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  • Nikita: French Film Guide
  • Guy Austin
Nikita: French Film Guide. By Susan Hayward. (Cine-file French Film Guides). London: I. B. Tauris, 2010. x + 128 pp. Pb £12.99.

Susan Hayward has long championed the films of Luc Besson, combating the perception in some academic and 'intellectual' film press circles that Besson's work, like that of the cinéma du look style with which he made his name, is superficial and unworthy of sustained analysis. Her latest study on Besson is an in-depth exploration of arguably his best film, Nikita (1990), which, as Hayward notes, is a text that 'responds well to a variety of approaches' (p. 125). Here she sets out with great clarity and evident enthusiasm the production context of the film (it was made as a 'thank you' to fans who made his previous work, Le Grand Bleu, a huge success despite critical mauling). She then analyses Nikita as a neo-noir melodrama, with particular focus on the importance of narrative structure (which she compares to the musical form of the symphony) and on the functioning of music, décor, costume, editing, and camerawork in the elucidation of the protagonist's relationship with the state and with constructions of gendered identity. One key, overarching metaphor here is baroque music, whose patterns of counterpoint and varied pace are compared in detail with the rhythms of the film narrative. Even more illuminating, however, is Hayward's close attention to the technical precision of Besson's filmmaking, and her conclusions regarding the tensions within camerawork and décor especially. She is particularly perceptive about the 'violence in the décor' (p. 5), the 'moral and aesthetic' implications of filming in cinemascope (p. 5), and the tension between scope and the medium shot frequently used by Besson, resulting in a sense of violence 'created through the very materiality of the film' (p. 26). She also teases out parallels between Nikita and the 1950s intertext [End Page 131] Caroline chérie, and hints (only) at connections with the brilliant Hollywood noir melodrama Mildred Pierce. Hayward demonstrates how little Nikita has in common with the femme fatale of film noir (apart from in one key sequence) and also how the film's ending 'contests traditional noir closure and offers new ways to conceive of the genre' (p. 92). The final chapter engages in an impassioned demolition of the US remake, anchored intriguingly once more by music — here a righteous anger at the misuse of Nina Simone on the soundtrack. Hayward's style matches Besson's very appropriately, since his action cinema (with glimpses of greater depth) is illuminated by her action writing (with perception and depth). At least in the first third of the book, she, like Besson, goes at speed. Too many detailed references or examples would slow her down. Theory is deliberately kept to a minimum, with just one brief use of Foucault and another of Deleuze. The result is a rapid, enthusiastic, and very accessible style, which makes this study an excellent starting point for students approaching the film for the first time. Appendices (filmography, credits, and so on) are included, although stills are not. Nor is there an index, but that is surely the publisher's decision not Hayward's, who adds meticulous set diagrams to this invigorating and lucid study.

Guy Austin
Newcastle University
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