New French Extremity

New French Extremity (New French Extremism or, informally, New French Extreme) is a term coined by Artforum critic James Quandt for a collection of transgressive films by French directors at the turn of the 21st century.[1] The filmmakers are also discussed by Jonathan Romney of The Independent.[2]

Bava as much as Bataille, Salò no less than Sade seem the determinants of a cinema suddenly determined to break every taboo, to wade in rivers of viscera and spumes of sperm, to fill each frame with flesh, nubile or gnarled, and subject it to all manner of penetration, mutilation, and defilement.

 — James Quandt, Artforum.[1]

New French Extremity

Years active	2000s-2010s
Country	France
Influences	American horror film, European art cinema, exploitation film

Quandt associates François Ozon, Gaspar Noé, Catherine Breillat, Bruno Dumont, Claire Denis' Trouble Every Day (2001), Patrice Chéreau's Intimacy (2001), Bertrand Bonello's The Pornographer (2001), Marina de Van's In My Skin (2002), Leos Carax's Pola X (1999), Philippe Grandrieux's Sombre (1998) and La vie nouvelle (2002), Jean-Claude Brisseau's Secret Things (2002), Jacques Nolot's Glowing Eyes (2002), Virginie Despentes and Coralie Trinh Thi's Baise-moi (2000), and Alexandre Aja's High Tension (2003) with the label.[1]

While Quandt intended the term as pejorative, many so labeled have produced critically acclaimed work. David Fear indicates that the lack of humanity beneath the horror represented in these films leads to their stigma, arguing that Bruno Dumont's Flanders (2006) "contains enough savage violence and sexual ugliness" to remain vulnerable to the New French Extremity tag, but "a soul also lurks underneath the shocks".[3] Nick Wrigley indicates that Dumont was merely chastised for "letting everybody down" who expected him to be the heir to Robert Bresson.[4]

Jonathan Romney also associates the label with Olivier Assayas' Demonlover (2002) and Christophe Honoré's Ma mère (2004).[2]

Tim Palmer has also written about these films, describing them as constituting a "cinema of the body."[5] Palmer has argued that such films reflect a large scale stylistic trajectory, a kind of avant-garde among like-minded directors, from Catherine Breillat to François Ozon, along with contemporary figures such as Marina de Van, Claire Denis, Dumont, Gaspar Noé, and many others. Palmer places this tendency within the complex eco-system of French cinema, underlining the conceptual diversity and artistic scope in French cinema today.[6]

History

Jonathan Romney traces a long line of (mainly French) painters and writers influencing these directors, beginning with the Marquis de Sade, and including Gustave Courbet's 1866 L'origine du monde, Comte de Lautréamont, Antonin Artaud, Georges Bataille, William S. Burroughs, Michel Houellebecq, and Marie Darrieussecq.[2] He locates filmic predecessors in Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí, Roman Polanski, Jean-Luc Godard's Le weekend, Andrzej Zulawski's Possession, and Michael Haneke.[2] Quandt also alludes to Arthur Rimbaud, Buñuel, Henri-Georges Clouzot, Georges Franju, Michelangelo Antonioni, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Guy Debord, Walerian Borowczyk, Godard, Psycho, Zulawski, Deliverance, Jean Eustache's La maman et la putain, and Maurice Pialat's A Nos Amours as models, but criticizes that the contemporary filmmakers so far lack the "power to shock an audience into consciousness".

