Decentring France: multilingualism and power in contemporary French cinema 9781526113573, 1526113570

Table of contents :
Introduction --
A brief history of multilingualism in French cinema --
Decentred perspectives : case studies --
Capital centres : Polisse and Entre les murs --
Urban margins : Un phophète and Dheepan --
Coastal borders : Welcome and La Graine et le mulet --
International spaces : London River and Des hommes et des dieux --
Conclusion.

Citation preview

Decentring France: Multilingualism and power in contemporary French cinema is the first substantial study of multilingual film in France. Unpacking the power dynamics at play in the multilingual dialogue of eight emblematic films, it proposes non-binary frameworks for examining language difference in cinema. It reveals how strategic language use can be a tool for exerting social power in many twenty-first-century films, from Jacques Audiard’s Un prophète to Xavier Beauvois’ Des hommes et des dieux. Bridging the fields of film studies and French cultural studies, this book argues that many contemporary French films take a new approach to language and power, showing how even the most historically maligned languages can empower their speakers. Through studies on social power combined with close film analysis, Decentring France offers a unique insight to academics and students alike, into the place of language and power in French cinema today.

Gemma King

D ecentring F rance

In a world defined by the flow of people, goods and cultures, many contemporary French films explore the multicultural nature of today’s France, portraying multilingualism in novel and empowering ways. In such films, the status of a wide range of languages is evolving from trivialised to central; through strategic language use, characters wrest power from one another and wield it in innovative ways. From rival lingua francas such as English to socio-politically marginalised languages such as Arabic or Kurdish, these characters exploit their knowledge of multiple languages and offer counter-perspectives to dominant ideologies of the role of linguistic diversity in society.

Gemma King is Lecturer in French Studies at the Australian National University

King

Niels Arestrup and Tahar Rahim in Un prophète (Jacques Audiard). © Roger Arpajou / Why Not Productions Cover design: riverdesign.co.uk

ISBN 978-1-5261-1357-3

9 781526 113573 www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk

D e c e n tri n g F r a n c e Multilingualism and power in contemporary French cinema

Decentring France

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Decentring France Multilingualism and power in contemporary French cinema GEMMA KING

Manchester University Press

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Copyright © Gemma King 2017 The right of Gemma King to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Published by Manchester University Press Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data applied for

ISBN 9781 5261 1357 3  hardback First published 2017

The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Typeset in Monotype Plantin with Myriad display by Koinonia, Manchester

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Pour M.

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Contents List of figures page   viii Acknowledgements ix List of abbreviations x Note on translations xi 1 Introduction

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2 A brief history of multilingualism in French cinema 31 3 Decentred perspectives: case studies

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4 Capital centres: Polisse and Entre les murs 56 5 Urban margins: Un prophète and Dheepan 84 6 Coastal borders: Welcome and La Graine et le mulet 119 7 International spaces: London River and Des hommes et des dieux 157 8 Conclusion

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Appendices Filmography References Index

193 199 203 212

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List of figures   1 Percentage of multilingual films with 1m+ French box office entries (compiled by author, with film data from CNC website: www.cnc.fr) page   20   2 Number of multilingual films nominated, Prix César (compiled by author, with data from César website: www.academie-cinema.org) 28   3 Number of multilingual films nominated, Prix Louis Delluc (compiled by author, with film data from allocine.fr) 28   4 Awards, primary corpus (compiled from author’s research) 29  5 Polisse (Maïwenn, Les Films du Trésor) 63  6 Entre les murs (Laurent Cantet, Haut et Court) 74  7 Un prophète (Jacques Audiard, Why Not Productions) 91  8 Dheepan (Jacques Audiard, Why Not Productions) 97  9 La Graine et le mulet (Abdellatif Kechiche, Pathé) 133 10 Welcome (Philippe Lioret, Nord-Ouest Productions) 140 11 London River (Rachid Bouchareb, 3B Productions) 173

