‘Going Home’: mobility and return journeys in French and Spanish road movies

Abstract

Frequently understood as a typical American film genre, the matrix of the road movie is adapted by film-makers of national cinemas across the world. As a modern audio-visual continuation of the literary tradition of journeys of initiation, this genre is an ideal format for the cinematic depiction of uprooting as well as for the search for individual or trans/national identity in time and space. Dealing with the return journeys of the protagonists through France and Spain towards the Maghreb countries Morocco and Algeria, a comparative analysis of Exiles, by Algiers-born French director Tony Gatlif, and Hassan’s Way, by Spanish film-makers Fran Araújo and Ernesto de Nova, explores the categories of identity and mobility, as those expose the temporal and spatial structures which determine ideological attributions to the aesthetics and the filmic narration of nomadic postcolonial European road movies.

Keywords:

• French/Spanish road movie
• identity
• mobility
• spatiality

Notes

1. For a more profound comprehension of the definition of the American road movie see, e.g. Corrigan 1991; Cohan and Hark 1997; Sargeant and Watson 1999; Frasca 2001; Laderman 2002; Ganser 2009; Benoliel and Thoret 2011; Archer 2016, 11–40.

2. For further bibliography on European road movies see, for instance, Rascaroli 2003; Nestingen 2005; Daković 2007; Pohl 2007; Everett 2009; Coury and Pilipp 2010; Archer 2013; Gott and Schilt 2013.

3. For further information about Hassan’s Way see also http://www.elrayolapelicula.com/.

4. For European migrant cinema, see amongst others Berghahn and Sternberg 2010; Loshitzky 2010; Rings 2016. For Spanish ‘migrant cinema’, the following references are considered benchmarks: Richardson 2002; Castiello 2005; Santaolalla 2005; Monterde 2008; Deveny 2012, 1–130. Out of the vast French migrant cinema bibliography, especially Tarr 2005 and Higbee 2013 are recommended.

5. As Sandra Ponzanesi and Marguerite Waller state, postcolonial cinema ‘(…) is constituted by and within a conceptual space in which making connections and drawing inferences, specifically those that are occluded by national and colonial frames, is encouraged’ (2012, 2).

6. See, for instance, Gatlif’s films Latcho Drom (1993), Gadjo Dilo (1997), TranSylvania (2006) or Korkoro/Freedom (2009).

7. My special thanks go to Fran Araújo and Ernesto de Nova for giving me free access to Hassan’s Way and to Fran Araújo for further information via correspondence.

8. The definition of Elizabeth Ezra and Terry Rowden characterizes ‘transnational’ films firstly as ‘films that fashion their narrative and aesthetic dynamics in relation to more than one national community’, and secondly as ‘films that reflect the impact of advanced capitalism and new media technologies in an increasingly interconnected world system’ (2006, 1).

9. ‘In 2013, 547,980 people left the country, the majority of them immigrants but also 79,306 Spanish nationals. The figure is an 80% increase on that of 2012. The majority of those migrating are young people.’ (Monaghan and Burgen 2014).

10. ‘The term “Pieds-Noirs” is used (…) to refer to the French-born citizens of colonial Algeria who were exiled to France during and after the Algerian War for Independence (1954–1962)’. (Hubbell 2015, 7).

11. ‘The word beur is reputedly derived from Parisian backslang for arabe (Arab), and was in circulation within the immigrant community in the late 1970s. Its hybrid form reflects the conflict of identity experienced by the newly visible “second generation” (…)’ (Tarr 2005, 27).

12. ‘La tasa de paro en España alcanza el 26,03%’ [‘Unemployment in Spain reaches 26,03%’] (2014).