John Wray notes that some of these filmmakers show less affection for Hollywood films than their New Wave predecessors, and take after Jean Renoir as well as Bresson.[7] He also notes the long shots and enigmatic story-telling style of Dumont and the Dardenne brothers.[7]

The expanded term "The New Extremism", referring to European filmmakers such as Lars von Trier, Lukas Moodysson, and Fatih Akın, has subsequently appeared.[7][8]

Themes and characteristics

While the New French Extremity refers to a stylistically diverse group of films and filmmakers, it has been described as "[a] crossover between sexual decadence, bestial violence and troubling psychosis".[9] The New French Extremity movement has roots in art house and horror cinema.[10] According to film blogger Matt Smith, this tradition has recently "shoved its way very consciously into [France's] genre endeavors".[10] According to Smith:

[T]his new crop of horror is something altogether entirely different, concerned as much with gender identity as it is with sheer taboo-breaking of the screen images of bodies. The New French Extremity in particular is a wide-ranging set of films, encompassing art-house darlings like Claire Denis and Catherine Breillat (a filmmaker much more interested in sex than violence, or rather sex as violence) as well as those who might be deemed schlockmeisters by their detractors[,] like Xavier Gens and Alexandre Aja.[11]

Films belonging to the New French Extremity take a severe approach to depicting violence and sex.[12]

Smith identifies five films that he believes primarily comprise a new wave of horror in France: High Tension, Them, Frontier(s), Inside and Martyrs.[10] These films, he says, provide a "comprehensive snapshot of human anxieties about our bodies", both corporeally and socially.[10] Within these works, Smith identifies two predominant themes: home invasion and, relatedly, a fear of the Other.[10]

Pascal Laugier, director of the film Martyrs, has said that his work is connected to American torture porn efforts like the Saw series and director Eli Roth's Hostel, though he likens Martyrs to an "anti-Hostel".[13][14] What makes his film different from its American counterpart, he says, is that Martyrs is about pain rather than torture.[15] Per Laugier:

My film is very clear about what it says about human pain and human suffering. [...] The film is only really about the nature and the meaning of human suffering. I mean, the pain we all feel on an everyday basis - in a symbolic way. The film doesn't talk about torture - it talks about the pain".[15]

Film scholar Steve Jones has also charted the relationship between New Extremism and torture porn based on their shared themes and characteristics.[16]

Cinematic roots

Body horror

Although films belonging to the New French Extremity exhibit traits representative of a wide range of horror subgenres—including slashers, revenge films and home invasion films—the body horror subgenre has been particularly influential.

Smith identifies body horror as one of the New French Extremity's most significant thematic antecedents, citing the early work of Canadian filmmaker David Cronenberg as a key influence on the movement.[11] He calls attention to the collective focus of the New French Extremity on human corporeality, specifically its destruction and violation:

As the French seem intent to prove, it is not our corporeal existence that should be held sacred - [their] insistence on showing anything and everything is evidence of this. The body is meant to be examined, explicitly and externally, to deepen our understanding of our own humanity...and what we hope lies in wait for us at the end of it all.[10]

Xavier Gens, a director associated with the New French Extremity, has loosely contextualized his work within the body horror tradition.[17] He cites David Cronenberg's 1986 remake of The Fly as an influence on his film Frontier(s), saying: "To me, Frontiere(s) is a love letter to the genre movie. There's a lot of reference to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and The Fly, and to many others..."[17]

Relatedly, film scholar Linda Williams has written about the so-called "body genres"—also known as "gross" genres or "genres of excess"—a label that includes pornography, horror and melodrama.[18] Body genre films "promise to be sensational, to give our bodies an actual physical jolt. [...] [T]heir displays of sensations...are on the edge of respectable", which is what attracts audiences to them.[19] Such films are necessarily spectacle-driven, depicting human bodies overcome by intense physical or emotional sensations (e.g., pleasure, terror, sadness). Body genre films are also marked by the fact that they induce within viewers an involuntary mimicry of the emotions or sensations portrayed onscreen—for example: pleasure in porn, terror in horror or sadness in melodrama.[20]

Williams has widely featured the work of New French Extremity filmmaker Catherine Breillat in her discussion of body genres, particularly Breillat's 1999 film, Romance.[21]

Exploitation cinema

The New French Extremity bears certain thematic comparisons to the American exploitation cinema of the 1970s. USC film scholar Tania Modleski notes that much of what distinguished the American exploitation movement from the Hollywood-dominated horror films that preceded it was "[exploitation films'] unprecedented assault on all that bourgeois culture is supposed to cherish--like the ideological apparatuses of the family and the school".[22] Films like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and The Brood, she says, were at the time noteworthy for their "adversarial relation to contemporary culture and society".[22] In much the same way, many films belonging to the New French Extremity have been explicit in their criticism and rejection of bourgeois ideals. Films like Martyrs, Inside and Frontiere(s), for example, have been noted for their subversive attitudes toward dominant political, social and cultural orders.[23]

Both exploitation cinema and the New French Extremity are characterized in large part by their transgressive attitudes towards depicting violence and sex.