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Acknowledgements Looking back on the process of creating this book, I am grateful to my brilliant and generous mentors. My first thanks go to Andrew McGregor, who has encouraged, challenged and championed me throughout the past ten years. I owe much to Véronique Duché and Raphaëlle Moine, for supporting me from Australia to France to the USA with this project. I am also grateful to my examiners, Charles Forsdick, Ben McCann, Martin Barnier and Laurent Jullier, and to my mentor, Natalie Edwards. Mille mercis aussi to Alison Smith, Michaël Abecassis, Marcus Carter, Rachel Landgren, Bertrand Bourgeois, Alice Burgin, Jackie Dutton, Tim McNamara, Colin Nettelbeck, Kasongo Kapanga, Tess Do, Anne Freadman and Emeline Seignobos. To my beloved friends and family: thank you for your tireless provision of guidance, levity, perspective, kindness and coffee. Some parts of the proceeding chapters on the films Polisse, Entre les murs, Un prophète, Welcome and London River draw upon material published in the Australian Journal of French Studies, Contemporary French Civilization, Linguistica Antverpiensia, Peter Lang Oxford and Librairies Garnier Paris respectively. Bibliographical information is provided below. My thanks to the editors of each of these publications. ‘Code-switching as power strategy: multilingualism and the role of Arabic in Maïwenn’s Polisse’, Australian Journal of French Studies, 52:2, 2015, 162–73. ‘Decentring France: multilingualism and the French language in Welcome’ in Abecassis, M. and Ledegan, G. (eds). De la genèse de la langue à Internet (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2015), 221–42. ‘En français, s’il te plaît: the linguistic battlegrounds of Entre les murs (Laurent Cantet)’, Contemporary French Civilization, 42:1, 2017. ‘Langues désancrées: le rôle du français dans London River’ in Do, T., Duché, V. and Rizzi, A. (eds), Genre, Text and Language: Mélanges Anne Freadman (Paris: Librairies Garnier, 2016), 317–26. ‘The power of the treacherous interpreter: multilingualism in Jacques Audiard’s Un prophète’, Linguistica Antverpiensia, 13, 2014, 78–92.

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List of abbreviations BAFTA CNC

British Academy of Film and Television Arts Centre national du cinéma et de l’image animée [formerly Centre national de la cinématographie] HLM habitation à loyer modéré [subsidised housing estate] MINERVA MInisterial NEtwoRk for Valorising Activities in digitisation [EU organisation for the digitisation of cultural and scientific content] MLV Multiple Language Version [film] (late 1920s/early 1930s filmmaking practice) RER Réseau Express Régional [Paris long-distance train network linking city and suburbs] UNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization

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Note on translations This book contains a range of material in languages other than English. French quotations within the text are included in the original, accompanied by published translations wherever possible. Those quotes without pre-existing translations were translated by me. The vast majority of film dialogue transcriptions feature multilingual speech; therefore, with a few minor exceptions, this dialogue is presented in English, with a note identifying the language used before each line. For the most part, French and English film dialogue was translated by me, while translation of dialogue in other languages has been taken from the official subtitles accompanying each film.

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1 Introduction

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n a dreary Paris office, a Tamil man, woman and child sit across a desk from a French immigration officer. Newly arrived from war-torn Sri Lanka, the family must plead their case for asylum in France. As the man relates his family’s suffering, of how they came to be in Europe and why they deserve asylum, an interpreter of Sri Lankan origin translates his speech from Tamil into French. So begins a crucial scene in Jacques Audiard’s 2015 Palme d’or-winning film, Dheepan. Unknown to the officer, these three people are not exactly who they claim to be. They had purchased the identity of a murdered family before fleeing Sri Lanka, paying a people smuggler to transport them by boat to India and on to France. They are virtual strangers, three individuals banded together in desperation. Though they are true victims of the Sri Lankan civil war, their stories are murky, their backgrounds mysterious, their identities unknown even to one another. The girl is an anonymous orphan, the woman an unidentified victim of the conflict. The man is a former Tamil general with a controversial history. Each has lost their entire family. Each risks immense danger, and even death, should their application for asylum in France be rejected. Yet this is not the story the man, Dheepan, tells to the immigration officer and the interpreter. ‘I was working for an NGO. I was a journalist and peace activist. The Sri Lankan government accused me of …’ The interpreter stops Dheepan in his tracks. ‘I know your story. The one about you being a peace activist. Did your smuggler feed you that story?’ The refugees have been told that such a sanitary and noble story would be sure to curry favour with the French authorities. But the interpreter has heard this canned response many times, and knows the French officer has as well. In a relaxed, level voice, the interpreter tells Dheepan that to use such a story would be to reveal himself as a liar. In response to the lengthy, untranslated exchange, the French officer interjects and asks what is being said. The interpreter feigns confusion, explaining that he doesn’t understand, implying differences in dialect between the two men. He asks Dheepan his true name, and when Dheepan responds Savidhasan, it becomes clear the

