MATHIEU Kassovitz's film, La Haine, marks one of the great successes of 199Os cinema. Although French cinema is hardly famous for its social realism, the film has taken the country by storm since its release last May. French police, in a recent report, blamed it for a spate of suburban violence in the immigrant communities ringing Paris during the summer months - and that was long before the escalating unrest of more recent weeks.
Filmed in black and white video-documentary style, the movie is a far cry from the standard French fare of soft colours and pained, tortuous personal relationships. The inclusion of television news footage powerfully reinforces the intent and impact of the film. The bleak landscape and even the dress code startled, critics - it conjures up a picture far removed from the leafy, well-heeled Paris suburbs like Neuilly-on-Seine. Instead of the well-dressed walking their poodles we 5 police in riot squad uniforms violently confronting scores of angry young men dressed in the obligatory hooded sweatshirts, jeans, boots and trainers of the disenfranchised - abandoned and unemployed with little or no prospects, or, as they are often referred to in France, the generation Mitterrand, who were children when Mitterrand came to power in 1981.
Kassovitz has criticised filmmakers for neglecting the majority of the French, focusing all too often on the emotional traumas of the bourgeoisie in their chic apartments and country houses. His influences do not come from the ranks of French cinema; although born into a cinema family, Kassovitz admires America's Spike Lee, Yugoslavia's Emir Kusturica, and Britain's Ken Loach. A lingering scene from the film shows the protagonist, Vinz, posturing in front of a mirror, a hark-back to Robert De Niro in Toy Driver. And Kassovitz has described Brian de Palma's character Tony Montana in Scarface as the urban outcast par excellance, and claims to have a soft spot for Teminator 2.
The setting for La Haine is a desolate, derelict Paris suburb - well off the tourist trail - planted with bleak, concrete blocks of flats as far as the eye can see. The plot is based on the true story of a 16-year-old Zairean, Makome Bowole, who died in police custody three years ago in the 18th arrondissement. He had been shot in the head at point-blank range by police officer Pascal Compain.
The film's riot scenes evoke similar crises in the real-life ghettoes of Vaulx-en-Velin, Lille, Tourcoing, Garges-les-Gonesses and Drancy, which have all been associated with street violence, more often than not sparked off by police manoeuvres which ended in death.
The police do not deny that the violence depicted in the film is rampant in the poorer suburbs of France's large towns and cities. The police association, FASP, says tension between the police and youths in large urban areas has become a constant. Police are seen as the arm of a society which has nothing to offer but containment. For many, the mere presence of a police uniform is enough to provoke a violent reaction.
La Haine tells the story of 24 hours in the lives of three youths, one black, one Jewish and one beur of North African Arab origin. The three friends, Hubert (Hubert Kounde), Vinz (Vincent Cassel) and Said (Said Taghmaoui) all react in their own way to a night of rioting when another youth dies at the hands of the police. We learn of his fate throughout the film from intermittent photographs and news bulletins. Although Kassovitz insists the film is not anti-police, the French security forces have accused the film of being dangerously provocative.
Vinz gets his hands on the Magnum 44 of a police officer and the film hurtles to its inevitable conclusion as racist rightwing culture makes its appearance. Kassovitz once said, tongue-in-cheek, that he chose to play a walk-on part as a skinhead to provoke, but that he hoped his grandmother would not recognise him.
The gun dominates the film, providing a central image of the heavily armed police working against unarmed and dispossessed urban youths. The absence of female characters is, according to the film-maker, a reflection of life in the suburbs, where social confrontation is a male preserve.
Kassovitz uses the special Ianguage of suburban youth - verlan - which inverts and distorts French words, giving them a coded meaning. The language is violent and often shocking and the music also gives great power to many of the scenes. The soundtrack, which features 11 bands, is a bestseller, and includes the Bob Marley classic Burnin' and Lootin'.
Although Kassovitz has successfully avoided caricature, it is hard not to see his mark on the Jewish character called Vinz. A key scene, in the film depicts an old Polish Jew who tells of his experiences at the hands of the Nazis. Kassovitz's grandfather was a Jew who fled persecution. It is hardly a coincidence that the spectre of the French extreme right and the National Front party hangs over the film like a cloud of tear gas.
Kassovitz's grandmother also escaped from a concentration camp; his father fled from Budapest in 1956 upon the arrival of Soviet tanks to become a filmmaker in France. Matieu Kassovitz's first film, Metisse (Mixed race) received critical acclaim in France and laid the groundwork for La Haine, his second film.
THE movie was shot over a three-month period, mostly in the Paris suburb of Canteloup-les-Vignes. A dozen municipalities turned dawn Kassovitz's request for permission to film and Canteloup officials only agreed on condition that there would be a minimum of publicity. The extras were almost all found among local youths, who also played members of the riot police.
Finding a location was not Kassovitz's only worry. This highly successful film has served to highlight the conservative nature of French film: it was initially denied advance funding by the national film board.
La Haine has produced a body-blow to the complacency which helped elect the conservative Gaullist, Jacques Chirac. It is hardly surprising that the police have been up in arms since the film's release. Suburban violence is on the increase and the new government has done little to tilt the balance in favour of the millions of young people, many of them, the sons of African and Arab immigrants, who have little to look forward to in large communities plagued by unemployment, drugs and gang violence.
But La Haine, although disturbing, is far from hopeless. Rather like the work of Roddy Doyle, it treads a fine line between laughter and fear, and gives a vigorous voice to the marginalised outside the capital of La Belle France.