Political controversy

While films associated with the New French Extremity are unified by their transgressive content, critics and scholars have also highlighted their tendency to incorporate social and political themes.[24][25][26] According to film scholar Tim Palmer, "[the New French Extremity] offers incisive social critiques, portraying contemporary society as isolating, unpredictably horrific and threatening".[12]

Writer and film scholar Jon Towlson says that "the New French Extremity movement, [sic] can... be seen most significantly as a response to the rise of right-wing extremism in France during the last ten years..., a response that filmmakers are in the process of working through".[27]

Still, films of the New French Extremity do not appear to reflect a unified social or political platform. Some have been noted to include politically progressive commentary[28] while others have been called conservative, homophobic and fascistic.[29]

Critics disagree as to whether the sensational nature of many New French Extremity films disqualifies them as legitimate expressions of social, political and philosophical commentary.[27] Some critics and scholars have judged the movement's treatment of such themes positively;[26] others have dismissed it as tacked on, miscalculated or even offensive.[30]

Several films associated with the New French Extremity have generated significant controversy upon their premieres.[31] Trouble Every Day and Irréversible, which respectively debuted at the 2001 and 2002 Cannes film festivals, were noteworthy for prompting widespread walkouts among audience members.[31] Martyrs was received similarly upon its debut at Cannes 2008, with audience members reportedly walking out, fainting, vomiting and bursting into tears.[32][33][34]

Frontiere(s)

In a positive review of Xavier Gens' Frontier(s), New York Times film critic Manohla Dargis notes the film's exploitative tendencies while also crediting its "amusingly glib and timely political twist".[35] In the film, a group of French-Arab youths flees a riotous Paris following the election of a far-right government, only to be pursued by a murderous family of militant white fascists. "There's enough blood in the unrated french horror film Frontiere(s) to satiate even the most ravenous gore hounds", Dargis says.[35] "The real surprise here is that this creepy, contemporary gross-out also has some ideas, visual and otherwise, wedged among its sanguineous drips...".[35] While Dargis ultimately regards the film's political convictions in a positive light, she notes that certain scenes veer "dangerously close to the unpardonable, with images that evoke the Holocaust too strongly".[35]

Like Dargis, The Village Voice critic Jim Ridley acknowledged Frontiere(s)'s political themes.[36] Ridley, however, is less favorable of the movie, describing it as "vigorously art-directed torture porn".[36] Comparing it to other films in the New French Extremity (specifically High Tension, Sheitan and Inside), he says Frontiere(s) takes "the most bluntly political tack yet." It is "both hysterical and muddled", even when interpreted as satire.[36]

Director Xavier Gens was himself vocal about the film's intended socio-political message. Asked in one interview about his inspiration for Frontiere(s), Gens said: "It came from the events in 2002, when we had the presidential elections [in France]. There was an extreme right party in the second round. That was the most horrible day of my life. The idea of Frontiere(s) came to me then...".[37]

Martyrs

Pascal Laugier's Martyrs was the subject of similar contention upon its debut at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival, where early reporting highlighted viewers' divergent reactions to the film's violence and socio-philosophical themes. Anton Bitel of Britain's Film4 praised the film, saying it "eludes the 'torture porn' label precisely by questioning what those terms might mean, what appeal they might possibly have, and what questions - fundamental, even metaphysical questions - they might answer".[38] Jamie Graham of Total Film called Martyrs "one of the most extreme pictures ever made, and one of the best horror movies of the last decade".[13] He also likened it to "a torture-porn movie for Guardian readers", one that owed as much to Francis Bacon and Raphael as to its genre contemporaries.[13] By contrast, writer and film scholar Jon Towlson says Martyrs' "political intentions are less overt, more ambivalent and ultimately nihilistic" compared to its contemporaries.[27] "Putting the audience 'through it,'" he says, "is the film's raison d'etre"[27]