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2  Decentring France interpreter has heard of him. Taken aback, he exclaims, ‘I thought you were dead.’ However, the officer has picked up on the word ‘Savidhasan’ and asks its meaning. Without missing a beat, the interpreter tells him Savidhasan is the name of the family’s home village in Sri Lanka. He then concocts a more convincing story for Dheepan to use, insisting he will have more success with the grittier tale. ‘Say that the Tigers recruited you by force, that the Sri Lankan army captured and tortured you and that they tried to kill you.’ The interpreter then relays the story in French. The asylum request is granted. This scene presents a rich and complex picture of language relations. Of course, in a legal sense, the French immigration officer is the individual with the institutional power to accept or reject Dheepan and his family’s claim for asylum; to allow or deny them legal admittance into the French nation. Yet the interpreter, the only person in the room who is fluent in both French and Tamil, is able to control the situation in a unique way, to place the family in an advantageous position and to concoct a narrative designed to ensure their acceptance into France. In this situation, the ability to speak multiple languages is a distinct advantage. The Tamil language becomes a disguise the interpreter can exploit in order to protect his fellow compatriots, and a tool for controlling the outcome of the exchange. In Dheepan, language is a barrier between monolingual groups, and a challenge for the film’s Sri Lankan characters to surmount. Monolingualism (in either Tamil or French) is a hindrance to social interaction, and even what Claire Kramsch calls a ‘handicap’ (2006: 102) preventing cultural integration. Yet multilingualism – the ability to learn, use and transition among multiple languages – is an opportunity. This scene, and the film in general, is about cultural difference, language barriers, the politics of migration, tensions between the First and Third worlds, the moral ambiguity of war and the trauma of displacement. But it is also about social power, as enacted through strategic use of language. In a cinematic landscape increasingly characterised by multiculturalism and linguistic diversity, a number of contemporary French films are beginning to represent multilingualism as a means of attaining and exerting social power. In multilingual film, language functions not only as a vessel of meaning, but also as a loaded and complex tool. Characters actively exploit their multilingualism in order to exert symbolic power: they may switch into a language other characters cannot understand to conspire, exclude or intimidate, or flaunt their competence in a certain language to gain access to a particular cultural group. Language learning expands characters’ skill sets and opens up new possibilities for accessing knowledge and control.

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Introduction 3 Beyond the inclusion of languages other than French in film dialogue, this phenomenon is remarkable for its foregrounding of language not only as a theme or narrative device, but as a weapon to be harnessed and deployed in the pursuit of power. In contrast to more traditional, twentieth-century portrayals of multilingualism, contemporary French multilingual films often portray language difference as a narrative device in itself, and a means of obtaining and wielding influence over others. The twenty-first-century French cultural landscape is one shaped by globalisation and postcoloniality. As migration towards metropolitan France booms, postcolonial legacies continue to make themselves felt in social, cultural and economic contexts, cities strain under the weight of tensions between urban centre and fractured periphery, the global refugee crisis intensifies, Paris reels from unprecedented terrorist attacks and the European Union struggles to maintain and define itself, language is coming to the forefront of cinematic representations of multicultural France. Contemporary French films frequently concern themselves with spaces of social and cultural tensions, with what Mary-Louise Pratt calls ‘contact zones’: ‘social spaces where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in contexts of asymmetrical relations of power, such as colonialism, slavery, or their aftermaths as they are lived out in many parts of the world today’ (1991: 34). In the language contact zones of locations like Paris, other large cities like Lyons and Marseilles, the port regions of the English Channel and the Mediterranean, cross-cultural international spaces like other European cities or former French colonies and the banlieues in which many communities of international origin or background reside, multilingualism is a fact of everyday life, and many ­contemporary French films investigate these loaded spaces with and through language. Despite depicting a more realistic cultural and linguistic landscape than many monolingual films, multilingual dialogue is not only included in contemporary films as a means of representing realism, and language choice is rarely arbitrary. Instead, multilingualism is a central thematic concern and, frequently, a plot device in itself. As Carol O’Sullivan explains, ‘subtitled foreign dialogue is no longer used merely as ornament, to mark location or nationality, but becomes a vehicle for plot and character development’ (2008: 84). Languages are not simply modes of communication, but sociocultural elements and tools that can be used to exert authority, infiltrate cultural groups and manipulate others. In a wide range of situations, the ability to understand and speak multiple languages, and especially the ability to move strategically among multiple languages, is of distinct benefit to even the most marginalised characters. Knowledge of French is

