagonists of the beur and banlieue films that she analyses.⁶ Tarr persuasively challenges Naficy’s notion that works by diasporic directors are ‘accented’ by their journey(s) from one land to another and also explores the importance of authorship within films about beurs and banlieue residents.⁷ A key element of this exploration is her argument that banlieue films by white French directors concentrate more on violence and confrontation, whereas those by Maghrebi directors ‘are more interested in exploring individual problems of identity and integration’.⁸ The veracity of this notion can be valuably gauged by examining documentary films as well as fictions and also by comparing the films of directors who are from the banlieues and those of others who are not.

As Will Higbee observes, France’s colonial history means that ‘an appreciation of postcolonial theoretical discourses and their historical context is vital if we are to gain a full understanding of what is at stake in French films that deal with issues of migration, displacement and the imbalance of power involved in transcultural exchange’.⁹ Postcolonial theory provides a means of situating the marginalisation experienced by immigrants (and their descendants) who are not from France’s former colonies and also the marginalisation of banlieue residents. The way in which banlieue has become a term loaded with negative connotations provides a key example of how the French media and politicians have a tendency to portray certain members of France’s population as being on the margins of the nation’s supposedly egalitarian Republican society.

Although it would be wrong to conflate the two admittedly overlapping groups constituted by immigrants and banlieue residents, it is important to acknowledge that similar power dynamics influence how these groups interact with the French state. The realities of social and racial exclusion faced by banlieue residents have been highlighted by Hargreaves, who notes that in 2005 ‘among equally qualified job candidates, those from the most disadvantaged banlieues were only half as likely as other candidates to be offered an interview’.¹⁰ In relation to immigrants, he observes that ‘today, while far more settled in France than was the case thirty years ago, many foreigners face a much higher risk of social exclusion as a consequence of unemployment’ and cites figures illustrating that this is a particular problem for Maghrebis.¹¹ These observations strongly suggest that significant inequalities exist within the theoretically single and indivisible French Republic. Whilst the distinction between nationals and non-nationals provides a legitimate basis for differential treatment within the Republic, groups such as immigrants and banlieue residents cut across this distinction and membership of them is consequently not a legitimate basis for discrimination.

Before engaging more closely with postcolonial theory in the manner that Higbee suggests, it is first worth considering Gramsci’s notion of hegemony due to its influence on the work of postcolonial theorists such as Gayatri Spivak. This provides a means of unpicking many power relations issues that have been raised in recent French films, and understanding how groups such as banlieue residents and immigrants can become or remain marginalised. Gramsci saw hegemony as ‘the spontaneous consent given by the great masses of the population to the general direction imposed on social life by the dominant fundamental group’.¹² In other words, it is a concept that involves both the exercising of power and the acceptance (tacit or otherwise) of principles that define power relations in a given society. In his writings on hegemony, Gramsci argued that the dominance of one group over another has been an important element of struggles aimed at bringing about social change such as the French Revolution of 1789. He further suggested that the acceptance of certain hegemonies (especially that of Paris) was a consequence of the French Revolution and the desire to ‘destroy the old régime’, and also that the Revolution effectively established a sort of bourgeois hegemony that was ‘cunningly withheld from the proletariat’.¹³ Where hegemony exists, it is possible to challenge its very foundations by establishing a counter-hegemony. This concept provides a means by which marginalised groups can challenge and subvert dominant ideas. Rather than seeing counter-hegemony as involving a frontal attack on pre-existing norms, and via their critique of the term ‘resistance’, Chalcraft and Noorani characterise it as ‘a gradual process of disarticulation and rearticulation’ that is similar to the Gramscian notion of a ‘war of attrition’.¹⁴

When seeking to relate Gramscian principles of hegemony to contemporary France, the work of Gayatri Spivak constitutes an important reference point as it analyses the degree to which it is possible for marginalised people to respond to hegemonic discourses and structures. Spivak’s writings, which are widely seen as being influenced by Gramsci, provide a means of contextualising the predicaments faced by many different marginalised groups. They provide an illuminating explanation of the sort of process that explains how banlieue residents and immigrants can become the subjects of discourses of otherness emanating from the French media or the French state. It is important to realise that the French state has been unafraid to use measures associated with the colonial era to deal with domestic issues in a postcolonial context. This was demonstrated in autumn 2005 when the government responded to suburban unrest by utilising a curfew order that had been initially implemented during the Algerian War.¹⁵

Analysis of Gramscian theory has demonstrated that state discourse can lead to minority groups becoming particularly marginalised due to the normalisation of processes of exclusion or the reproduction of pre-existing stereotypes.¹⁶ The risk that the internalisation of dominant discourses can lead to greater oppression of minority groups is a key theme in the work of Spivak, who utilises Gramscian principles when discussing subalterns. Whilst these writings are primarily based on India’s colonial experiences and specifically the immolation of widows, Loomba argues that the term subaltern is ‘a shorthand for any oppressed person’.¹⁷ A key tenet of Spivak’s arguments in her seminal text ‘Can the subaltern speak?’ is the notion that pre-existing hegemonies and stereotypes create an environment in which subalterns unavoidably express themselves in a way that is conditioned by such an ideological climate. Spivak consequently appears to endorse Gramsci’s notion that members of subjugated groups risk increasing their isolation as a result of internalising dominant power relations and modes of thinking. Spivak has been critical of intellectuals who attempt to speak on behalf of subalterns and criticised ‘white men [who] are saving brown women from brown men’.¹⁸ Consequently, it will be important to analyse the methods of representation and engagement employed by film-makers who seek to make films about marginalised groups of which they are not members.

Despite widespread acceptance of the significance of Spivak’s writings, some have nevertheless accused her of being overly defeatist and failing to acknowledge situations where subalterns have been able to resist and express their dissent. Spivak also stands accused of attributing excessive weight to hegemonic discourses and some critics also argue that major parts of her arguments are contradictory. Moore-Gilbert, for example, states that, ‘in so far as Spivak asserts that the subaltern cannot speak, she is, of course, herself continuing and speaking for, or in the place of the subaltern – the very manoeuvre for which she criticises so much Western discourse’.¹⁹ Spivak has sought to respond to these criticisms by insisting that her question ‘can the subaltern speak?’ is relevant to both being heard and the process of speaking. As Landry and MacLean state, ‘when she claims that the subaltern cannot speak, she means that the subaltern as such cannot be heard by the privileged of the First or Third Worlds’.²⁰ Whilst this qualification introduces an important nuance that hints at the existence of a more complicated interaction of factors than her critics suggest, it does not resolve the issue of whether Spivak is being too defeatist. Nevertheless, Spivak’s theories provide the basis for posing a series of important questions about the issues faced by banlieue residents and immigrants as well as how such subjects are represented on the big screen. To what extent do France’s Republican political traditions create a situation whereby banlieue residents and immigrants can or cannot speak in the sense that Spivak means? When banlieue residents and immigrants do speak, to what extent are their words shaped