You are on page 1of 12

New French

Extremity
An Exercise in Pain
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. Images and subjects
once the provenance of splatter films, exploitation flicks, and
porn ... proliferate in the high-art environs of a national cinema
whose provocations have historically been formal, political, or
philosophical.
James Quandt
Definition
Introduction
Whether subjected to glorious acclaim or framed within the
invective of pornography (and often, both), the New French
Extremity movement is nevertheless one that continues to
confound many people in both its classification and nature.

Generally used as an umbrella term for a wave of transgressive
cinema originating from the French-Belgian region at the turn of
the 21st century. Usually associated with horror, but has since
expanded to encompass a number of other genres.
Cinematic Influences
French New Wave: Melville (Le Samourai),
Godard ( bout de souffle, Weekend), Rohmer (La
Collectionneuse), uawski (Possession), Eustache (La
Maman et la Putain). Existential themes, especially
dealing with nihilism and absurdism (post-WWII
austerity). Handheld, mobile 16mm cameras,
natural lighting, obscure actors. Unstaged
narratives, underlying social themes focusing on the
destabilisation and marginalisation of groups.
Italian Neo-Realism: Inspired French New
Wave. Dealt with social injustice, oppression,
poverty. Themes of anxiety and boredom. Tragic
heroes and the rise of the everyman.
Body Horror: Cronenberg (Videodrome, The
Fly), Barker (Hellraiser), Miike (Visitor Q, Ichi the
Killer, The Happiness of the Katakuris), Verhoeven
(Robocop, Showgirls), Von Trier (Antichrist). Similar
usage of the body's violent metamorphosis as
catharsis. Graphic portrayal of violence and flesh.
Overwhelmingly-negative depiction of contemporary
society.

American Horror: Hooper (The Texas
Chainsaw Massacre [1974]), Craven (The Hills Have
Eyes, The Last House on the Left). To lesser degree,
Carpenter (The Thing) and Scott (Alien).
Delegitimisation of authority, subversion of the
familial unit, misogyny, Lacanian Other.
Exploitation cinema: Tenebre, I Spit on
Your Grave, Cannibal Holocaust, Nekromantik.
Sexploitation (Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, Showgirls),
slashers (Halloween, Friday the 13th), rape-revenge
(Ms. 45, Deliverance). Pasolini (Sal, Il Decameron).
Surrealist Cinema: Buuel (The
Exterminating Angel), Dal (Un Chien Andalou) -
collab. on L'Age d'Or - Dulac (La Coquille et le
clergyman). Irrational and seemingly-irrelevant
scenes, frequent usage of transgressive imagery,
convoluted plotlines. Filmmakers saw themselves as
revolutionaries.



Literary Influences
Marquis de Sade (Justine, La Philosophie dans le
boudoir ) - from whom Kraft-Ebbing derived 'sadism'.
Violence as the purest form of sexuality. Biastophilia,
coprophilia, erotophonophilia, group sex. The
degradation of politics. Imprisoned by Napoleon.
Georges Bataille (Histoire de l'oeil) - Various
paraphilias, including necrophilia, menophilia,
urophilia. Metaphor of liquid and ovular objects
(tears, cat's milk, egg yolks, urine, blood, semen,
enucleated eyes, bull testicles).
Comte de Lautramont (Les Chants de Maldoror) -
bitter, violent nihilism, influenced Surrealists,
Dadaists.
Bret Easton Ellis (American Psycho, Glamorama) -
minimalism, ambiguity, intentional usage of one-
dimensional antiheroes. Banality as the primary
agent of evil; evil without purpose. Intensely violent.


Octave Mirbeau (Le Jardin des supplices, Le Calvaire)
- Like de Sade, sexual violence as satire. Saw
capitalism as inherently evil and driven by murder (ie
colonialism).
Leopold von Sacher-Masoch (Venus im Pelz) - rise of
the Byronic hero. Like all the others, socialist,
humanist. We derive from his name 'masochism'.
Also,
Henry Miller (Tropic of Cancer)
D.H. Lawrence (Lady Chatterley's Lover)
J.G. Ballard (pretty much everything, but
particularly Crash)
Daniel Defoe (Moll Flanders)
Thomas Hardy (Jude the Obscure, Tess of the
d'Ubervilles)
Artistic Influences
Gustave Courbet (L'Origine du monde), douard
Manet(Olympia). Graphic eroticism. Rejection of
both the tradition of idealistically-flawless nudes
endemic to academic painting, but also the
hypocritical eroticism frequently used by the Second
Empire in mythological and oneiric paintings.
Depicted the nude in realistic, unflattering
representations.
Marcel Duchamp (Nude Descending a Staircase,
tant donns, Fountain). Pioneer of Dada
movement. Art as artificial, unnecessary. Modern art
was a mockery and a crutch, like religion. Wanted to
do away with it.




