Cinema Du look

Cinema Du Look was a French film movement in the 80s-90s, also called the “New New French wave”. Implied in the movements name, the films focus more on look more than the content of the movie, saturated colors, grainy grungy aesthetic, high production cinematography, great scored and overall a very stylistic look. Luc Besson, making films like Leon: The Professional (A sad great movie) Jean-Jacques Beineix with Diva our screening this week, and Leos Carax, Boy Meets Girl(1984) were the main directors headed this movement Many of the main characters in these films were young, lower to middle-class people, themes revolve around, love, youth, rebellion ect.. (themes we see in American 80s coming of age films at the time). Ideas of alienation, loneliness, separation from society, doomed love are what you will see when watching these type of films. The filmmakers were inspired by American New Hollywood films.

The first film i would like to talk about from this movement is Luc Besson’s Leon: The Professional (1994). The film has all of the key characteristics and themes present in a Cinema Du Look Film. The film revolves around two outcasts in society, Leon, a quiet hitman and Mathilda, a young girl whose family was just murdered. Leon takes Mathilda under his wing and shows her (reluctantly) the skills of his trade, you watch them develop a special bond as they are both scorned from past bad relationships (Leon with his ex-lover, Mathilda with her dysfunctional family) They relate to each other and help each other in that aspect. The film has a sad but lightly optimistic ending which I will not spoil. This film is very stylistic, shot with a slight sepia tone, there is a contrast of innocence and corruption that we see in Mathilda, themes of alienation, isolation, this is what makes it a main film in the cinema Du Look movement. It is overall a very interesting film with a weird love story that really pulls you in.

The next film is Diva (1981) which might be the best and most popular example of a cinema du look film. I watched this film on Thursday, it is about a postman who gets mixed up in a TON of stuff, there was actually a lot jammed into this plot, many stories, characters, anyways, basically there are two tapes, one, a recording of a famous opera singer who refuses to be recorded, as she has never heard her voice. The second he got in a passing interaction which incriminates a higher up police chief. Both of these tapes have people after them ready to kill to get them. We watch as all of these stories pan out over the span of the film. Ultimately it ends, the bad guys die, and we see Cynthia, hearing herself sing for the first time while embracing Jules. I enjoyed the look of this film very much, I liked the story, it was interesting but I definitely found the visual aspects of it to be what I was drawn too more than the plot, which, after reading about this movement is what it’s all about. The aesthetics were dark, murky, dirty lighting, colorful, it was refreshing to see, Some of the scenes reminded me a bit of Wong Kar Wai films, a director who started making films a few years after diva came out, they have that same grit to them, although I believe Wong Kar Wai can not only portray that stylistic type of film and one that is heavy on the visual stuff, he does a good job at also adding depth to the story being told, heavy emotions. Anyways, I liked this movie a lot and want to explore the movement further! The shots below are a still from the film Diva and a still from the film Fallen Angels (1995). When seeing that scene in diva the look reminded me so much of the scene from Wong Kar Wais fallen angels.