New French Extremity
Encyclopedia
New French Extremity is a term coined by Artforum
critic James Quandt for a collection of transgressive
films by French directors at the turn of the 21st century. The filmmakers are also discussed by Jonathan Romney of The Independent
. Quandt describes the style as follows:
Quandt associates François Ozon
, Gaspar Noé
, Catherine Breillat
, Bruno Dumont
, Claire Denis
' Trouble Every Day, Patrice Chereau
's Intimacy, Bertrand Bonello
's The Pornographer, Marina de Van
's In My Skin, Leos Carax
's Pola X
, Philippe Grandrieux
's La Vie nouvelle and Sombre, Jean-Claude Brisseau
's Secret Things
, Jacques Nolot
's La Chatte à deux têtes
, Virginie Despentes
and Coralie Trinh Thi
's Baise-moi
, and Alexandre Aja
's Haute tension
with the label.
While Quandt intended the term as pejorative, many so labeled have produced critically acclaimed work. David Fear indicates that the lack of humanity beneath the horror represented in these film leads to their stigma, arguing that Bruno Dumont's Flanders "contains enough savage violence and sexual ugliness" to remain vulnerable to the New French Extremity tag, but "a soul also lurks underneath the shocks". Nick Wrigley indicates that Dumont was merely chastised for "letting everybody down" who expected him to be the heir to Robert Bresson
.
Jonathan Romney also associates the label with Olivier Assayas
' Demonlover
, Christophe Honoré
's Ma mère
, and C.S. Leigh's Process.
Tim Palmer has also written about these films, describing them as constituting a "cinema of the body." Palmer has argued that such films reflect a large scale stylistic trajectory, a kind of avant-garde among like-minded directors, from Catherine Breillat to Francois Ozon, along with contemporary figures like Marina de Van, Claire Denis, Dumont, Gaspar Noé, and many others. Palmer situates this tendency within the complex eco-system of French cinema, underlining the conceptual diversity and artistic scope in French cinema today.
's 1866 L'origine du monde
, Comte de Lautréamont
, Antonin Artaud
, Georges Bataille
, William S. Burroughs
, Michel Houellebecq
, and Marie Darrieussecq
. He locates filmic predecessors in Luis Buñuel
and Salvador Dalí
, Roman Polanski
, Jean-Luc Godard
's Le weekend, Andrzej Zulawski
's Possession
, and Michael Haneke
. Quandt also alludes to Arthur Rimbaud
, Buñuel, Henri-Georges Clouzot
, Georges Franju
, Michelangelo Antonioni
, Pier Paolo Pasolini
, Guy Debord
, Walerian Borowczyk
, Godard, Psycho
, Zulawski, Deliverance
, Jean Eustache
's La maman et la putain, and Maurice Pialat
's A Nos Amours
as models, but criticizes that the contemporary filmmakers so far lack the "power to shock an audience into consciousness".
John Wray
notes that some of these filmmakers show less affection for Hollywood films than their New Wave
predecessors, and take after Jean Renoir
as well as Bresson. He also notes the long shots and enigmatic story-telling style of Dumont and the Dardenne brothers
.
The expanded term "The New Extremism", referring to European filmmakers such as Lars von Trier
, Lukas Moodysson
, and Fatih Akin
, has subsequently appeared.
, Ils
, Haute Tension
, Frontier(s) and À l'interieur
. The Belgian film Calvaire has also been associated with this trend.
Pascal Laugier
, director of the controversial horror film Martyrs
, disagrees with the idea of there being a horror revival in France:
Artforum
Artforum is an international monthly magazine specializing in contemporary art.-Publication:The magazine is published ten times a year, September through May, along with an annual summer issue...
critic James Quandt for a collection of transgressive
Transgressive art
Transgressive art refers to art forms that aim to transgress; i.e. to outrage or violate basic mores and sensibilities. The term transgressive was first used by American filmmaker Nick Zedd and his Cinema of Transgression in 1985...
films by French directors at the turn of the 21st century. The filmmakers are also discussed by Jonathan Romney of The Independent
The Independent
The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
. Quandt describes the style as follows:
Quandt associates François Ozon
François Ozon
François Ozon is a French film director and screenwriter and whose films are usually characterized by sharp satirical wit and a freewheeling view on human sexuality....
