Examine the strategies adopted by Luc Besson and Leos Carax to depict marginality in modern French society in Subway (1985) and Les Amants du Pont Neuf (1990)
The 1980s marked the emergence of a new film movement in French cinema, coined as Le Cinéma du Look which signalled a move towards a postmodern cinema where the ‘look’ of the image was prioritised above all else. ‘A celebration of the visual and sensory elements of the filmic text’ (Harris 2004: 219) and a departure from the naturalistic methods of filmmaking employed by the New Wave directors, the Cinéma du Look reflected the growing pop video and advertising culture of the time with its highly stylised, dynamic aesthetic. Luc Besson’s Subway (1985) and Leos Carax’s Les Amants du Pont Neuf (1990) are two films that exemplify the characteristics of the Cinéma du Look. Enacting and illuminating the marginalisation of the Mitterand generation in France during this period, these films essentially serve as ‘a vehicle for the expression of a marginal and anomic consciousness by the younger generation’ (Powrie 1997: 83). In this essay I will be exploring and critiquing the treatment of marginalisation in them.
Although the key directors of the movement Jean-Jacques Beineix, Luc Besson and Leos Carax never formed a coherent school, thematic and visual continuities between their works classed them together as such. Coinciding with the 1981 elections that saw socialist President François Mitterand come to power, the emergence of the Cinéma du Look was inevitably influenced by the ‘historical conjuncture’ (Hardt and Weeks 2000: 10) that this period represented. Societal optimism arising from the socialist government’s election soon faded as France was hit by the 1982 economic recession and it became clear by 1983 that the government would fail to deliver the changes they had promised. Unemployment escalated and social dislocation increased. Especially affected were the inexperienced youth. ‘The gap between the haves and the have-nots widened’ (Hayward 1998: 24), leaving the youth outcast from society; this younger excluded generation became an identifiable class known as ‘les laissés-pour-compte’. What began as a decade emanating feelings of hope, turned into a ‘period of progressive disenchantment’ (Hayward 1998: 25) where a ‘mood of youth-cynicism prevailed’. Although the Look films appear to avoid direct engagement with the political issues at hand, they characteristically portray the existing societal malaise and fragmentation resulting from the economic and political downturn in France.
Subway and Les Amants du Pont Neuf both open with a sequence which establishes the protagonists as outsiders. We are involved in the onscreen action from the outset as the directors present the dissociation of the characters through situating the viewer in a moving car. While in Subway we’re positioned inside the car at various angles alongside Fred (Christopher Lambert), and thus involved in his descent underground, in Les Amants Carax positions us as voyeuristic passengers within a car, initially allowing us only to catch passing glimpses of Alex (Denis Lavant) and Michèle (Juliette Binoche) staggering along the streets as we look through the car windows. Fred’s move away from the city is purpose led and almost comical, with his manic driving and his focus on the music playing instead of on his pursuers; combined with vivid, unthreatening colourisation and an upbeat soundtrack, Besson causes the viewer to sit back and accept the ride with Fred into the Paris métro. In contrast, in Les Amants du Pont Neuf the car windows protect the viewer from the disturbing figures of wandering vagrants Alex and Michèle, who as yet have no relation to the viewer or each other but instead work to symbolise the perceived threat of the growing homeless groups in France by society. Carax uses shaky camera movement and a blurred lens to create a distorted vision that disorientates the viewer. He forces us to participate in the voyeuristic process of watching and abandoning the protagonists in the street, and then makes us revisit them by introducing them to us more intimately through close-up shots, thus forcing us to question our judgement of them. Carax’s induced moments of startling realism move from the vision of Alex scraping his head across the ground, to being hit by a car, and eventually taken to the Nanterre night refuge for the homeless. This scene, shot ciné-vérité style and on location with real homeless characters is a disturbing and uncomfortable watch and presents a raw naturalistic picture of the misfits in society in comparison to Besson’s more romanticised vision at this point.
The term ‘margin’ signifies a particular spatial positioning and subsequently the places that Besson’s and Carax’s characters inhabit are expressions of their marginalised state. In Subway Fred descends into the métro, pursued by henchmen after blowing up a safe containing important documents. Escaping them, and the police, he moves further into the depths of it via a series of tunnels and stairs. Besson integrates the real location of the Paris métro with Alexandre Trauner’s set to create ‘a labyrinth that fascinates in its unfamiliar familiarity’ (Hayward 1998: 1998: 40). This subterranean world where Fred takes refuge is visually punctuated by a polished, fantasy style image, and this timeless looking place is one which allows him to access his desire for escape from the ‘real’ world as the other ‘lost children of the underworld’ (Hayward 1998: 36) that he meets have done; their ‘underworld’ becomes a society of outcasts and a space they can claim as their own. As David Berry comments, this arena ‘offers [Fred] the means of evasion, refuge and romantic fantasy’ and is one where he is free to assume whatever identity he wishes. The physically exaggerated, almost caricatured figures of sideline characters such as ‘Le Roller’ with his roller-skates and strongman ‘Gros Bill’ present the underground as a haven for a ‘bizarre assortment of underworld fugitives’ (Berry 2000: 15)’ where any curious identity is accepted.
