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Brutal Intimacy: Analyzing Contemporary

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Middletown, CT: Wesleyan UP, 2011
William Brown
Published online: 28 Oct 2014.

To cite this article: William Brown (2015) Brutal Intimacy: Analyzing Contemporary French Cinema
by Tim Palmer. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan UP, 2011, Quarterly Review of Film and Video, 32:1, 91-97,
DOI: 10.1080/10509208.2011.646161
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Quarterly Review of Film and Video, 32: 9197, 2014

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ISSN: 1050-9208 print / 1543-5326 online
DOI: 10.1080/10509208.2011.646161

REVIEW

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Brutal Intimacy: Analyzing Contemporary French

Cinema by Tim Palmer. Middletown, CT:
Wesleyan UP, 2011
WILLIAM BROWN

Brutal Intimacy: Analyzing Contemporary French Cinema aims to do for French cinema
of the 2000s what Dudley Andrews Mists of Regret: Culture and Sensibility in Classic
French Cinema (1995) did for French cinema of the 1930s. That is, the book aimsand
succeedsin offering a scholarly overview of a vital period of French filmmaking. The
reason for making this comparison between Palmer and Andrew does not end with the
creation of a book whose main title pithily, perhaps even poetically, sums up the period
of French cinema under consideration (the mists of regret of the 1930s; the brutal
intimacy of the 2000s). For, while Palmer is perhaps not so concerned with film theory as
Andrew is in Mists of Regret and, of course, in his wider work, the two scholars do share a
concern for providing not just an overview of French cinema during the period in question,
but they also work hard to contextualize the cinema of that period, such that they offer up
not simply a series of close textual analyses, but also an understanding of where these films
come from and why.
To this end, Palmer opens with an analysis of the ecosystem of French cinema in
his introduction, which charts the breadth of contemporary French film productionfrom
blockbusters and comedies to art house/festival films, as well as their successful circulation
globally. He summarizes the institutional support offered to French filmmakers, particularly
through the Centre National de la Cinematographie (CNC), before also suggesting the
important role of la Femis, Frances premier film school, in French cinemas ongoing
success. Beyond this, Palmer offers up four chapters that each deal with a certain key
characteristic of contemporary French film: youth cinema often made by first-time directors;
the infamous cinema du corps that is known internationally through filmmakers such as
Gaspar Noe and Catherine Breillat; the crossover in French cinema between the high
and the low brows in many popular productions; and the significant role that women
filmmakers play in the afore-mentioned ecosystem.
In greater detail, the first chapter considers French cinemas emphasis on first-time and
young directors. Here, Palmer not only provides reasons for this (a history of supporting
young filmmakers since the French New Wave, the promotion of new directors by organizations like UniFrance, consistent media coverage, and prizes, such as the Cesar for Best
First Feature, the Prix Jean Vigo and the Prix Louis Delluc, which favor first-timers), but he
also offers analyses of various films, all from 2007, and all by first-time female filmmakers.