, Gaspar Noé
Gaspar Noé
Gaspar Noé is an Argentine filmmaker and the son of Argentine painter and intellectual Luis Felipe Noé. He graduated from Louis Lumière College and is the visiting professor of film at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland...
, Catherine Breillat
Catherine Breillat
Catherine Breillat is a French filmmaker, novelist and Professor of Auteur Cinema at the European Graduate School.-Life and career:Breillat was born in Bressuire, Deux-Sèvres, but grew up in Niort...
, Bruno Dumont
Bruno Dumont
Bruno Dumont is a French film director. To date, he has directed five feature films, all of which border somewhere between realistic drama and the avant-garde. His films have won several awards at the Cannes Film Festival. Two of Dumont's films have won the Grand Prix award: both L'Humanité and...
, Claire Denis
Claire Denis
Claire Denis is a French film director and Professor of Film at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland.-Early life:...
' Trouble Every Day, Patrice Chereau
Patrice Chéreau
Patrice Chéreau is a French opera and theatre director, filmmaker, actor, and producer.-Biography:Patrice Chéreau was born in Lézigné, Maine-et-Loire, and went to school in Paris. At a young age he became well-known to Parisian critics as director, actor, and stage manager of his high-school theatre...
's Intimacy, Bertrand Bonello
Bertrand Bonello
Bertrand Bonello is a French film director. His background is in classical music, and he lives between Paris and Montreal.Le Pornographe won the FIPRESCI prize at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival...
's The Pornographer, Marina de Van
Marina de Van
Marina de Van is a French film director, screenwriter and actress. Her film, Don't Look Back, was screened out of competition at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival.-Selected filmography:* See the Sea...
's In My Skin, Leos Carax
Leos Carax
Leos Carax is a French-born film director, critic, and writer. Carax is noted for his poetic style and his tortured depictions of love. His first major work was Boy Meets Girl , and his notable works include Lovers on the Bridge and the controversial Pola X...
's Pola X
Pola X
Pola X is a 1999 French romantic drama film starring Guillaume Depardieu, Yekaterina Golubeva and Catherine Deneuve. The film is loosely based on the Herman Melville novel Pierre: or, The Ambiguities. It revolves around a successful young novelist who is confronted by a woman who claims to be his...
, Philippe Grandrieux
Philippe Grandrieux
Philippe Jesus Grandrieux is a French film director born in 1954.- Biography :He studied movies at the INSAS in Brussels and started his career as a moviemaker by shooting fictional films and documentaries. Grandrieux then worked as an experimental filmmaker in Belgium where he exhibited his...
's La Vie nouvelle and Sombre, Jean-Claude Brisseau
Jean-Claude Brisseau
Jean-Claude Brisseau is a French filmmaker best known for his 2002 film Secret Things and his 2006 film The Exterminating Angels ....
's Secret Things
Secret Things
Secret Things is a 2002 French film directed by Jean-Claude Brisseau, starring Coralie Revel and Sabrina Seyvecou. The film is sometimes associated with the New French Extremity.- Plot :...
, Jacques Nolot
Jacques Nolot
Jacques Nolot , is a French actor, screenwriter and film director.- Life :Jacques Nolot was born on 31 August 1943, Marciac, Gers, a small village in Southwest France. A fragile child, Nolot was doted upon by his mother, a woman who had three children with three different fathers...
