The Wacky French: The Extreme Wave
by Laurent Hasson
America has been French kissed this past weekend with a high spectacle of 3D horror served up by French director Alexandre Aja. But when you look a little bit closer, the movie is actually surprising. Aja created High Tension, one of the more influential horror films of the last decade – a brutal and brooding gore fest. For him to break new ground in horror seven years ago with a low-budget gruesome cult horror film, and then find himself today with a new film, in 3D, in theaters across the US… Talk about The American Dream! He got it. Although his latest baby has Hollywood written all over it (it’s a high budget grand spectacle), you cannot forget where it all came from, and for that, i propose to take you on a walk through what is known as the Extreme Wave, and perhaps, make you buy or rent a few movies you may have never heard of.
French cinema has always been striving for realism. For Jean-Luc Godard, Cinema was truth 24 times a second. As a philosophical foundation for the New Wave, making stories and characters more realistic was the goal. Using rawer filming techniques that would translate into a clearer realism was also key. Cameras were often handheld, shaky, and editing was often jumpy. Away with theatrics, away with complex setups, cinema became about capturing the every day truth of the human condition.
Fast forward 40+ years, and the French have been at it again, except this time, we are not talking about dramas: we are talking about truth in a much more graphic way. Some of the more personal, psychological, gripping, affecting, and visual horror films of the past decade have been French. Striving for ultra graphic realism, and pointing the horror inward, the French have meshed together psychological drama, the thriller, and horror in a new, very artsy package. Those films push the limit in their subject matter, in how graphic they are, and are done with a typically French sensibility to make it all look beautiful. They are low budget of course, but they ooze style and beauty, even if the end result is macabre to the extreme.
But calling it horror is also a disservice to this trend. These films are dramatic thrillers which happen to feature a lot of realistic gore and at times, graphic sex. Qualifying Gaspar Noe’s Irreversible (2002) or Bertrand Bonello’s Tiresia (2003) as Horror films is really missing the point, although horrific and bloody images abound. They are really about painting a broad vision of human suffering and violence in the most psychological terms, while taking a horror format. As such, they might appeal to the more intellectual among horror fans, which actually makes those films less approachable by mainstream audiences. Here are 15 such movies which have marked this last decade or so.
With films such as Irreversible (2002) and I Stand Alone (1998), Gaspar Noe is a unique visionary film maker in today’s landscape. He is one of the most manipulative, visually capable, and provocative artists out there, presenting to you hyper-manufactured packages that are fundamentally designed to shock you. In some sense, he stands alone here as his movies are magical works of digital art. Although it all looks hyper realistic, every single frame of his movies are digitally manipulated in order to carry out the most potent emotional impact. Watching, for example, the documentary about how Irreversible (2002) was made will make you want to watch it again and study it further, if only you can detach yourself just a little from the emotional assault it takes on you. Although consciously manipulative, Noe manages to pull the greatest trick only real Magicians can: make you believe it’s all so real, and pull you in until you cringe and cry, or want to punch the screen. His last two movies are without a doubt some of the most harrowing experiences committed to celluloid.
In My Skin (2002), from writer, director, and actress Marina De Van is a singular entry in this list because it is above all a very personal woman’s film. Women authors are very rare in the horror genre. Exploring themes of self-image gone awfully wrong, she paints a road that starts with narcissism and ends in autosarcophagy (self-cannibalism). A young and successful professional woman accidentally wounds herself while taking a stroll in a garden, and actually doesn’t feel anything. It’s only an hour or so later that she sees blood and discovers a gaping wound in her leg. That incident starts a deep psychological dissociation between her mind and her body, which leads to a horrific outcome. The movie is impeccably filmed and performed, and illustrates – with some very emotional scenes – how this woman is slowly drifting to literal self destruction based solely on a disconnected body image.