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These include Et toi, tes sur qui?/Just About Love? (Lola Doillon, France, 2007), Naissance des pieuvres/Water Lilies (Celine Sciamma, France, 2007), Tout est pardonne/All is
Forgiven (Mia Hansen-Lve, France, 2007), Ceux qui restent/Those Who Remain (Anne
Le Ny, France, 2007), and the internationally successful Persepolis (Marjane Satrapi and
Vincent Paronnaud, France/USA, 2007). As such, the chapter not only introduces in a
concerted fashion considerations of Frances youth-oriented film industry into scholarly
discourse on French cinema, but it also offers up timely readings of films that, in only a
few short years, have begun to attract critical and scholarly attention.
In the second chapter, Palmer addresses the cinema for which France is most infamous,
if not outright famous: namely the cinema du corps, or what in other circles has been
dubbed new extreme cinema (Quandt 2000). Films by the likes of Noe, Breillat, Claire
Denis, Bruno Dumont, and Philippe Grandrieux, as well as one-off movies like Baise-Moi
(Virginie Despentes and Coralie Trinh-Thi, France, 2000) have received far more attention
than the fact or actual work of first-time filmmakers in France, with significant contributions
coming from Lisa Downing (2004), Martine Beugnet (2007), and Tanya Horeck and Tina
Kendall (2011). However, while there is a tendency in all of these contributions to use the
cinema du corps as a means to reflect on wider philosophical, cultural and/or sociological
issues/concerns, particularly relating to the nature of the film experience, Palmer sticks
predominantly to the films themselves. As such, he offers close readings of Trouble Every
Day (Claire Denis, France/Germany/Japan, 2001), Irreversible/Irreversible (Gaspar Noe,
France, 2002), Twentynine Palms (Bruno Dumont, France/Germany/USA, 2003), Dans ma
peau/In My Skin (Marina De Van, France, 2002), and Lannulaire/The Ring Finger (Diane
Bertrand, France/Germany/UK, 2005). While Palmer is attuned to the ways in which these
films evoke new levels of perceptual engagement from the viewer (93), the value of his
work is that he sticks closely to the text, reading the films in a sensitive and informed
fashion, something that I shall discuss in greater depth later.
The third chapter also breaks relatively fresh ground with regard to scholarship on
French film in its take on popular cinema as not being easily separable from the art house
fare that is associated with the likes of Denis, Breillat and Noe. Mention is of course made
here of Luc Besson, the director of such cinema du look hallmarks as Subway (France,
1985), Le Grand Bleu/The Big Blue (France/USA/Italy, 1988) and La Femme Nikita/Nikita
(France/Italy, 1990), and now the head of EuropaCorp and the writer-producer of such
lucrative films as Taken (Pierre Morel, France/USA/UK, 2008). Besson does, in some
respects, emblematize a certain kind of simultaneously artistic and popular cinema, and
has attracted scholarly attention for these reasons (see Hayward 1998; Hayward and Powrie
2006), but Palmer prefers instead to concentrate on the comparatively under-analyzed
Mesrine and OSS 117 franchises.
Both enable Palmer, albeit briefly, to move away from the auteur-driven analyses that
predominate elsewhere, and instead to consider the role that stars play in contemporary
French cinema. For, Vincent Cassel is the star that makes a relatively significant international hit of the Mesrine films, Linstinct de mort/The Killer Instinct and Lennemi public
n 1/Public Enemy No. 1 (Jean-Francois Richet, France/Canada/Italy, 2008), while Jean
Dujardin is the spoof Bond-esque hero of Le Caire: nid despions/Cairo, Nest of Spies and
Rio ne repond plus/Lost in Rio (Michel Hazanavicius, France, 2006 and 2009), which similarly have picked up a transnational fandom. These gangster films (Mesrine) and comedies
(OSS 117) also help Palmer to introduce to the reader how genre plays a structuring role
in much French popular cinema, which in turns leads to considerations of the horror, war,
and thriller genres through analyses of Les revenants/They Came Back (Robin Campillo,

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France, 2004), La France (Serge Bozon, France, 2007), and Demonlover (Olivier Assayas,
France, 2002) respectively.
This is not to overlook how each of these films plays around with genre, which in
many respects is Palmers point: these films and filmmakers know how to maximize their
mainstream appeal, while retaining individuality of voice, which translates more or less
into irreverence towards the cinematic establishment (subverting genres)and as such the
films offer a final (potentially problematic) reaffirmation of the auteur as the genius
behind even quite mainstream films. This is made most clear in Palmers considerations of
Valeria Bruni Tedeschis two films, Il est plus facile pour un chameau . . . /Its Easier for a
Camel (France/Italy, 2003) and Actrices/Actresses (France, 2006). Both remain resolutely
films by Bruni Tedeschi in Palmers analysis (although he does recognize close collaboration with co-writer Noemie Lvovsky), while simultaneously doffing their cap to and
biting their thumb at high culture. That only someone who is of/with/from high culture
could achieve this does not get analyzedthough this is a topic to which I shall return
below.
The fourth chapter, meanwhile, builds upon Palmers considerations of female firsttimers in the first chapter, and considerations of Denis and Bruni Tedeschi in the second
and third chapters respectively, by looking specifically at contemporary women filmmakers
in France. In spite of a history of late adoption regarding progressive sexual politics in
France, its cinema has perhaps the highest number of women filmmakers in the world.
As such, Palmer guides us through work by Christine Carri`ere (Darling, France, 2007),
Lucile Hadzihalilovic (Innocence, Belgium/France/UK/Japan, 2004), Siegrid Alnoy (Nos
enfants/Our Children, France, 1999, and Elle est des notres/Shes One of Us, France, 2003),