This Neo-Dada, which they call New Realism, Pop
Art, Assemblage, etc., is an easy way out, and lives
on what Dada did. When I discovered the ready-
mades I sought to discourage aesthetics. In Neo-
Dada they have taken my readymades and found
aesthetic beauty in them, I threw the bottle-rack
and the urinal into their faces as a challenge and
now they admire them for their aesthetic beauty.
Gottfried Helnwein (Adoration of the Magi).
Serrano's Piss Christ.
And a bunch of other shit I can talk about later.




Irreversible (2002)
Alex M (Monica Bellucci) is raped and beaten to
death. Her boyfriend Marcus (Vincent Cassel) and his
friend Pierre (Albert Dupontel) take revenge. Shot in
reverse chronological order.

Directed by Gaspar Noe. 97 min. Not rated.

Notes: Le temps dtruit tout. Balances exploitation
genre (subcat: rape-revenge) with arthouse style
typical to the 80s. Nonlinear plot (reverse
chronological order) which creates fatalistic nihilism:
we witness the characters' sufferings before we
identify them. Camerawork begins highly
unstructured, moving wildly as if drunk: then, Alex's
rape, a 9-min. stagnant shot. Gradually becomes
more composed. At the end, acquires surrealistic
quality: long vertical panning shots, inverted
sequences. Strong ambient reds, blacks: colours of
the flesh. Existential conflict of free will v.
determinism.
Dans Ma Peau (2004)
After injuring herself at a friend's party, Esther
(Marina de Van) becomes increasingly obsessed with
her wound, which grows progressively worse. She
develops an addiction to self-mutilation and isolates
herself further and further from those around her as
she indulges in her compulsive self-destruction.

Directed by: Marina de Van. 96 min. unrated.

Notes: minimalistic cinematography. Follows the
Cronenbergian film structure: everyman (or woman)
in sterile corporate world. Onset of disease or
wound, and the character's obsession with it. Clinical
cinematography, subjective lens. Also, influenced by
Haneke and the suburban horror movement.
lintrieur (2007)
Sarah Scarangelo (Alysson Paradis), a heavily-
pregnant woman, is injured in a car crash in which
her husband dies. On Christmas, another woman
(Beatrice Dalle) comes to her door and tries to take
her baby from her.

Directed by: Alexandre Bustillo, Julien Maury.
82 min. (uncut), 75 min. (R-rated). $3m budget.

Notes: Inversion of house-invasion genre (cf The
Strangers, Ils, Funny Games, Halloween).
Claustrophobia through usage of dark corners, dim
lighting, hazy amber lighting. Heavily influenced by
minimalist horror, Renaissance palette (warm
yellows for lighting, obfuscated shots a la
chiaroscuro, tonal reds for blood).


Martyrs (2009)
About two women (Morjana Alaoui and Mylne
Jampano) and a secret society.

Directed by: Pascal Laugiere. 99 min. R-rated. Cut
from 102 min. $6.5m budget.

Notes: 'Martyr' drv. Gk. 'martys' - witness: refers to
someone who testifies to that of their own personal
knowledge. [In William Tyndales 1534 New
Testament, we see martys used in this sense in Acts
22:15, where Ananias tells Saul: The God of our
fathers hath ordained thee before, that thou
shouldest know his will, and shouldest see that which
is rightful, and shouldest hear the voice of his mouth:
for thou shalt be his witness unto all men of those
things which thou hast seen and heard.]



Antichrist (2009)
Following their child's unfortunate death the Man
(Willem Dafoe) and the Woman (Charlotte
Gainsbourg) move to a remote cabin in the middle
of the woods in order to deal with the Woman's
depression.

Directed by Lars von Trier. 108 min. Suggested to be
NC-17, cut to Not Rated. $11m budget.

Notes: Some theological implications: deer is grief,
fox is pain, raven is despair. The three beggars. The
cabin named Eden. Sex - two acts. Genital
mutilation. Chaos reigns. Christ as a man, man's
potential to achieve divinity amidst chaos. This
triumph of the human spirit is not a synthesis or
balance of reason and intuition or order and chaos
but rather the abnegation of these as opposing poles
and transcending them in Pure Resolution or
Survival.



A Serbian Film (2010)
Retired film star Milos (Srdan Todorovic) and his
family are suffering from financial difficulties, when
one day, a fellow actress comes to offer him an
opportunity in an upcoming art film. Shit ensues.

Directed by Srdjan Spasojevic. 104 min. NC-17. 96
min. Censored.

Notes: Inversion on American torture-porn genre,
porn industry in general. Slick, professional quality,
hi-fi cinematography, tight character development
and palette despite exploitative subject. Excellent
use of lighting - deep focus, varying shallow depths
of field. Hyperrealistic approach to graphic scenes.
Emotional destruction > physical destruction.
Naturalistic acting, shot composition follows Rule of
Thirds.

You might also like