Sight&Sound - 11.2019

46 | Sight&Sound | November 2019

1980s, typified by Jean-Jacques Beineix’s Diva

(1981) and Luc Besson’s Subway (1985), the

vanguard of French auteur cinema appeared to be

going back to its roots in the realist tradition,

epitomised by Jean Renoir and, in the post-war

period, Claude Sautet, Jean Eustache and especially

Maurice Pialat. Chris Darke, writing in Sight &

Sound in December 1999, traced Pialat’s “cinema of

first-person emotional directness” as the major

reference point for the Young French Cinema. And

in 1998 Cahiers du Cinéma held a discussion

between leading figures in the movement, among

them Arnaud Desplechin, who claimed, “The

filmmaker whose influence has been the strongest

and most constant on the young French cinema

isn’t Jean-Luc Godard but Maurice Pialat.”

Today, the ‘young’ filmmakers – and their

actors – have grown up. Desplechin, Denis,

François Ozon, Catherine Breillat, Olivier Assayas,

Cédric Klapisch and Cédric Kahn have become

established figures, while others faded into relative

obscurity. So, with 20 years’ hindsight, was the

Young French Cinema merely a convenient label or

was it a coherent entity? Did it achieve that French

critical holy grail, to become a new nouvelle vague?

Back to reality

In an article in Le Monde in 1995, the critic

Jean-Michel Frodon commended the renewed

vigour of French cinema and the emergence

of a talented new generation, but noted that

its diversity prevented any talk of a coherent

movement. Later, the film historian Jean-Pierre

Jeancolas talked about the “confused image” of

Young French Cinema. Among other things,

he pointed out that ‘old’ filmmakers can

make ‘young’ films, and vice versa. And yet

unavoidable comparisons were made to the

New Wave, prompted by striking similarities: a

high incidence of young directors making their

first film, low budgets, on-location aesthetics

and an emphasis on personal expression.

Yet the Young French Cinema was, inevitably,

a product of its time, and markedly different

from its 1960s ancestors. While the New Wave

of François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard et al

arose out of a violent attack on the perceived

complacency of films by an older generation of

French filmmakers – the cinéma de papa – the ‘new

New Wave’ of the 1990s was largely a product of

institutional structures, not a rebellion against

them. Since World War II the fonds de soutien

had levied a portion of all box-office receipts

and ploughed the money back into French

production, and since 1960 the avance sur recettes

subsidy had benefited a band of auteur films. But

the enlightened cultural policies of President

François Mitterrand and his culture minister Jack

Lang in the 1980s ensured even more money was

poured into filmmaking, in part to defend the

‘cultural exception’ (the pledge to treat culture

differently to other commercial products).

Like their predecessors in the New Wave, the

directors of the Young French Cinema benefited

from the help of risk-taking producers such

as Humbert Balsan, Pascal Caucheteux and

Christophe Rossignon, but unlike them, they had

the support of the most influential film critics

in culturally prestigious publications, among

them Le Monde, Libération and Les Inrockuptibles.

Festival prizes and other awards (the Césars, the

Prix Louis Delluc, the Prix Jean Vigo) especially

Bedtime stories: Jeanne Balibar and Mathieu Amalric in Arnaud Desplechin’s My Sex Life... Or How I Got into an Argument (1996)

DEEP FOCUS NEW FRENCH REALISM

By Ginette Vincendeau

Followers of French cinema have long celebrated

the 1990s as a golden age. As well as witnessing

the renewed success of mainstream French films

at the national box office, with blockbusters

by the likes of Luc Besson, Jean-Pierre Jeunet

and Marc Caro, as well as popular comedies

and lavish heritage films, those fin-de-siècle

years saw French auteur cinema return with a

vigour not seen since the heyday of the nouvelle

vague in the 1960s. The new talents behind this

revival were soon grouped by critics under the

banner of le jeune cinéma français – ‘the Young

French Cinema’ – and their work hailed as

marking the emergence of a ‘new realism’.

These new talents typically made films on small

budgets and confronted the social reality of an

era of economic crisis, unemployment, a political

shift to the right and Aids. Their stories were

characteristically set in unglamorous locations,

such as the bleak rural vision of northern France

in Bruno Dumont’s La Vie de Jésus (1996), and

explored themes of alienation, be it individual

(The Dreamlife of Angels, Erick Zonca, 1998), social

(Marius et Jeannette, Robert Guédiguian, 1997),

political (Human Resources, Laurent Cantet,

1999), racial (No Fear, No Die, Claire Denis, 1990)

or sexual (Savage Nights, Cyril Collard, 1992).

After the slick studio-based cinéma du look of the

TESTAMENTS OF YOUTH

Heavily indebted to the spirit of

Maurice Pialat, a wave of young

French talent found its voice in the

1990s with some raw realist gems

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