Alante Kavate (Ecoute

le temps/Fissures, France, 2006), Claire Simon (C
a brule, France,
2006), and Julie Lopes-Curval (Toi et moi/You and Me, France, 2006). This is not to say that
Palmer overlooks the grandes dames of French cinema, particularly Agn`es Varda, whose
work is considered briefly in Brutal Intimacy, and nor is it to say that Palmer disregards
the substantial literature written on French womens cinema by all manner of scholars.
Nonetheless, by framing contemporary French cinema through the lens of a proactive and
diverse femininity, Palmer does suggest the progressive nature of contemporary French
cinema.
In the conclusion, Palmer rounds off his analysis of French cinema in the 2000s by
arguing that cinephilia is what holds it togetheron a cultural if not explicitly on an institutional level. That is, French cinema is underwritten by a knowledge and understanding
of film history, or by what Palmer terms film literacy. By extension, French cinema is
populated by filmmakers who are actively trying to find their own place within that history, which they endeavor to achieve by exploring different forms and styles, even while
trying to produce mass-market fare. If in placing cinephilia at the heart of French cinema
Palmer reaffirms Frances cinephile image as a whole (one thinks of Shosana/Melanie
Laurent in Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino, USA/Germany, 2009) telling Fredrick
Zoller/Daniel Bruhl that we respect directors in our country), he does also seek to provide
institutional evidence for this.
Not only does Palmer recall early on the diversity of cinemas that any film scholar or
fan who has been to Paris will know exists there, but in the conclusion he also examines
in greater detail the role played by la Femis in training its students (40 per year) in
film history as much as in the technical aspects of film production. These students are
almost all employed soon after graduationand they go on to play influential roles in the
French film industry, particularly as directors. As such, film literacy drives the French film

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industry, providing it with knowledgeable and distinctive voices, as evidenced by the work
of filmmaker and la Femis instructor, Jean Paul Civeyrac, whose A` travers la foret/Through
the Forest (France, 2005) forms the focus of Palmers final section. Civeyracs career is
summed up as that of an artist, the meaning of which is a lifetimes work with a medium
in order to elaborate the means of its best expression (214). This in turn is the model that
Palmer feels fits French cinema the best.
If Palmer sees cinephilia as being at the heart of French cinema, then it also informs his
work. That is, the pleasure that Palmer seems to take in describing contemporary French
cinema transfer easily to the reader. As such, the close textual analyses that Palmer offers
in Brutal Intimacy are one of the major strengths of his book, conveying a real passion for
the subjectand not an excuse to use the subject as a means to discuss something else.
Palmers cinephilia also shines through thanks to his resolute desire to find worth in films
that many scholars might overlook, such as the popular and relatively infantile Dujardin
vehicle, Brice de Nice/The Brice Man (James Huth, France, 2005), alongside the more
scholar-friendly films of Denis, Noe and Dumont. Palmers accessible and enthusiastic
writing style is furthermore matched by his sensitivity to nuances of character and theme
during his close textual analyses. Perhaps an extended quotation from relatively early on in
Brutal Intimacy can help to convey this. Writing of Hansen-Lves All is Forgiven, Palmer
offers the following analysis:
It is Pamelas sixth birthday, and we meet her and Victor naming new dolls
(You cant call them both Dolltheyll get confused!) while sitting on a mat
surrounded by toys. Leaving the apartment to play tennis, father and daughter hit
their ball off walls, the ground, and each other, and the two actors simply play,
in impromptu reaction to where the ball bounces. Hansen-Lves camera tracks
the pair in a static long shot as they exit their building, a rightward pan as they
move through an adjacent courtyard, then a series of wobbling handheld closeups when the game [of wall tennis] degenerateshappilyas Victor grabs
Pamela (Meanie!), and she sees him off with a swipe of her racket. HansenLves cinematography underscores the unforced tenderness of the characters,
the actors physical improvisations accentuated gently by the increasingly close,
bustling camerawork. The payoff comes, though, when Annette [Victors wife
and Pamelas mother] arrives in a static insert that interrupts both the stylistic
flow and the tennis. The effect is compounded when she calls out (Ive been
looking for you everywhere!) in loud German, rather than Pamela and Victors
conversation French. When Victor now hastily abandons Pamela to her mothers
care, the dramatic seed is sown. Victor, we infer, is the source of anarchic fun
in this household whereas Annette is the reluctant disciplinarian; one parent,
not two, is present in this family tableau. (45)
This is not to say that other scholars do not carry out this sort of analysisbut Palmers
book is full of such descriptive passages that vividly bring to mind not only the style, but
also the possible meanings, of the various films under consideration. In this way, and given
its commitment to looking more often than not at seemingly overlooked filmsbe they
from the established, art house canon or otherwiseBrutal Intimacy is a treasure trove of
insightful work. Perhaps inevitably, though, a however must emerge: there are issues to
take with Brutal Intimacy, not necessarily in terms of how Palmer interprets the films in
question (all of his readings seem entirely reasonable, even if not final or game-ending),
but more in terms of the way in which Palmer frames his ecosystem of contemporary

