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Over the next two terms, Peter and James will be taking us on an around-the-world trip through the medium of film. Each week will take us to a new destination - so check back every Thursday to see where we're going, and perhaps be intrigued by a film you never thought you would be.
With French cinema of the late 19th and early 20th Century providing the foundation for all films that were to follow, a famous example being the first science-fiction film A Trip To The Moon (La Voyage Dans La Lune) which premiered in 1902, it is only natural that France would be the first country visited on this whistle-stop tour of foreign cinema.
Acting simultaneously as the launch-pad for many international directors as well as stimulating home-grown talent, France has one of the most free and vibrant film industries in the world today. The films that were chosen here truly emphasise the freedom that directors find with the cult classic Delicatessen and the extremely controversial Irréversible.
Directors: Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Mark Caro (1991)
Before Jeunet became world-famous for his whimsical storytelling as found in his breakout hit Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain (released in the English-speaking world simply as Amélie) he was a master of distortion and dystopia which can be best seen in his debut feature-length film Delicatessen. Here France is presented in an alternate version of the fifties, resplendent with tin toys and black & white television, where it is implied that the Second World War went completely nuclear. As such the country has now been reduced to a deserted wasteland where crops can no longer grow meaning that corn and lentils have become the de facto currency of this post-apocalyptic world.
The focus of the whole film rests upon the residents of a small dilapidated apartment building who have now resorted to cannibalism as a means of feeding themselves. With a cast of characters that are profoundly equal in their grotesquery, a special mention to a female tenant who constructs elaborate suicide machines only to have them fail her at every turn, this film is the epitome of a dark comedy with slight dashes of horror inserted for good measure.
While the concept may sound rather macabre this is not a film that the faint-hearted should steer clear from; with the threat of violence acting as the main driving force, and with its much-parodied set pieces that are widely available online, it is little wonder that Delicatessen has earned its place as a cult classic.
Director: Gaspar Noé (2002)
At the most simplistic level, Irréversible is a revenge story, about two men who go looking for blood after Vincent’s girlfriend is brutally raped. However, the film is so much more than this using a constant philosophy of ‘Time Destroys All Things’ and telling its tale through reverse chronology, it soon becomes far more than a simplistic tale of revenge.
What Irréversible is most famous for and what has made it so controversial is the horrific violence of the film, all of which takes place on camera. Indeed, the violence is what led to it becoming the most walked out film of 2003, and is incredibly hard to stomach. In the opening ten minutes the viewer is forced to watch the act of vengeance as a man’s head is crushed by a fire extinguisher. Even more controversially is the barely watchable nine minute rape scene, which is incredibly distressing, and clearly pushing the boundaries of what is acceptable in film.
Yet for all its horrific and shocking violence the film does have a point, echoing that ‘Time Destroys All Things’ at its beginning and end and moving from the horrific opening to the eventual tranquillity of the end is very effective, as the viewer mourns all that is lost. Therefore, the film is not merely a brutal and tasteless exercise in violence as many have claimed, but is instead an incredibly powerful film about destruction and loss, and as such is truly brilliant cinema.
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