Gender and Genre in Banlieue Film, and the Guerrilla Film Brooklyn

Abstract

The twenty-first century has seen banlieue film expand as a filmic category. Of particular note, female directors and characters have entered banlieue film in earnest, thereby disrupting what had been male-centred films and film-making. Also, new trends and methods sometimes pulling in different directions have impacted the diversification of banlieue film. I consider Brooklyn (2014) in relation to Bande de filles (2014) for the primary reason that they broke new ground by featuring lead black actresses. Then I focus on guerrilla film Brooklyn to explore how a new wave of film-making in France has contributed to decentralizing and renewing the filmic category. In this article, then, gender and genre function as the primary critical lenses to survey the evolution of banlieue film.

Keywords:

• Film
• banlieues
• gender
• genre
• black actresses

Notes

1 From the outset, the category of banlieue film has pertained semantically to the banlieues défavorisées, not to the banlieues broadly writ. The category is focused and exclusive in this regard.

2 Milleliri’s definition of banlieue film aligns with similar definitions in Higbee (2007, 2013), Hargreaves (2003) and Tarr (2005).

3 See, for instance, Jousse (1995a) and (1995b); and Tobin (1995).

4 Among his film set, Higbee identifies 11/13 films as mainstreamed comedies. Through Higbee’s case study of director Djamel Bensalah, son of Algerian immigrants and a native of Saint Denis, it becomes clear that banlieue comedies such as Le Ciel, les oiseaux et ... ta mère (1999), Le Raid (2002), Il était une fois dans l’oued (2005), and Beur sur la ville (2011) are rarely exclusively set in the banlieues. Rather, they use the banlieue-scape as a backdrop or a starting point toward other locations. This is also true of recent comedies Les Intouchables (Nakache & Tolendo, 2011), De l’autre côté du périph (Charhon, 2012), L’Ascension (Bernard, 2017) that juxtapose a banlieue location against a another location — whether central Paris or Mount Everest.

5 See, for example, Cervulle (2013), Derfou (2009) and Quemener (2009) on the whitewashing of race and ethnicity in the French entertainment industry.

6 An important exception to this is Zaïda Ghorab-Volta, whose film Jeunesse dorée (2002) is often overlooked. For instance, Milleliri does not mention the film. Meanwhile, Higbee affirms that Ghorab-Volta’s film was the first banlieue film shot by a Maghrebi-French female director, and as such it ‘redress[ed] the absence of a female perspective, that, until recently, has been part and parcel of the banlieue film’ (Higbee, 2007: 42). He further notes that by handing the camera over to her protagonists, who leave their cité with the goal of photographing lived environments similar to the cités in the countryside, ‘Ghorab-Volta reflects upon her own position as a woman director working within the banlieue filmmaking tradition’ (42).

7 Philippe Faucon’s filmography includes other important banlieue films, namely Samia (2000), Dans la vie (2008) and La Désintégration (2011).

8 Bande de fille’s Karidja Touré was nominated for Best New Actress at the 2015 César Awards. Omar Sy was the first black actor to win a César, Best Actor, for his lead role in Les Intouchables (Nakache & Toledano, 2011).

9 The experience of black French women holds particular interest and weight at present in visual culture in France. This includes two recent documentary film projects of particular note: Amandine Gay’s Ouvrir la voix (2016) and Kaytie Nielsen and Mame-Fatou Niang’s Mariannes noires (2016).

10 Ginette Vincendeau (2015) raises the question of whether filming the banlieues constitutes auteuristic appropriation on the part of some directors: ‘Like Jacques Tati, Jean-Luc Godard or Jean-Claude Brisseau before him Kechiche [Abdellatif] appropriates the banlieue to his auteuristic vision. This is also what Céline Sciamma does with the latest, high-profile banlieue film, Girlhood’ (2015: 27). She bases the debate on reception in France on Girlhood (reception in the USA and UK, for instance, was more consistently favourable and enthusiastic): ‘Cinephile and mainstream reviewers admired the charismatic performances by the non-professional cast and the originality of the mise-en-scène, while ideological critics indicated the film as the racist, exoticising fantasy of a privileged white filmmaker’ (27). Whether the film is an example of cultural appropriation will no doubt continue to generate debate and difference of opinion.

11 Two years after Brooklyn and Bande de filles, Houda Benyamina’s Divines (2016) took Cannes by storm. When Benyamina won the 2016 Caméra d’or at Cannes, her acceptance speech made its mark. Feminist, activist, founder of 1000 Visages, a cultural association designed to assist and promote new talent in the seventh art in the banlieues [of note, Divines depended upon 20 youth who had been associated with 1000 Visages (La Croix)], the speech affirmed the place of women filmmakers, ‘Cannes, c’est aussi notre place à nous! Cannes est à nous, à nous les femmes!’. When Benyamina founded 1000 Visages, she declared French cinema to be ‘blanc, bourgeois et misogyne’. She clearly unsettled this with big wins for her film and her lead actresses at the 2017 Césars: it garnered Best First Film, Best Female Hopeful for lead Oulaya Amamra (Benyamina’s younger sister) and Best Female Supporting Role for Deborah Lukumuena.

12 See more on this in Guénif-Souilamas and Macé (2004) and also Mack (2017), which continues along the same lines but further complexifies them by introducing sexuality and gay culture.

13 Alice Diop has contributed a very important visual piece to debunking the ‘war of the sexes’ with her documentary film Vers la tendresse (2016), which won the 2017 César for Best Short Film. About it, Diop has said, ‘Pour m’aider à y réfléchir, j’ai réuni à La Courneuve quatre jeunes hommes, avec lesquels j’ai échangé autour de leur vie intime. J’avais apporté une caméra, afin de conserver une trace de nos conversations comme l’aurait fait un dictaphone. Je n’imaginais pas que ce qu’ils me diraient serait aussi bouleversant; que la matière de mon film serait là’. (in Diao, 2015). The film debunks male–female relations in banlieues as seen through the terms of the ‘war of the sexes’; it recasts them in terms of hope, love and exchange.

14 Brooklyn is also a hip-hop drama. It resonates with Abd Al Malik’s adapted autobiography Qu’Allah bénisse la France (also of 2014) whose primary location is the cité of Neuhof outside of Strasbourg. In terms of a genealogy of French hip-hop films, it could also backdate to La Haine (Kassovitz, 1995), and it would include recent films such as Tour de France (Djaïdani, 2016), La Fine équipe (Richard-Serrano, 2016), Comme c’est loin (Orlesan and Offenstein, 2015), Max et Lenny (Nicolas, 2014). In fact, Milleliri lists rap and hip-hop as formal elements in the banlieue film: ‘Le recours à la musique rap, les références au hip-hop et l’emploi d’un langage communautaire sont interprétés comme des éléments formels participant à faire de ces films de véritables témoignagnes culturels’ (2011: 313–14).