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French cinema. Drawing on the above-cited passage regarding Mia Hansen-Lve can help
to make this clear.
Hansen-Lves second feature film, Le p`ere de mes enfants /The Father of My Children
(France/Germany, 2009), tells the story of Gregoire (Louis-Do de Lencquesaing), a film
producer who vehemently supports art cinema and who is up to his eyeballs in debt as
a result of thissuch that he takes his own life. The film is in this way a fictionalized
account of the life of Humbert Balsan, the producer of work by filmmakers as diverse as
Pierre Kast, Samuel Fuller (when in exile in France), Claire Denis, Sandrine Veysset, Elia
Suleiman and Youssef Chahine. While I cannot here offer up the history of Balsans career
that perhaps deserves to be written, not least because of Balsans reputed and continual
support of/for women filmmakers, I mention him because Brutal Intimacy does not take
us too far behind the scenes of contemporary French film. For example, while in Mists of
Regret Dudley Andrew explains the important role of producers in 1930s French cinema,
Palmer does not get much beyond the surface of support for young filmmakers and/or for
women filmmakers. Who brought this about? What were the conditions in which such
support systems could be brought about? Whose brainchild was it? Such a history, surely
more informative than simply telling us that there is such support in place for first time and
women filmmakers, is not offered here.
Furthermore, while Palmer does explain the ways in which many of the filmmakers
that he discusses work together in different roles on different projects (for example, Noemie
Lvovsky, mentioned above as Bruni Tedeschis co-writer, is also a director and actress in
her own right), and while Palmer does name check important creative personnel such as
cinematographer Benot Debie (who worked on Noes Irreversible and Hadzihalilovics
Innocence), he does not necessarily provide us with the sense of an integrated film industry that in fact has many important personalities beyond simply directors (and stars
in the cases of Cassel and Dujardin). Are personnel such as Agn`es Godard (the regular
cinematographer for Claire Denisalso mentioned but not leant much creative weight by
Palmer), Guillaume Schiffman (who lensed the OSS 117 films, before going on to shoot
Joann Sfars remarkable Gainsbourg (vie heroque)/Gainsbourg (France, 2010)), production designer Christian Marti (whose work on the eye-catching Gainsbourg follows a long
career working with the likes of Claude Berri, Jean-Paul Rappeneau, Chantal Akerman and
Claude Sautet), or composers like Alexandre Desplat (who has written scores for Jacques
Audiard, David Fincher, Tom Hooper, Wes Anderson, Stephen Frears and Roman Polanski)
and groups like Air (the French pop group) and Daft Punk to be overlooked?
Directors are of course important, but the overwhelming sense of auteurism that
pervades Palmers book arguably occults as much of French cinema as it shows. And even
on the topic of auteurs, Palmers emphasis on youth tends to overlook the ongoing/ending
careers of established filmmakers, from the New Wave stalwarts (Godard, Chabrol, Rohmer,
Resnais, Marker, etc) to the likes of Berri, Rappeneau, Jean-Jacques Annaud, Bertrand Blier,
Robert Guediguian, Pierre Salvadori and so forth. Given that many filmmakers find their
second film significantly harder to fund than their first film (an issue mentioned but not
explored by Palmer), to achieve a career as a filmmaker is not to be overlooked these days,
particularly one with the longevity of the New Wavers.
What is more, for all of the welcoming that the French film industry supposes (support
for young, first time filmmakers), it also remains very exclusive. Palmer disavows nepotism
as a deciding factor in Lola Doillons career (she is the daughter of director Jacques Doillon),
before listing various sons and daughters of established filmmakers who now make films
(22). This list only grows when we analyze the provenance of a good number of the other
filmmakers considered/mentioned (Palmer does not specifically examine, for example, the

