French Minority Cinema (review)

This study provides a valuable and thought-provoking introduction to two categories of French cinema, banlieue and gay films, arguing that the overlapping cinematic representations of these minority groups constitute a discursive intervention in the ongoing debate over the future of French Republicanism. Through an analysis focused on the narratives and verbal exchanges in a select body of popular films (or films that generated discussion in the press), Johnston explores the possibility of a third way between traditional republicanism and USA-style multiculturalism. These films, argues Johnston, generate a complex picture of national identity and thereby evoke the prospect of a renewed republicanism, offering ‘coherence and unity within and through difference’ (p. 177) while avoiding a descent into an ‘incoherent juxtaposition of individual and collective particularities’ (p. 176). Approaching the films through the (again overlapping) prisms of ethnicity, gender, and sexuality and with reference to media reception of the films, Johnston demonstrates persuasively that banlieue films such as Hexagone (Malik Chibane, 1994) and gay films such as Pédale douce (Gabriel Aghion, 1996) from the 1990s onwards engage, whether intentionally or not, with the question of what it means to be French at the turn of the millennium. Johnston is careful to convey the impact of each film in terms of viewing figures and press coverage. She also illustrates how certain narratives and characters emerge in the context of particular media debates. Although at times she comes perilously close to treating scripted dialogue as though it were ethnographical evidence, ultimately her contention that the films both reflect and contribute to social discourse is convincing. Throughout, Johnston shows that ‘minority’ identities are always in relation to and often combined with ‘majority’ identities. Even when relatively unsubtle, the films discussed repeatedly play with and subvert stereotypical categories of ‘minority’: the bourgeois gay man in Pédale douce who looks down on unworldly provincial gays, or the mother in Douce France (Chibane, 1995) who asks a salesman for a price in anciens francs, confounding his expectation that she is foreign. Johnston’s interwoven analysis of different constituencies is a strength here, supporting her claim that contemporary film depicts a multilayered vision of French society. Nevertheless, given her assertion in the Introduction that her concept of ‘minority’ is informed by the work of Deleuze and Guattari, Pierre Bourdieu, and Judith Butler, it is surprising that they are barely mentioned; a more detailed examination of this theoretical underpinning would have made the discussion all the more nuanced and compelling, as would reference to alternative approaches to questions of marginality and identity in French cinema by Martine Beugnet and Mireille Rosello. Johnston claims, with some justification, that dialogue is a neglected aspect of film studies, yet, despite promises in the Introduction, her own analysis neglects the visual and aural qualities of the films, and one often feels she might as well be describing written texts. The question of whether cinema has a particular power to engage us in ways that challenge conventional discourse is therefore left unresolved.