Bertrand Bonello’s Tiresia (2003) updates the ancient Greek myth with a modern tale of a Brazilian transsexual that accidentally catches the eyes of a psychotic priest. After having been kidnapped, her eyes gouged and left for dead, Tiresia emerges alive, with the gift of prophecy. This is again a fantastic film about extreme emotions and vices. The movie is very realistic in the details it portrays, from the graphic violence and sex, to the slow and inexorable “decrepitude” Tiresia is forced through while in captivity and without access to the hormones that are the guardians of her femininity. This is also another movie in the long line of “Clergy gone bad” films that are popular in the horror genre (see Lucio Fulci’s Don’t Torture A Duckling (1972) or Aldo Lado’s Who Saw Her Die? (1972) for two classic Giallo examples). Here though, there is no mystery, and the murderous priest (portrayed by the incredible French actor Laurent Lucas) is a full character in the story. This is not a whodunit, but a study of character between the prey and the predator, between blind obsession and forgiveness and sacrifice.
Philippe Grandrieux’s Sombre (1998) is a dark look at a serial killer following the Tour De France,visiting prostitutes at every town the Tour passes through, and strangling them. This is a very strange movie that is as unfocused and ethereal as the main character’s motivation: he kills because he seems to need to, without any real motive or back story. The movie wanders across France with many dark and out of focus shots (thus the film’s name which in French means not only Somber, but also Dark). It’s completely experimental, but very potent.
Pascal Laugier’s Martyrs (2008) is a movie that has elicited adoration and hate equally. It reached a point when even the writer/director felt somewhat ashamed of the final result, although he never went so far as disowning it. It is a gorgeous movie with horrifically perverse and graphic violence, and a nihilist philosophical background that makes the whole experience just taboo. Yet, no one can deny its power when it delivers the final blow. The movie is about a secret and powerful sect that kidnaps young women to torture them to the extreme and transform them into Saints, in the most perverted, religious way. A Saint is someone who has gone through so much extreme physical suffering that just before dying, their soul was allowed in the presence of God to witness His reality. A throwback to the old satanic cults and the pagan use of women as vessels to godly worlds, the movie updates the whole concept by pushing the limits of realistic depiction of torture and such obscene rites.
Jean-Claude Brisseau’s Secret Things (2002) and The Exterminating Angels (2006) are in contrast very different as they are much more a study of human sexuality, perversions, and quirks rather than violence. But the strong emotions felt by the characters towards each other – ranging from adulation to utter rejection – certainly paints the film into some uncomfortable corners of voyeurism and shock. As most French films that touch this sort of subject, the films are sexually explicit, and sex is never a commercial excuse; it’s fully part of the narrative, and used as a device to make you uncomfortable about something that for most people, is above all else a very personal experience.
Xavier Gens’s Frontier(s) (2007) is not as philosophically minded as other films in this list, and certainly aims for a more Hollywood-esque flavor of horror. Billed as a French The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), its only real connection might be that it strongly discourages you from wandering off the main highways through the French countryside, the same as Massacre discouraged you from doing the same off Texas’ highways. Otherwise, the film is not nearly as good; although, it does represent a unique entry in French cinema in that it really tries not to look French. Its production is polished, and features lots of action and blood, going for a movie that an American audience might actually like.
Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury’’s Inside (2007) is, like Martyrs or In My Skin, another subdued masterpiece. It is one of the most brutal films i have seen, but its central character, a psychotic woman in search of a baby at all costs, is so layered and so powerful that the humanity of the horror on display is inescapable. Portrayed by the great French actress Beatrice Dalle, this character is the reason why the film doesn’t dissolve into exploitative and meaningless violence, and why the movie grabs you emotionally from beginning to end. This is where hyper-graphic violence can be its most powerful because it grabs you viscerally. This is not about leaving a lot to viewers to imagine for themselves, but confronting them with an unpleasant reality they’ll have to deal with.
Gela Babluani’s 13 (Tzameti) (2005) follows a few men, down and out in their lives, trying to make a large amount of money by surviving a duel to the death based on Russian Roulette. The movie is graphic again, but very stylized, filmed in black and white, and propelling you, the viewer, into nail-biting suspense where each scene unfolds, revealing which of the contestants will get a bullet, and whom will advance to the next round, while learning a bit more each time about the contestants.
Fabrice Du Welz’s Calvaire (2004) is a movie people have compared to Deliverance (1972) and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974). Whereas Frontier(s) (2007) failed both in quality and style to really resemble The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Calvaire fares better, and keeps the French identity while developing an American feel of inbred psychoticism.