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4  Decentring France essential, but knowledge of other languages, from English to Arabic to Bambara and beyond, is not a hindrance, a disadvantage or a point of shame, but an asset, an advantage and an opportunity. Thus, contemporary French multilingual film places the relationship between multilingualism and power at its core. Beginning in the early twenty-first century and flourishing from approximately 2005 onwards, multilingual cinema is an increasingly prevalent phenomenon in French film. This book is the first sustained project to map out and analyse this rich group of films, using transnational film discourse to focus critical attention on eight core case studies ranging in date from 2007 to 2015. This book is informed by Foucault’s vision of power as ‘strategy’ from his 1976 Histoire de la sexualité I, and by the theoretical framework of Ella Shohat and Robert Stam’s polycentric multiculturalism, which ‘is about dispersing power, about empowering the disempowered, about transforming subordinate institutions and discourses’ (1994: 48–9). It approaches contemporary French multilingual films from a non-hierarchical, non-Eurocentric perspective, in order to uncover the many possible fields of social power at play in multilingual scenes. This cinema does not ignore the imbalances of social power that continue to impact multicultural communities in contemporary France. In his manifesto ‘Cinéma-monde?’ Bill Marshall points out that polycentric multicultural theory ‘does not elide the inequality of media power relations, but places them in a recognised and often contradictory plurality’ (2012: 37). Instead, within this inherently imbalanced historical context, it envisions multilingual interaction as being driven by ‘a systematic principle of differentiation, relationality, and linkage [in which] no single community or part of the world, whatever its economic or social power, is epistemologically privileged’ (Shohat and Stam 1994: 48). When examined from this standpoint, the power relations at play in dialogue between, for example, French and Tamil characters (as in Dheepan) or Guernsian francophone and Malian francophone characters (as in Rachid Bouchareb’s London River) reveal themselves to be far more complex than a Eurocentric standpoint might reveal. According to Jan Blommaert’s conception of language and globalisation, ‘authority emanates from real or perceived “centres”, to which people orient when they produce an individual trajectory in semiosis’ (2010: 39). Contemporary French multilingual films resist monopolistic centrings of authority and situate multiple language use within correspondingly polycentric French and global spaces. Films such as Polisse (Maïwenn 2011), Entre les murs (Laurent Cantet 2008), Un prophète (Jacques Audiard 2009), Dheepan (Jacques Audiard 2015), Welcome (Philippe Lioret 2009), La Graine et le mulet

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Introduction 5 (Abdellatif Kechiche 2007), London River (Rachid Bouchareb 2009) and Des hommes et des dieux (Xavier Beauvois 2010) thus re-envision the role multilingualism has to play in contemporary French culture. In her analysis of beur and other multicultural French films, Carrie Tarr writes that films can ‘destabilize and rearticulate the “national” of French cinema, and invite spectators to acknowledge the multicultural nature of contemporary, postcolonial French society’ (2009: 291). Engaging with the work of French and transnational film scholars like Tarr, this book delves into the above eight films to investigate their representation of multilingualism in the contemporary universe and how they show the potential for languages to afford social power. Subsequently, the book will reveal how these films are emblematic not only of how multilingualism is being foregrounded, but of how the once-monopolistic role of the French language is being revised in French film. Historically, languages other than French have occupied a marginal position in French cinema, besides a handful of exceptions such as Jean Renoir’s 1937 La Grande Illusion or Jean-Luc Godard’s 1963 Le Mépris. Despite the many historical periods of multilingualism which have marked French history, including colonisation and decolonisation, the First and Second World Wars and the largescale migration waves of the twentieth century, the vast majority of French cinema has been monolingual. When other languages began to appear on the French screen in far greater numbers in the 1980s, they found themselves locked into a sociolinguistic hierarchy. In these films of the 1980s and 1990s, languages associated with colonisation or immigration are portrayed as dominated by French, isolating, undesirable or even endangering. If languages other than French do appear in earlier films, they are usually relegated to background noise and unsubtitled, stripped of their semantic meaning. Characters who elect to speak in a language such as Turkish or Arabic are frequently maligned, and those who fail to learn French invariably suffer. Language learning may occur in such films, but this usually involves migrant characters learning French to survive. The acquisition of new language by French characters is generally limited to other Western European tongues, such as Italian or English, and even then remains quite rare. In contrast, in post-2005 cinema, multilingualism does not merely function as a secondary, trivial or decorative element. Instead, language is a central narrative component, a ‘thematic fulcrum’ (Gramling 2010: 353) and a means of establishing authority, gaining leverage or exerting control. The characters of these films knowingly exploit their multilingualism in order to exclude, infiltrate, negotiate,