Alex’s place of refuge on the bridge Pont Neuf, although closed off from the streets of Paris for repairs, is above ground, and subsequently does not provide him with the same element of escape from society that the underground does for Fred; instead he is forced to constantly face the reality of his marginalised status. Whereas Fred’s place of refuge accommodates his fantasy style escape from reality, allowing him to hide from the public sphere as and when he chooses, Alex cannot and is forced into the public eye, having to busk and perform on the streets for money in order to make ends meet. Alex is faced with the brutal suppressive force of the authorities, something seen particularly in the Nanterre and prison sequences whereas the police’s ineffectual comic portrayal in Subway shows the contrast between the characters’ interaction with the outside world.
Like Besson, Carax matches the real location of the bridge with a set, showing the blend of reality and fiction that is a thematic thread across the Cinéma du Look films. Carax attempts ‘to break down the frontier between what people call fiction and non-fiction’ through using ‘real homeless people and actors, a false bridge and genuine fireworks’ (Thompson 1992) and does this by juxtaposing gritty, realist scenes with visually elaborate ones that dazzle the viewer with the combination of lights, music and vivid colours that are transferred to screen. The firework display of the bicentennial celebrations of the French Revolution is one such spectacle which provides Alex and Michèle with a moment of escapism; although it shows the viewer ‘what is happening to the city of Paris, with the gap between this expensive public spectacle and the miserable lives of the homeless’ (Thompson 1992), there is a sense of hope for the couple as they join in with the public celebrations from their secluded location, elatedly running and dancing on the bridge, surrounded by a sensual layering of lights and music.
The bridge and the métro station as residence for the segregated groups in Les Amants du Pont Neuf and Subway are of integral significance to the narrative of them; they are passing places, and a ‘space that links, and that separates’ (Nettlebeck 1995: 111). They are both a ‘meeting-cum-confrontation point of two very different cultural textures’ (Nettlebeck 1995: 111) and as such provide hope that integration of the two is possible. The female love interests in both films also represent this possibility of change in society; Héléna and Michèle represent the bourgeois society they are born into, but they choose to reject the class they are a symbol of and instead cross into the marginalised worlds that Fred and Alex inhabit. This rejection is most obviously shown in Subway, as Héléna attends a bourgeois dinner party, purposefully dressing to stand out and speaking rudely to the guests in an attempt to outcast herself from them. In Les Amants du Pont Neuf Michèle’s obsession and knowledge of ‘high’ art is representative of her middle class background, but her own half finished rough sketches are set in opposition to the Rembrandt painting in the Louvre that she is desperate to see, ‘mark[ing] the distance between two worlds’; ‘Michèle’s sketch, with... its raw portrayal of pain... is emblematic of an art that is totally contemporary, socially marginalized and dislocated’ whereas the Rembrandt portrait is ‘an image of experience’ (Nettlebeck 1995: 116). Although Besson and Carax highlight the contrast between the classes and ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture through their female characters, they ‘[attempt] to find a way of creating a fertile dynamic between the two traditions (Nettlebeck 1995: 117) by setting them into a ‘love relationship’ with socially rejected Fred and Alex and highlight that the blending of cultures and classes is a positive move forward rather than backwards.
In Besson’s and Carax’s films there is a noticeable absence of family figures. Besson has commented on how the socio-political situation in Mitterand’s France ‘unbalanced the family, creating emotional deprivation in young people’ (Hayward 1998: 26). In Subway and Les Amants du Pont Neuf, the combination of Fred’s and Alex’s ambiguous back story, their reluctance to speak, and their lack of emotional openness suggests their insecurity. The films ‘speak about the loneliness and suffering of [the] protagonists’ (Hayward 1998: 18) provoked by ‘a society that is morally corrupt and which excludes all deeply emotional bonds’ (Hayward 1998: 1998: 18). Their need for emotional interaction is shown not only through their romantic desires for Héléna and Michèle, but also through the groups of similar outcasts that they surround themselves with who effectively become substitutes for their absent families. The sidelined marginalised characters of the other underground dwellers in Subway and Hans in Les Amants du Pont Neuf are ‘not without their own narratives and dreams’. As with the romantic relationships in the films, the formation of the friendship groups that we see depict the possibilities of a ‘magic resolution of difference’ (Powrie 1997: 126). This occurs noticeably in the formation of Fred’s rock group in Subway and their final performance at the end of the film which essentially renders his ‘search for [his] lost voice’ (Powrie 1997: 128) successful; unable to sing himself, his desire to voice himself through music is accomplished through his interaction with the other marginalised characters of the underground.