Coralie’s Baise Moi (2000) is a remake of sorts. Take Thelma And Louise (1991), put it in the hands of a really angry feminist porn star, make it graphically violent and sexual, and you’ll get this film, which literally means in French, “Fuck Me”. This is a violent assault on the viewer with very disgusting characters, and a cinema-verité technique that is very jarring.
Catherine Breillat is a strange figure in French cinema. She is known to make very provocative and sexually explicit movies, and she is completely accepted in the (almost) mainstream French cinema life. With Anatomy Of Hell (2004), she does it again by taking famous European porn actor Rocco Siffredi (who is very famous for his 12 inches) and putting him at the center of a woman’s obsession. The movie is faithful to Breillat’s career, graphic in every way, pushing taboos, and provoking reactions from viewers.
And finally, let’s get back to our poster boy du jour. Alexandre Aja’s High Tension (2003) is one of those seminal films in French horror in that it depicted absolutely realistic and unflinching gore on screen, something that most French horror films had avoided until then. It was loaded with style and launched a few careers, including its leading ladies and creator Aja who is now enjoying a successful Hollywood career. Aja always likes to compare France and America along common lines of the horror genre: sex and violence. France has never had problems with sex, but violence is somewhat taboo, whereas in the US, it’s kind of the opposite. It’s hard for American audiences to realize how ground breaking those films were, to be made like that in the French film system.
These are but a few examples of this Extreme Wave. Each one of those films marry several aspects of what makes a horror film; and they are absolutely not about entertaining you in a passive or pleasant way. They involve you and your guts, and to some extent, they don’t shy from the possibility that they might repulse you. This can happen through explicit and abject sexual behavior, or graphic blood and guts spilled by the bucket load. What differentiates the French Extreme Wave though, is that all those films accentuate strong philosophical and psychological themes that make them all primarily about people – humans – who happen to find themselves in very extreme situations. In all cases, these are also personal works of art, representing a singular vision of typically negative human emotions such as despair, obsession, self-absorption, repulsion, and envy, which are all the core ingredients for people to do the worst of things to other people.
These are some of the reasons why those films have generally not reached the mainstream, yet, in the film community, have gathered a lot of attention because of their raw energy and unbelievable themes. So, not surprisingly, many of those directors and writers have attracted the attention of big Hollywood. But one can think about what happens when such films get remade (such as a remake of Martyrs), or when such personal directors make the move to Hollywood. The intensity of the original work simply cannot survive the transition since the market and target audiences are simply incompatible.
Although Aja is the poster boy for someone to start from humble cult cinema origins in France and continue with mega Hollywood projects, there have been a few other French directors who have made the transition, albeit perhaps less successfully. Christophe Gans’s Silent Hill (2006) was a visually stunning rendition of the popular video game, but maybe it was too abstract or slow, and didn’t gel well with American audiences. Franck Khalfoun’s P2 (2007) (written and produced by Aja) was a brutal and claustrophobic tale of a young woman stalked by a psychotic parking security guard. The movie didn’t do terribly, but maybe its graphic nature turned most people off. Fabrice Du Welz’s Vinyan (2008) is another example where the French sensibility doesn’t translate so well for polished Hollywood fare and an American audience. Gorgeous and slow, the movie follows the obsession of a woman who has lost her son in the Tsunami but believes he’s still alive. Her quest will take her to the difficult jungles of countries torn by horrific civil wars and a market of dream merchants ready to promise anything for a few bucks. The ending twisted me the wrong way.
Finally, Alexandre Aja’s The Hills Have Eyes (2006) has probably been the most successful outing to date, getting good public and critical reception, while being able to keep, in some respect, the French brutal aesthetic that had defined his earlier work. His next project, Mirrors, wasn’t received well, although it did include a few ground-breakingly gruesome visuals that people everywhere noticed and talked about. This summer, his Piranha 3D (2010) is a highly-anticipated film with 3D and IMAX, a grand Hollywood project by any measure. Will he be successful in catering to his core following, who want buckets of blood and tons of tension, or will he go softer and still deliver fun in order to reach a greater audience? I wish him all the best luck.
Laurent Hasson a Frenchman living in exile on the island of Manhattan. He watches nearly 900 films a year and reviews them at RatingMovies.com.