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6  Decentring France persuade or manipulate others. Sequences depicting interpreting and translation, language classes, individual or informal language learning, cross-cultural intimate relationships, conflicts between different cultural groups (including between religious and political factions), intertextuality and code-switching are at the heart of these films, revealing complex social hierarchies among characters. Inevitably, these hierarchies reveal themselves along class-based, racial, sociocultural, politicised, gendered and (post)colonial lines. However, such hierarchies do not remain fixed and multilingualism is not a static attribute of these films. It is used by characters, even those in a position of submission or oppression, in order to renegotiate hierarchical relations. Reflecting Claire Kramsch’s scholarship on critical multilingualism, such films ‘diversify the notion of communicative competence and empower multilingual speakers to use language in ways that might differ from those of monolingual speakers’ (2012: 116). Thus, in a fresh and innovative way rarely seen in French cinema prior to the contemporary period, multilingual French films do not cement their characters in immovable power structures, but equip them with tools to reshape them.

Multilingualism, French cinema and power This book investigates a phenomenon that finds itself at the nexus of three fundamental terms: multilingualism, French cinema and power. The following sets out the field of study for this book, and the ways in which I propose to approach the complementary concepts of multilingualism, cinema and power. Multilingualism On the most basic level, the term ‘multilingual cinema’ refers to films whose dialogue is composed of several languages. However, it would seem absurd to label a film which includes a smattering of words or phrases in a different language (a ‘bonjour’ or an ‘Inch’Allah’ uttered here and there, without any full multilingual sentences or conversations) as a ‘multilingual film’. Chris Wahl pinpoints this distinction by labelling minor or superficial instances of multilingualism in cinema as ‘postcarding’ (2005: 2), as distinct from the meaningful engagement with language seen in what he calls ‘polyglot cinema’. (Other terms in circulation include ‘plurilingual’, ‘polylingual’ and even ‘heterolingual’, however ‘multilingual’ is the most versatile and universal designation.) Such language use is generally for decorative effect or shorthand for identifying a character as ‘foreign’, rather than being part of a meaningful linguistic exchange.

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Introduction 7 While ‘multilingual’ is a common term, its definition is in fact rather subjective. Dictionary definitions merely describe the term as relating to several languages; ‘using or able to speak several or many languages with some facility/spoken or written in several or many languages/ dealing with or involving several or many languages’ (Oxford English Dictionary 2011), yet such definitions do not define what a ‘language’ itself is. As a result, whether or not a text can be defined as multilingual is dependent on what we understand a language to be. Is a language a distinct linguistic system that can be identified as an official or national tongue (French, Mandarin, German)? A regional dialect, pidgin mix or slang (tchatche, verlan)? A non-verbal yet standardised system of communication (Sign Language)? Can a definition of language be stretched so far as to include body language, silence, lip-reading, music or even physical violence? No dictionary definition of multilingualism, in English or in French, tests the definition sufficiently to explore the limits of the systems of signification we call language. Due to this confusion, multilingual film scholars often feel the need to clarify their own understanding of the term. Translation scholars Delabastita and Grutman, for example, are explicit about their inclusion of semiodiversity (i.e. variations within taxonomic languages) in their understanding of multilingualism, acknowledging the slippery nature of defining language itself: The simplest possible definition of a multilingual text would be to say that such a text is worded in different languages, but that still begs the fundamental question of how one should understand the concept of ‘language’. We favour a very open and flexible concept which acknowledges not only the ‘official’ taxonomy of languages but also the incredible range of subtypes and varieties existing within the various officially recognised languages, and indeed sometimes cutting across and challenging our neat linguistic typologies. (2005: 15)