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filmmaking connections of Vincent Cassel, Mathieu Kassovitz, or Louis Garrel, nor the
aristocratic credentials of Bruni Tedeschi, sister of Carla Bruni, who herself is the wife of
President Nicolas Sarkozy).
In fact, most places one looks, French cinema is (perhaps like British and other cinemas)
never far from the establishmentbe that the cinematic or industrial establishment. In this
respect, while the work of women filmmakers is justly feted by Palmer, it seems odd that the
achievements of other overlooked groups, including specifically immigrant/beur directors,
barely get so much as a mention here. Abdellatif Kechiche is named once, while others,
like Rabah Ameur-Zameche, Karim Dridi, Mahmoud Zemmouri and Rachid Bouchareb,
whose Indig`enes/Days of Glory (Algeria/France/Morocco/Belgium, 2006) is surely one of
the landmarks of 2000s French cinema, merit not a single mention between them (and many
others).
While this is perhaps a predictable and therefore cheap shot to make at a book that
arguably does not set out to address all aspects of contemporary French cinema, the book
does claim in its title to analyze contemporary French cinemathe implication being
that it is inclusive, even if in execution Brutal Intimacy leaves out far more than it does or
can include. Indeed, on the basis of Palmers book, one could read contemporary French
cinema as being dominated by a small coterie of white, middle- to upper-class filmmakers
who work in a relatively enclosed field. No wonder Luc Besson, an avowed outsider to the
French system and self-made man, does not really figure here.
What is more, with Balsans spirit still looming, Brutal Intimacy never really defines
where France begins and ends. Here, not only is the exclusion of minority ethnic filmmakers
telling, but so is the exclusion of Frances involvement in much world cinemaas per
Balsans work with Elia Suleiman and Youssef Chahine. Alongside Balsan, then, one
thinks of Marin Karmitz, whose MK2 production and exhibition arms have played a key
role in the life of world cinema over the last two decadesand who also is not considered
here. Given that Karmitz was born in Romania, and given that in late 2010, Frances lower
house passed a bill to strip immigrant criminals of their nationality (even if they had resided
in France for 80 years, they would/could be deprived of their French passport and sent back
to their country of birth), Karmitz is from a certain perspective not really French, even
though he carries a French passport.
My point is that by not engaging with the complexities surrounding France and national
identity, and by sticking exclusively to an auteurist and pure French cinema (with Noes
Argentine nationality perhaps being the exception to prove the rule), Palmer seems to
assume something like the lower houses position: anything tinged with foreignness is
not French, unless, of course, that foreignness happens to be American. Palmer does, for
example, talk about how various filmmakers like Kassovitz, Cassel, Richet and Christophe
Gans have worked in the USA at times, explaining at one point that the international
distribution of Persepolis (claimed, without much justification, as distinctively French
despite its international connections) climaxed with a run in North America for Sony
Classics (49). That this achievement is perceived as the films climax suggests an
Americentricism on Palmers part that remains unexamined.
For all of its youth-driven gusto and tales of sexual equality, then, Brutal Intimacy
offers a relatively reactionary account of French cinema in the 2000s, providing us with an
ecosystem that seems distinctively fenced, even if the cinema du corpss presence gives the
title the frisson of danger. Brutal Intimacy is a beautifully written and ambitious account of
French cinema in the 2000s. It carries out original work in discussing first-time filmmakers,
popular stars like Jean Dujardin, and the role played in French cinema by la Femis. If
cinephilia describes French cinema and Palmers love thereof, it is perhaps an exclusive

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cinephiliawhich begs the question of how much love of cinema Palmer has. He loves the
French films he loves, obviously, but he does not travel too far beyond the bounds of the
mainstream to measure whether his love of French cinema is without measure.

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William Brown is a Lecturer in Film at the University of Roehampton, London. He is the

author of Supercinema: Film Theory in the Digital Age (Berghahn, 2013) and, with Dina Iordanova
and Leshu Torchin, of Moving People, Moving Images: Cinema and Trafficking in the New Europe
(St. Andrews Film Studies, 2010). He is the co-editor, with David Martin-Jones, of Deleuze and
Film (Edinburgh UP, 2012), and has published a growing number of essays in edited collections
and journals, including New Review of Film and Television Studies, animation: an interdisciplinary
journal, Studies in European Cinema, Studies in French Cinema, Third Text, Deleuze Studies, and
more.

Works Cited
Andrew, Dudley. Mists of Regret: Culture and Sensibility in Classic French Cinema. Princeton:
Princeton UP, 1995.
Beugnet, Martine. Cinema and Sensation: French Film and the Art of Transgression. Edinburgh:
Edinburgh UP, 2007.
Downing, Lisa. French Cinemas New Sexual Revolution: Postmodern Porn and Troubled Genres,
French Cultural Studies 15.3 (2004): 265280.
Hayward, Susan. Luc Besson. Manchester: Manchester UP, 1998.
Hayward, Susan, and Phil Powrie, eds. The Films of Luc Besson: Master of Spectacle. Manchester:
Manchester UP, 2006.
Horeck, Tanya, and Tina Kendall. The New Extremism in Cinema: From France to Europe. Edinburgh:
Edinburgh UP, 2011.
Quandt, James. Flesh and Blood: Sex and Violence in Recent French Cinema, Artforum 42.6 (2000):
2427.