HATE / LA HAINE (73)

Directed by: Mathieu Kassovitz

Starring: Vincent Cassel, Said Taghmaoui

The Pitch: 24 hours in the dead-end lives of three teenagers - white, black and Arab - in a Paris banlieue.

Theo Sez: Despite the title, what distinguishes this deft, accomplished piece from the many American ghetto-movies it (consciously) resembles is precisely that it's not driven by hate, blind rage or moral indignation. Unlike things like MENACE II SOCIETY it doesn't spend all its energy on being hellish and trying to shock - it's able to stand back a little. One always feels the presence of the film-maker commenting and highlighting, distinct from the characters and milieu - most overtly, and stunningly, in the amazing shot (crane shot? helicopter-shot?) where the camera floats up from street-level like a levitating shaman, swaying slightly as it observes the roofs and playgrounds of the ghetto, everything turning placid and geometric. It gives the film an artificial, outside-looking-in air - it doesn't feel of the streets the way the black-American movies often do. At worst it feels like a middle-class kid slumming, especially since Kassovitz is also enamoured of the smartass catchphrases of the Tarantino School for Hipsters - Mexican standoffs, trivia talk ("Who do you like best, Tweety or Sylvester?"), shaggy-dog stories told by one-scene characters. For much the same reasons it's worth any number of visceral ghetto-movies - not just morally and sociologically powerful, but artistically valid. In admitting more than violence and despair, in showing boredom, humour, even occasional beauty, it manages to humanise the characters in a way the New Black Cinema has rarely achieved. It's not really a macho movie, more a goofy, caramaderie-driven movie under a macho exterior. The voice screams a mixture of RESERVOIR DOGS and STRAIGHT OUT OF BROOKLYN, but the heart beats STAND BY ME.