Delabastita and Grutman are thus concerned not only with the fact that definitions of multilingualism may encompass either ‘the “official” taxonomy of languages’ or the ‘subtypes and varieties’ within these, but also with the difficulty of separating the two. This complicates the meaning of multilingualism even further. We see this conundrum in the 2004 film L’Esquive (Abdellatif Kechiche), in which three disparate versions of French are spoken – standard French, banlieue street slang (almost unintelligible to many mainstream French viewers) and the antiquated, floral prose of Marivaux. These codes are used in wildly different ways, and each is relevant only in specific contexts. In this way, they function much like distinct taxonomical languages: the label ‘French’ does not take into account the profound semiodiversity of the film’s dialogue. Though the film includes a few Arabic phrases,

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8  Decentring France L’Esquive would not typically qualify as ‘multilingual’ according to a dictionary definition of the term. Yet the heteroglossia inherent in almost every scene of the film bubbles to the fore in the tense and complicated relationships between characters of varying cultural backgrounds and linguistic competencies. In this book, I propose to view semiodiverse films such as L’Esquive as multilingual in their own, if murky, ways. In multilingual films, it is not so much the mere presence of ltiple languages on the soundtrack that is significant. Instead, mu­­ it is the portrayal of characters adept at moving among different languages and using them to strategic effect, which renders these films so important for French film studies. This movement between languages is studied in a number of forms, particularly code-switching and translanguaging. Focusing on back-and-forth switching between languages, code-switching in film refers to passages of dialogue in which characters engage in ‘the practice of alternating between two or more languages or varieties of language in conversation’ (Oxford English Dictionary 2011). Code-switching is characterised by linguistic and sociocultural boundary-crossing: as Sharon Deckert and Caroline Vickers explain, the practice involves ‘a form of switching languages or language variations … in a manner that reflects movement across perceived social or ethnic boundaries’ (2011: 13–14). A code-switch can be undertaken for a multitude of reasons, and in any number of situations. Switching between languages can be banal, practical or innocuous. However, in contemporary French multilingual film, code-switching often constitutes a calculated and strategic act. Code-switching is a linguistic event; however, this dialogic phenomenon can also bring about important sociocultural shifts in relationships between characters. As Alison Smith explains, ‘there is more at stake in filmic employment of code-switching than mere fidelity to a previously established external reality … the decision to employ multiple languages in film represents a strategy for critical assessment of linguistic and social hierarchies’ (2010: 37–8). Thus, multilingual characters may use their mutual familiarity with two languages, and undertake code-switches between them, in order to exert authority over one another. Alongside code-switching theory, it is also helpful to refer to the newer concept of ‘translanguaging’ (Forsdick 2014: 252; García and Wei 2014), which privileges a more dynamic and multidirectional language use over a unilateral switching back and forth. Of this new way of considering linguistic diversity, Otsuji and Pennycook admire how it allows us to ‘look at translingual practices where communication transcends both “individual languages” and words, thus

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Introduction 9 involving “diverse semiotic resources”’ (2015: 56). Translanguaging thus involves moving among language and using language in diverse ways. As they move among French and other languages like Arabic or Tamazight, multilingual characters call upon different languages to advance their positions, underlining the complex interplay between language, culture and power the practices of code-switching and translanguaging can entail. This places language, and the complex and loaded act of switching between distinct languages – and thus identities – at the heart of the film. French cinema It is no small challenge to define the nationality of multilingual (often transnational) films, which by nature are ‘made and received between and across national, linguistic, and cultural borders’ (Koos 2012: 317). Much like the term ‘multilingualism’ conjures questions regarding the definition of language, the term ‘French cinema’ also begs an interrogation of the concept of national film. As Dale Hudson writes, ‘cinema and nation have always had shifting, problematic functions with regard to one another and to the larger arena of world culture’ (2006: 217). Transnational cinema studies have made considerable progress in dismantling the now largely outdated notion of monolithic national cinemas, acknowledging instead the diverse cultural exchanges which occur in film narratives and cinematic production practices. As might be expected, multilingual film is particularly susceptible to the problems surrounding a label like ‘French film’, considering that the presence of languages other than French entails the contribution of actors, characters and crew of varying nationalities, as well as of international production elements, filming locations and narrative settings. These films often fall into what Alice Burgin, Andrew McGregor and Colin Nettelbeck identify as ‘a transnational auteur cinema emerging from France that extends the traditional concept of cultural diversity beyond French/European borders, incorporating transcultural narratives and promoting various forms of cinémas du monde’ (2014: 397). In many cases, multilingual films are created under co-production agreements. They may not be shot on French soil (such as in London River). More broadly, they may not subscribe to dominant French ideals or represent the perspective of French nationals (Dheepan). France may not be the home, dream or ultimate destination of the characters (Des hommes et des dieux). The film may not be written or edited in France. The title may not even be in French (Welcome), or may itself play with linguistic ambiguities (Polisse). However, in the