Commenting on the controversy surrounding his film to IndieLondon, director Laugier said he felt "insulted" by many critics' misinterpretations of Martyrs.[15]

New wave of French horror

Some films considered as part of the New French Extremity rework elements of the horror genre. Other contemporary French horror films with a similar sensibility include Trouble Every Day, Sheitan, Them, High Tension, Frontier(s) and Inside. The Belgian film Calvaire has also been associated with this trend.[39]

Pascal Laugier, director of the controversial horror film Martyrs, disagrees with the idea of there being a horror revival in France:

The fact is that we are much more successful in foreign countries and in our homeland it's always the same stuff where you're never a prophet..What I mean is that even the horror fans, the French ones, they are very condescending about French horror films. It's still a hell to find the money, a hell to convince people that we are legitimate to make this kind of movie in France. So I know from an American point of view and probably an English one too, there is a kind of new wave of modern horror film, but it's not true. It's still hell. My country produces almost 200 films a year and there are like 2 or 3 horror films. It's not even an industry, French horror cinema is very low budget, it's kinda prototype. I think that a genre really exists when it's industrially produced like the Italians did 600 spaghetti westerns. So we can't really say that there is a wave of horror in French Cinema, I don't believe it.

— [40]

Laugier does, however, acknowledge the existence of a broader wave of new European horror. He notes Spain, France and England as contributors.[41]

Legacy and influence

The New French Extremity movement has influenced filmmakers in other countries, particularly in Europe, prompting some to suggest that a greater movement of European Extremity is afoot.[42][43][44][45]

See also

• Kitchen sink realism
• Theatre of Cruelty
• Extreme cinema
• Cinema of Transgression