's La Chatte à deux têtes
Glowing Eyes (film)
Glowing Eyes is a 2002 French drama film directed by and starring Jacques Nolot. It was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival.-Cast:* Vittoria Scognamiglio - Cashier* Jacques Nolot - 50-Year-Old Man...
, Virginie Despentes
Virginie Despentes
Virginie Despentes is a French writer, novelist and filmmaker.-Life:She settled in Lyon, where she worked multiple odd jobs; including maid, prostitute in "massage parlors" and peep shows, recorded store sales, and a freelance rock journalist and pornographic film critic.She moved to Paris.Her...
and Coralie Trinh Thi
Coralie Trinh Thi
Coralie Trinh Thi is a French author and former pornographic actress known for her acting, writing and for directing the film Baise-moi . She received a Hot d'Or Honorary Award in 2009....
's Baise-moi
Baise-moi
Baise-moi is a French film co-directed by Virginie Despentes and Coralie Trinh Thi, released in 2000. It is based on the novel by Despentes, first published in 1999. The film received intense media coverage because of its graphic mix of violence and explicit sex scenes...
, and Alexandre Aja
Alexandre Aja
Alexandre Aja is a French film director who rose to international stardom for his 2003 horror film Haute Tension .-Personal life:...
's Haute tension
Haute Tension
Haute Tension is a 2003 French horror film that was later released in 2004 in the United Kingdom and 2005 in the United States and Canada. The film, directed by Alexandre Aja, stars Cécile de France, Maïwenn and Philippe Nahon....
with the label.
While Quandt intended the term as pejorative, many so labeled have produced critically acclaimed work. David Fear indicates that the lack of humanity beneath the horror represented in these film leads to their stigma, arguing that Bruno Dumont's Flanders "contains enough savage violence and sexual ugliness" to remain vulnerable to the New French Extremity tag, but "a soul also lurks underneath the shocks". Nick Wrigley indicates that Dumont was merely chastised for "letting everybody down" who expected him to be the heir to Robert Bresson
Robert Bresson
-Life and career:Bresson was born at Bromont-Lamothe, Puy-de-Dôme, the son of Marie-Élisabeth and Léon Bresson. Little is known of his early life and the year of his birth, 1901 or 1907, varies depending on the source. He was educated at Lycée Lakanal in Sceaux, Hauts-de-Seine, close to Paris, and...
.
Jonathan Romney also associates the label with Olivier Assayas
Olivier Assayas
Olivier Assayas is a French film director and screenwriter.He made his debut in 1986, after directing some short films and writing for the influential film magazine Cahiers du cinéma.-Career:...
' Demonlover
Demonlover
Demonlover is a 2002 technological neo-noir thriller film by French writer/director Olivier Assayas. The film stars Connie Nielsen, Charles Berling, Chloë Sevigny, and Gina Gershon with a musical score by Sonic Youth...
, Christophe Honoré
Christophe Honoré
Christophe Honoré is a French writer and film director born in Carhaix, Finistère in 1970.After moving to Paris in 1995, he wrote articles in "Les Cahiers du Cinéma." He started writing soon-after. His 1996 book Tout contre Léo talks about HIV and is aimed at young adults; he made it into a movie...
's Ma mère
Ma mère
My Mother is a French-Austrian-Portuguese-Spanish 2004 movie about the fictional story of an incestuous relationship between a 17-year-old boy and his attractive, promiscuous, 43-year-old mother. The movie stars Isabelle Hupert, Louis Garrel, Emma de Caunes, Joana Preiss, Philipe Duclos and...
, and C.S. Leigh's Process.
Tim Palmer has also written about these films, describing them as constituting a "cinema of the body." Palmer has argued that such films reflect a large scale stylistic trajectory, a kind of avant-garde among like-minded directors, from Catherine Breillat to Francois Ozon, along with contemporary figures like Marina de Van, Claire Denis, Dumont, Gaspar Noé, and many others. Palmer situates this tendency within the complex eco-system of French cinema, underlining the conceptual diversity and artistic scope in French cinema today.