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10  Decentring France case of all these films, several defining characteristics serve to identify these films as French. Such identification is decided primarily at an institutional and financial level, though the film’s narrative and ideological identity is also crucial to its labelling as French. A key association responsible for the identification of a film’s French nationality is the government-run CNC, or the Centre national du cinéma et de l’image animée. A markedly different film production system to most other countries’ (especially other dominant Western cinemas such as the US Hollywood model) the CNC offers seed funding to finance French films. To be eligible for this funding, films must qualify for an Agrément de production, whereby, according to numerous criteria,1 a film is effectively given a score which reflects how ‘French’ the project promises to be. A second association involved in the public determination of a film’s nationality as French is the national motion picture awards organisation, the Césars. The annual ceremony is prestigious and observed by the French film industry and national French press. In order for a film to be eligible for consideration by the Césars board (a committee composed of esteemed actors, directors and other film professionals) it must be funded by French production companies (if the film is made under co-production, a co-production agreement must be signed between France and at least one other country with France contributing at least 50 per cent to the film’s production) and recognised as French by the CNC. In order to understand the extent to which the CNC and Césars influence the cultural identification and subsequent domestic success of a French film, it is enlightening to consider the case of Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s commercially significant 2004 film Un long dimanche de fiançailles. Un long dimanche, perhaps more than any other contemporary French film, demonstrates how important financing is considered in the classification of a film as ‘French’. Upon first observation, the film’s Frenchness appears undeniable. The film was directed by an established French filmmaker known for such national successes as Delicatessen (1991) and the stereotypically Parisian confection Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain (2001). Un long dimanche de fiançailles included a French cast, French-language script, Francebased narrative and focus on a key moment in French history. The film’s plot was adapted from an eponymous French-language novel written by a French author (Sébastien Japrisot 1991) in France. The film included such recognisable French stars as Audrey Tautou (of Amélie) and Gaspard Ulliel (star of films like Saint Laurent, Bertrand Bonello 2014). Indeed, the only well-known non-French actor in Un long dimanche de fiançailles is Jodie Foster, who appears in a cameo role. Foster’s dialogue, however, is entirely in French.

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Introduction 11 Nonetheless, the high-budget, USD$47 million Un long dimanche de fiançailles was largely funded by a France-based, but Hollywoodowned, production company. Though it had offices in France, the studio’s funds originated from Warner Brothers. The fact that the film received funding from an American source, a fact discovered by the CNC after the film was made, disqualified it from receiving an official French identification. The film was deemed ineligible for nomination at the Césars, and the film’s producers were ordered to return the original funds the CNC had provided them (Jäckel 2007: 27–8). In her analysis of Un long dimanche de fiançailles and its problematic labelling, Isabelle Vanderschelden remarks on the film’s paradoxical identity. On the one hand, the film operates as a French cultural artefact. On the other, it is an American commercial product. A transnational approach is thus required to understand this conundrum: Adopting a transnational perspective can help resolve the ambiguity surrounding Un long dimanche. The debate is not so much linguistic, artistic or thematic as commercial. The Frenchness of the film’s content is not in question, and may even partly explain its moderate worldwide success. The locations and period setting, the French dialogue and cast, all enhance its Frenchness. Even the presence of Hollywood star Jodie Foster in a cameo role as a French woman is played down; she is hardly recognisable, speaking fluent French in a role taking her away from her usual star persona. What causes ambiguity is the financial package, or rather the fund transfer strategy underlying the film’s production. (2007: 42)