References

Notes

1. Quandt, James (February 2004). "Flesh & Blood: Sex and violence in recent French cinema". Artforum. Archived from the original on 2004-08-10. Retrieved 2008-06-10. Also available on the ArtForum website (requires registration).
2. Jonathan Romney, The Independent, September 12, 2004. Access date: January 7, 2019.
3. David Fear, Time Out New York. Issue 607. May 17–23, 2007. Access date: August 11, 2008.
4. Nick Wrigley, "The Polarizing, Magnificent Cinema of Bruno Dumont". Masters of Cinema, April 2004. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2006-10-03. Retrieved 2006-10-03.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link) Access date: August 11, 2008.
5. Palmer, Tim "Style and Sensation in the Contemporary French Cinema of the Body", Journal of Film and Video, Fall 2006 "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2010-06-02. Retrieved 2010-05-17.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link) Access date: 14 May 2010.
6. Palmer, Tim (2011). Brutal Intimacy: Analyzing Contemporary French Cinema, Wesleyan University Press, Middleton CT. ISBN 0-8195-6827-9.
7. John Wray, "Minister of Fear", New York Times, September 23, 2007. "... a new group of Francophone filmmakers has come to prominence in Europe, one less bedazzled by the Hollywood genre films that so influenced the New Wave directors than by the work of French auteurs like Jean Renoir and Robert Bresson. The Belgian-born Dardenne brothers, for example, favor dark, naturalistic studies of working-class life, while Bruno Dumont, a former professor of philosophy, makes violent and sexually explicit films that tend toward parable. But both share a preference for long, intricately composed shots, a resolutely anti-Hollywood aesthetic and a Bressonian aversion for spelling things out. Haneke feels at home in their company ..."
8. Tanya Horeck, Tina Kendall, and Sarah Barrow, "The New Extremism: Contemporary European Cinema", conference held at Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, 24–25 April 2009, Archived 2008-12-07 at the Wayback Machine Access date: August 23, 2008.
9. MUBI, "New French Extremity + Influences"
10. Smith, "Confronting Mortality..." Part 2
11. Smith, "Confronting Mortality..." Part 1
12. Palmer, 22
13. Graham, "Art meets gorno..."
14. Kermode, "How much pain..."
15. Carnevale, IndieLondon - Pascal Laugier interview
16. Jones, Steve (2013) Torture Porn: Popular Horror after Saw (Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan), p.19
17. Bloody Disgusting, "Interview..."
18. Williams 1991 - Re-published in Braudy and Cohen 2009, 602, 604
19. Williams 1991 - Re-published in Braudy and Cohen 2009, 602
20. Williams 1991 - Re-published in Braudy and Cohen 2009, 605
21. Williams 2001
22. Modleski 1986 - Re-published in Braudy and Cohen 2009, 620
23. See, for example, Gibron, " 'Frontiere(s)' Follows..." and Tobias, "The New Cult Canon..."
24. Barry, "Finding The French..."
25. Johnson
26. Palmer
27. Towlson, "New French Extremity"
28. For example, "The Transfiguration of..."
29. See, for example, Towlson, "New French Extremity"; Knegt, IndieWire - Gaspar Noe interview
30. See, for example, Ridley
31. Palmer, 27
32. Jones, "Martyrs"
33. Griffiths, Eye for Film - Pascal Laugier interview
34. Turek, Shock Till You Drop - Pascal Laugier interview
35. Dargis, "After Making It Out..."
36. Ridley, "Xavier Gens's..."
37. Amner, Eye for Film - Xavier Gens interview
38. Bitel, "Martyrs"
39. Simon Augustine, "The 8 Most Disturbing Films of The New Wave of French Horror", Green Cine, June 17, 2008. Archived 2008-06-23 at the Wayback Machine Access date: September 22, 2008.
40. John White (13 April 2009). "Interview with Pascal Laugier (Director of Martyrs)". The Digital Fix. Poisonous Monkey Limited. Archived from the original on 3 August 2019. Retrieved 30 July 2012.
41. The Northlander (28 December 2008). "Northlander interviews MARTYRS' Pascal Laugier - and he spills about his HELLRAISER remake!!". Ain't It Cool News. Ain't It Cool, Inc. Retrieved 30 July 2012.
42. Roxborough, "Sicker, Darker..."
43. AintItCoolNews - Pascal Laugier interview
44. Nayman, CinemaScope - Ben Wheatley interview
45. Henderson, CBS, "Movie Blog..."

