Friday, 4 April 2008 05:24 pm
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deckardcanineLately, I've been going to a video store in addition to receiving from Netflix. There are a few reasons for this: love of movies, bored evenings, the urge as I return videos, a wish to keep the store in business.... What's less obvious is why I've been gravitating toward the foreign section there more than I do with my Netflix queue. Something about the store layout?
Anyway, the one foreign film that I didn't review before the Grown-Up Movie Forum went under is La haine ("Hate"). The only thing I knew about it beforehand was that it kept appearing on the IMDb top 250 -- at the moment, exactly #250. I assumed it was old from the B&W pictures, but it turns out just to be a low-budget indie from 1995, with the three main actors using their actual first names.
Actually, the B&W may have been chosen for artistic purposes. The movie depicts a poor French neighborhood with young adults who were born and raised in France but are largely considered outsiders because of their heritage -- in the three main friends' cases, Arabic, Black, and Jewish. Because of their lack of an apparent future, they get the worst of both boredom and high tension with authorities. The story begins with a youth riot (major bonus points for prophecy!), after which one protagonist finds a gun and swears to use it if his brother doesn't survive the beating he got from a cop.
Jodie Foster helped bring the movie to the U.S., tho I expect we don't account for most of the IMDb votes. Sadly, the subtitles can't possibly do justice to the rapid-fire and probably natural-sounding dialog. Sure is fun seeing a French impression of Travis Bickle, tho. Oh yeah: I should mention that that actor is Vincent Cassell, whom later played Francois Toulour in the Ocean's sequels, Monsieur Hood in Shrek, and Duc D'Anjou in Elizabeth among other roles.
For a little while, I feared that this was an example of IMDb giving too much credit to a movie due to its grit. There isn't a whole lot of violence, but the threat is never absent for long. Fortunately, it succeeds as much in art as in entertainment. By the second act, I was enjoying it plenty.
It may not be the golden oldie I expected, but it might just maintain a high level of esteem in fifty years.
Anyway, the one foreign film that I didn't review before the Grown-Up Movie Forum went under is La haine ("Hate"). The only thing I knew about it beforehand was that it kept appearing on the IMDb top 250 -- at the moment, exactly #250. I assumed it was old from the B&W pictures, but it turns out just to be a low-budget indie from 1995, with the three main actors using their actual first names.
Actually, the B&W may have been chosen for artistic purposes. The movie depicts a poor French neighborhood with young adults who were born and raised in France but are largely considered outsiders because of their heritage -- in the three main friends' cases, Arabic, Black, and Jewish. Because of their lack of an apparent future, they get the worst of both boredom and high tension with authorities. The story begins with a youth riot (major bonus points for prophecy!), after which one protagonist finds a gun and swears to use it if his brother doesn't survive the beating he got from a cop.
Jodie Foster helped bring the movie to the U.S., tho I expect we don't account for most of the IMDb votes. Sadly, the subtitles can't possibly do justice to the rapid-fire and probably natural-sounding dialog. Sure is fun seeing a French impression of Travis Bickle, tho. Oh yeah: I should mention that that actor is Vincent Cassell, whom later played Francois Toulour in the Ocean's sequels, Monsieur Hood in Shrek, and Duc D'Anjou in Elizabeth among other roles.
For a little while, I feared that this was an example of IMDb giving too much credit to a movie due to its grit. There isn't a whole lot of violence, but the threat is never absent for long. Fortunately, it succeeds as much in art as in entertainment. By the second act, I was enjoying it plenty.
It may not be the golden oldie I expected, but it might just maintain a high level of esteem in fifty years.