A review of the 1995 film “La Haine”
A French-language film shot in black and white with the title “Hate” might not immediately appeal, but it won the Best Director prize at the Cannes Film Festival and it has become a major classic of recent French cinema. Written and directed by Mattieu Kassovitz, amazingly this was his screen debut and he was only 27 at the time. The work is so striking because the locations and the characters are so different from most French films and an array of cinematic devices is deployed to tell a hard-hitting story.Shot largely in the deprived Paris suburb of Chanteloup-les-Vignes, the 24 hour narrative revolves around three friends: a Jewish man Vinz (Vincent Cassel), a black boxer Hubert (Hubert Koundé) and a young Arab Saïd (Saïd Taghmaoui) – note how the names of the actors inform those of the characters. There is a lot of (rough) dialogue with plenty of anger and violence but cleverly Kassovitz weaves into the tale some funny characters and situations – a bit like Shakespeare in his tragedies. You will never forget the ending.