History
Jonathan Romney traces a long line of (mainly French) painters and writers influencing these directors, beginning with the Marquis de Sade, and including Gustave CourbetGustave Courbet
Jean Désiré Gustave Courbet was a French painter who led the Realist movement in 19th-century French painting. The Realist movement bridged the Romantic movement , with the Barbizon School and the Impressionists...
's 1866 L'origine du monde
L'Origine du monde
L’Origine du monde is an oil-on-canvas painted by French artist Gustave Courbet in 1866. It is a close-up view of the genitals and abdomen of a naked woman, lying on a bed with legs spread...
, Comte de Lautréamont
Comte de Lautréamont
Comte de Lautréamont was the pseudonym of Isidore Lucien Ducasse , an Uruguayan-born French poet....
, Antonin Artaud
Antonin Artaud
Antoine Marie Joseph Artaud, more well-known as Antonin Artaud was a French playwright, poet, actor and theatre director...
, Georges Bataille
Georges Bataille
Georges Bataille was a French writer. His multifaceted work is linked to the domains of literature, anthropology, philosophy, economy, sociology and history of art...
, William S. Burroughs
William S. Burroughs
William Seward Burroughs II was an American novelist, poet, essayist and spoken word performer. A primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodernist author, he is considered to be "one of the most politically trenchant, culturally influential, and innovative artists of the 20th...
, Michel Houellebecq
Michel Houellebecq
Michel Houellebecq , born Michel Thomas, 26 February 1958—or 1956 —on the French island of Réunion, is a controversial and award-winning French author, filmmaker and poet. To admirers he is a writer in the tradition of literary provocation that reaches back to the Marquis de Sade and Baudelaire;...
, and Marie Darrieussecq
Marie Darrieussecq
Marie Darrieussecq is a French Basque writer.-Biography:Marie Darrieussecq was born on January 3, 1969...
. He locates filmic predecessors in Luis Buñuel
Luis Buñuel
Luis Buñuel Portolés was a Spanish-born filmmaker — later a naturalized citizen of Mexico — who worked in Spain, Mexico, France and the US..-Early years:...
and Salvador Dalí
Salvador Dalí
Salvador Domènec Felip Jacint Dalí i Domènech, Marquis de Púbol , commonly known as Salvador Dalí , was a prominent Spanish Catalan surrealist painter born in Figueres,Spain....
, Roman Polanski
Roman Polanski
Roman Polanski is a French-Polish film director, producer, writer and actor. Having made films in Poland, Britain, France and the USA, he is considered one of the few "truly international filmmakers."...
, Jean-Luc Godard
Jean-Luc Godard
Jean-Luc Godard is a French-Swiss film director, screenwriter and film critic. He is often identified with the 1960s French film movement, French Nouvelle Vague, or "New Wave"....
's Le weekend, Andrzej Zulawski
Andrzej Zulawski
Andrzej Żuławski is a Polish film director. He was born in Lwów, Poland . Żuławski has often gone against mainstream commercialism in his films,and has enjoyed success mostly with European art-house audiences....
's Possession
Possession (1981 film)
Possession is a 1981 cult horror film directed by Andrzej Żuławski.-Plot:Mark returns home to Berlin to find his wife Anna is leaving him for unclear reasons. He initially suspects an affair and hires detectives to track her, but gradually discovers clues that something far stranger is afoot...
, and Michael Haneke
Michael Haneke
Michael Haneke is a German born Austrian filmmaker and writer best known for his bleak and disturbing style. His films often document problems and failures in modern society. Haneke has worked in television‚ theatre and cinema. He is also known for raising social issues in his work...
. Quandt also alludes to Arthur Rimbaud
Arthur Rimbaud
Jean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud was a French poet. Born in Charleville, Ardennes, he produced his best known works while still in his late teens—Victor Hugo described him at the time as "an infant Shakespeare"—and he gave up creative writing altogether before the age of 21. As part of the decadent...