Although both Subway and Les Amants du Pont Neuf are films that are left open ended, the provision of hope that is resonated through highly stylised and vivid visual and aural displays is ultimately what is at the core of their narratives. Look films have been attacked by critics for their superficiality and investment in the image at the expense of the narrative but their content undeniably displays an underlying commentary and criticism on the commercial bourgeois society from which the marginalised characters are excluded. If the films can be criticised, it is for their lack of direct engagement with the matter of race, a key issue of marginalisation in French society; this contrasts with the centrality of racial marginality in a film such as La Haine (1995), or of anti-semitism in Le Dernier Métro (1980). Contrasting with Subway and Les Amants, La Haine is set in a geographically marginal location in the Paris banlieues, where racial and geographical exclusion go together. This contrast makes clear the strategy in Subway and Les Amants du Pont Neuf of making the centre marginal.
Both films take similar positions regarding marginality in French society. First, Besson and Carax reconstruct the centre as a marginal space, as though to claim that even here, marginalisation is at work. The Paris métro, at the centre of France, is an iconic location; the Pont Neuf is at the centre of Paris, and again is an iconic location. Ostensibly these places are as far from marginal as it is possible to get but both locations lend themselves to a certain sort of marginality. The métro isn’t quite in the city, but lies beneath it. Similarly, the bridge is on neither the Left nor the Right Bank, but in between, in a kind of no-man’s land. Furthermore, in the course of the film the bridge is closed to traffic and isolated from the rest of Paris. These marginalised central locations are the places the marginal protagonists attempt to make their homes. There is a certain pathos in this, since bridges and underground stations are typically seen as the resting places for the homeless; they are spaces meant for passing through, not loitering and much less for being at home.
Second, what constitutes marginality is especially marginality in relation to the law. The protagonists are marginal in that they are breaking laws and conventions of their society, actions which are depicted sympathetically by Besson and Carax.
Third, a question is posed regarding health, especially mental health. In Subway this is not a major theme, but is nevertheless present: are the métro dwellers not mentally deranged as well as physically dishevelled? In Les Amants du Pont Neuf the protagonists are struggling overtly and personally with their mental health and encroaching blindness.
Both films construct a tragic tension in the attraction between establishment and anti-establishment characters. Héléna represents a kind of establishment, albeit a fraudulent one of gangsters, to which the anti-establishment Fred is (fatally?) attracted. The anti-establishment addict Alex attempts to keep Michèle’s more conventional family from finding her. These represent the attempts of marginalised people at creating a sense of community at the centre. Whether these attempts can be successful, however, is a question which is left for the viewer to answer.
Bibliography
Books
Berry, David (2000), ‘Underground Cinema: French Visions of the Metro’, in Spaces in European Cinema, ed. Myrto Konstantarakos (Portland; Exeter: Intellect Books), pp. 8-22
Hardt, Michael and Weeks, Kathi (2000), The Jameson Reader (London: WileyBlackwell)
Harris, Sue (2004), The Cinéma du Look’, in Elizabeth Ezra (ed.), European Cinema, (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press), pp. 219-32
Hayward, Susan (1998), Luc Besson (Manchester; New York: Manchester University Press), pp. 23-27, 32-41
Nettlebeck, Colin (1995), ‘Layering Culture: Leos Carax and Les Amants du Pont-Neuf’ in Australian Journal of French Studies, 32:1, pp. 109-24
Powrie, Phil (1997), French Cinema in the 1980s (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 121-129
Articles in Periodicals
Thompson, David (1992), ‘Once Upon a Time in Paris’, Sight & Sound, 2:5, pp.10-11
Vincendeau, Ginette (1992), ‘Les Amants du Pont-Neuf’, Sight & Sound, 2:5, pp.46-47
Films
Besson, Luc (1985), Subway
Carax, Leos (1990), Les Amants du Pont Neuf
Kassovitz, Mathieu (1995), La Haine
Truffaut, HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7ois_Truffaut" \o "François Truffaut" François (1980), Le Dernier Métro