Bibliography

• AintItCoolNews - Interview with Pascal Laugier (Director of Martyrs)
• Amner, D. (October 24, 2007). Horror's new Frontiere(s). Eye for Film. Access date: April 7, 2012.
• Augustine, S., "The 8 Most Disturbing Films of The New Wave of French Horror", Green Cine, June 17, 2008.
• Barry, R. (February 12, 2012). Finding the French Gothic: The Monk Reviewed. The Quietus. Access date: March 19, 2012.
• Bitel, A. (Date unknown). Martyrs - Review. Film4. Access date: April 27, 2012.
• "Bloody-Disgusting.com Interviwe [sic] - Frontiere(s): Writer/Director Xavier Gens." BloodyDisgusting. Access date: March 19, 2012.
• Carnevale, R. (Date unknown.) Martyrs - Pascal Laugier interview. indieLondon. Access date: April 27, 2012.
• Dargis, M. (May 9, 2008). After Making It Out of Paris, Finding There's No Escape - Frontiere(s) (2007) Movie Review. The New York Times. Access date: March 19, 2012
• DVD Times - Interview with Pascal Laugier (Director of Martyrs)
• Fear, D, Time Out New York. Issue 607. May 17–23, 2007.
• Graham, J. (March 16, 2009). Martyrs - Art meets gorno.... Total Film. Access date: April 17, 2012.
• Griffiths, L. (March 26, 2009). This is hardcore.... Eye for Film. Access date: April 20, 2012.
• Henderson, E. (April 21, 2012). Movie Blog: MSPIFF, Day 10: 'Memorial Day,' 'Kill List'. CBS Minnesota. Access date: April 25, 2012).
• Horeck T., Kendall, T., and Barrow, S., "The New Extremism: Contemporary European Cinema", conference held at Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, 24–25 April 2009.
• Johnson, B. (Date unknown). Disavowing The Isle: Masochism and New Extremity. Keele University - Academia.edu. Access date: April 25, 2012.
• Jones, A. (Date unknown). Martyrs - 2008. Film4 Frightfest. Access date: April 20, 202.
• Kermode, M. (March 30, 2009). How much pain can you take? BBC - Kermode Uncut. Access date: April 7, 2012.
• Knegt, P. (December 12, 2009). Decade: Gaspar Noe on "Irreversible." IndieWire. Access date: April 27, 2012.
• Nayman, A. (Date unknown). Interview | Hammer Horror: Bill Wheatley's Kill List. Cinema Scope. Accessed April 25, 2012.
• "New French Extremity + Influences", MUBI.com. Access date: March 19, 2012.
• Palmer, T. (2006). Style and Sensation in the Contemporary French Cinema of the Body. Journal of Film and Video, Fall 2006, 58(3), pp. 22–32.
• Palmer, T. (2011). Brutal Intimacy: Analyzing Contemporary French Cinema, Wesleyan University Press, Middleton CT. ISBN 0-8195-6827-9.
• Quandt, J. (February 2004). "Flesh & Blood: Sex and violence in recent French cinema". Artforum. Also available on the ArtForum website (requires registration).
• Ridley, J. (May 6, 2008). Xavier Gens' Frontiere(s). The Village Voice. Access date: March 19, 2012.
• Romney, J, The Independent, September 12, 2004.
• Roxborough, S. (February 20, 2011). Sicker, Darker, More Twisted: The New European Horror Film at Berlin. The Hollywood Reporter. Access date: April 25, 2012.
• Schaefer, Jerome P. (2015). An Edgy Realism. Film Theoretical Encounters with Dogma 95, New French Extremity, and the Shaky-Cam Horror Film, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle upon Tyne. ISBN 978-1-4438-8017-6
• Smith, M. (June 6, 2011). Confronting Mortality: "The New French Extremity", the Hostel Series and Outdated Terminology. The Split Screen (Part 1 of 3). Access date: March 19, 2012.
• Smith, M. (June 28, 2011). Confronting Mortality: "The New French Extremity", the Hostel Series and Outdated Terminology. The Split Screen (Part 2 of 3). Access date: March 19, 2012.
• Towlson, J. (September 5, 2011). New French Extremity. Shocks to the System - Subversive Horror Films. Access date: March 19, 2012.
• "The Transfiguration of Horror: Pascal Laugier's Martyrs and the Violence of the Real." MLM Mayhem! Marxist-Leninist-Maoist Reflections. Access date: April 27, 2012.
• Turek, R. (June 22, 2008). Exclusive Interview: Martyrs Director Pascal Laugier. Shock Till You Drop. Access date: April 17, 2012.
• Williams, L. (1991). Film Bodies: Gender, Genre, and Excess. Film Quarterly, 44(4), pp. 2–12. Re-published in Braudy, L. and Cohen, M. (2009). Film Theory & Criticism, New York: Oxford University Press.
• Williams, L. (2001). Cinema and the Sex Act. Cineast, Winter 2001, 27(1).
• Wray, J., "Minister of Fear", New York Times, September 23, 2007.
• Wrigley, N., "The Polarizing, Magnificent Cinema of Bruno Dumont". Masters of Cinema, April 2004.

Further reading

• Horeck, Tanya; Kendall, Tina (2011). The New Extremism in Cinema: From France to Europe. Edinburgh University Press.
• Palmer, Tim (2011). Brutal Intimacy: Analyzing Contemporary French Cinema. Wesleyan University Press.