, Buñuel, Henri-Georges Clouzot
Henri-Georges Clouzot
Henri-Georges Clouzot was a French film director, screenwriter and producer. He is best remembered for his work in the thriller film genre, having directed The Wages of Fear and Les Diaboliques, which are critically recognized to be among the greatest films from the 1950s...
, Georges Franju
Georges Franju
-External links:* at Allmovie...
, Michelangelo Antonioni
Michelangelo Antonioni
Michelangelo Antonioni, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI was an Italian modernist film director, screenwriter, editor and short story writer.- Personal life :...
, Pier Paolo Pasolini
Pier Paolo Pasolini
Pier Paolo Pasolini was an Italian film director, poet, writer, and intellectual. Pasolini distinguished himself as a poet, journalist, philosopher, linguist, novelist, playwright, filmmaker, newspaper and magazine columnist, actor, painter and political figure...
, Guy Debord
Guy Debord
Guy Ernest Debord was a French Marxist theorist, writer, filmmaker, member of the Letterist International, founder of a Letterist faction, and founding member of the Situationist International . He was also briefly a member of Socialisme ou Barbarie.-Early Life:Guy Debord was born in Paris in 1931...
, Walerian Borowczyk
Walerian Borowczyk
Walerian Borowczyk was a Polish film director. He directed 40 films between 1946 and 1988. His career as a film director was mainly in France.-Biography:...
, Godard, Psycho
Psycho (1960 film)
Psycho is a 1960 American suspense/psychological horror film directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring Janet Leigh and Anthony Perkins. The film is based on the screenplay by Joseph Stefano, who adapted it from the 1959 novel of the same name by Robert Bloch...
, Zulawski, Deliverance
Deliverance
Deliverance is a 1972 American thriller film produced and directed by John Boorman. Principal cast members include Jon Voight, Burt Reynolds, Ronny Cox and Ned Beatty in his film debut. The film is based on a 1970 novel of the same name by American author James Dickey, who has a small role in the...
, Jean Eustache
Jean Eustache
Jean Eustache was a French filmmaker. During his short career, he completed numerous shorts, in addition to a pair of highly regarded features, of which the first, The Mother and the Whore, is considered a key work of post-Nouvelle Vague French cinema.In his obituary for Eustache, the influential...
's La maman et la putain, and Maurice Pialat
Maurice Pialat
Maurice Pialat was a French film director, screenwriter and actor noted for the rigorous and unsentimental style of his films...
's A Nos Amours
À nos amours
À nos amours is a 1983 French film directed by Maurice Pialat, written by Arlette Langmann and Pialat.-Plot:The film is a character study focusing on Suzanne, a promiscuous fifteen-year-old Parisian, played by Sandrine Bonnaire...
as models, but criticizes that the contemporary filmmakers so far lack the "power to shock an audience into consciousness".
John Wray
John Wray (novelist)
John Henderson , better known by his pen name John Wray, is a novelist and regular contributor to The New York Times Magazine. Born in Washington, D.C., of an American father and Austrian mother, he is a citizen of both countries...
notes that some of these filmmakers show less affection for Hollywood films than their New Wave
French New Wave
The New Wave was a blanket term coined by critics for a group of French filmmakers of the late 1950s and 1960s, influenced by Italian Neorealism and classical Hollywood cinema. Although never a formally organized movement, the New Wave filmmakers were linked by their self-conscious rejection of...
predecessors, and take after Jean Renoir
Jean Renoir
Jean Renoir was a French film director, screenwriter, actor, producer and author. As a film director and actor, he made more than forty films from the silent era to the end of the 1960s...
as well as Bresson. He also notes the long shots and enigmatic story-telling style of Dumont and the Dardenne brothers
Dardenne brothers
Brothers Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne are a Belgian filmmaking duo...
.
The expanded term "The New Extremism", referring to European filmmakers such as Lars von Trier
Lars von Trier
Lars von Trier is a Danish film director and screenwriter. He is closely associated with the Dogme 95 collective, although his own films have taken a variety of different approaches, and have frequently received strongly divided critical opinion....
, Lukas Moodysson
Lukas Moodysson
- External links :*...
, and Fatih Akin
Fatih Akin
Fatih Akın is a German film director, screenwriter and producer of Turkish descent.- Personal life :Akın was born in 1973 in Hamburg to parents of Turkish ethnicity...
, has subsequently appeared.
New wave of French horror
Some films considered as part of the New French Extremity rework elements of the horror genre. Other contemporary French horror films with a similar sensibility include SheitanSheitan
Sheitan is a 2006 French horror film. It was directed by Kim Chapiron, and written by Kim and Christian Chapiron. It stars and was co-produced by Vincent Cassel...
, Ils
Them (2006 film)
Them is a 2006 French horror film directed by David Moreau and Xavier Palud.Olivia Bonamy plays Clementine, a young teacher, who has recently moved from France to a remote but idyllic country house near Bucharest, Romania with her lover Lucas played by Michael Cohen.- Story :The film opens with a...
, Haute Tension
Haute Tension
Haute Tension is a 2003 French horror film that was later released in 2004 in the United Kingdom and 2005 in the United States and Canada. The film, directed by Alexandre Aja, stars Cécile de France, Maïwenn and Philippe Nahon....
, Frontier(s) and À l'interieur
Inside (2007 film)
Inside is a 2007 French horror film directed by Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo, starring Alysson Paradis and Béatrice Dalle. It was written by co-director Alexandre Bustillo, and is the first film from either director...
. The Belgian film Calvaire has also been associated with this trend.
Pascal Laugier
Pascal Laugier
Pascal Laugier is a French screenwriter and film director.-Career:Laugier is a former assistant to director Christophe Gans, also having directed the making-of documentary about Gans's 2001 film Brotherhood of the Wolf. He has written and directed the fantasy-horror feature films Saint Ange and...
, director of the controversial horror film Martyrs
Martyrs (film)
Martyrs is a 2008 French-Canadian horror film written and directed by Pascal Laugier. It was first screened during the 2008 Cannes Film Festival at the Marché du Film. The film was released in France publicly on 3 September 2008. The U.S. rights for Martyrs were bought by The Weinstein Company, who...
, disagrees with the idea of there being a horror revival in France:
See also
- Body horrorBody horrorBody horror, biological horror, organic horror or venereal horror is horror fiction in which the horror is principally derived from the graphic destruction or degeneration of the body. Such works may deal with disease, decay, parasitism, mutilation, or mutation...
- Cinema du lookCinema du lookCinéma du look was a French film movement of the 1980s, analysed, for the first time, by French critic Raphaël Bassan in La Revue du Cinéma issue n° 448, May 1989, in which Luc Besson was lumped with two other directors who shared "le look." These directors were said to favor style over substance,...
- New Gothic ArtNew Gothic Art-Manifesto:The Neo Gothic Art Manifesto was written by gothic artist Charles Moffat in 2001, who also coined the term "Neo Gothic" in an effort to differentiate it from gothic architecture...
- Porno chic
- Splatter filmSplatter filmA splatter film or gore film is a subgenre of horror film that deliberately focuses on graphic portrayals of gore and graphic violence. These films, through the use of special effects and excessive blood and guts, tend to display an overt interest in the vulnerability of the human body and the...
- List of surrealist films
- List of mainstream films with unsimulated sexUnsimulated sex in filmUnsimulated sex in mainstream cinema was at one time restricted by law and self-imposed industry standards such as the Motion Picture Production Code. Films showing explicit sexual activity were confined to privately distributed underground films, such as stag films or "porn loops"...
- Theater of Cruelty