Vanderschelden’s insistence on the film’s Frenchness, despite its consideration by the CNC as non-French, pinpoints a certain intangibility surrounding the concept of ‘French film’. There is no hard-and-fast rule for identifying a French film as such, especially a multilingual one and let alone a co-production, as it will inevitably possess multiple multicultural elements and international influences. As Carrie Tarr acknowledges, ‘the identity of any given film or filmmaker is becoming increasingly difficult to pin down in purely national terms, as the case of Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Un long dimanche de fiançailles … exemplifies’ (2007a: 4). Yet the CNC’s power to determine a film’s label as ‘French’ or ‘not French’ (a label which has a direct impact on its eligibility for César consideration, resultant distribution and other French cinema industry privileges), and to grant or withdraw funds accordingly, demonstrates how important a film’s ‘financial package’ (Vanderschelden 2007: 42) is to its cultural identification, however problematic such an identification may prove to be. Another interesting case in the identification of a film’s nationality is Michael Haneke’s 2012 Cannes Palme d’or winner, Amour. Amour

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12  Decentring France is considered to be a French film (indeed its cast, language, majority funding and setting are French), although the filmmaker, Michael Haneke, is not. This is not particularly remarkable in itself, as many directors of French films, from Krzysztof Kieslowski (La Double Vie de Véronique 1991) to Amos Gitaï (Désengagement 2007, Free Zone 2005), are not of French origin. However, the Austrian-born Haneke also directs films which are considered to be Austrian, such as Das weiße Band – Eine deutsche Kindergeschichte (2009) and the original Germanlanguage Funny Games (1997). Indeed, Haneke won the Palme d’or in 2009 for Das weiße Band, an Austrian project, three years before receiving the same award for France for Amour. Haneke’s 2001 La Pianiste is even set in Vienna, yet filmed entirely in French and starring the French actor Isabelle Huppert as a Viennese musician. Haneke and his films cross back and forth between nationalities, flirting with Frenchness and Austrianness (as well as Americanness, with his 2007 US remake of his own film, Funny Games) in a different way with each project. Haneke, however, has not encountered the slippery cultural identification conundrums of Jeunet, despite films like La Pianiste being inarguably less French than Un long dimanche de fiançailles on a narrative and sociocultural level. A relatively young field of research, transnational cinema studies has made considerable progress in confronting the problems of national cinemas. This is not to ignore the usefulness of the term ‘national’ (Hayward 2000), but instead to move beyond a potentially constricting approach. In the early twenty-first century, transnational cinema studies has emerged as a means through which to discuss films marked by international aspects, without ignoring the concept of the national. As Higbee and Lim explain: A variety of terms (some more politically engaged than others) have emerged since the 1980s, which attempt to describe the cultural production of diasporic film-makers, including: accented, postcolonial, interstitial, intercultural and multicultural. All of the above could potentially be subsumed by the term ‘transnational’, due to their association with modes of film production that transcend national borders and bring into question the fixity of national cultural discourses. (2010: 11)

This framework acknowledges the diverse cultural exchanges which arise within individual films and around their production processes. Transnational cinema also offers a way of articulating a multilingual film’s identity; as Higbee explains, ‘postcolonial discourses in film are concerned with challenging fixed, Eurocentric assumptions around cultural identity and the nation’ (Higbee 2007a: 51). To resolve this conundrum of the ‘French’ and ‘foreign’ inherent in multilingual cinema, I turn to works such as Natasa Ďurovičová and Kathleen

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Introduction 13 Newman’s 2009 World Cinemas, Transnational Perspectives, which provide a frame through which to view the exchange between cultures in film, without confining films within, or ejecting films from, a strict national frame. Elizabeth Ezra and Terry Rowden’s 2006 edited volume Transnational Cinema: The Film Reader remains perhaps the most widely referenced work on transnational film. Their introduction to the concept of the transnational remains an eloquent and widely cited one: The transnational at once transcends the national and presupposes it. For transnationalism, its nationalist other is neither an armoured enemy with whom it must engage in a grim battle to the death, nor a verbose relic whose outdated postures can only be scorned. From a transnational perspective, nationalism is instead a canny dialogical partner whose voice often seems to be growing stronger at the very moment that its substance is fading away. This recognition of the essentially imaginary nature of any notion of cultural purity is not, however, unilateral and untroubled. The space of the transnational is not an anarchic free-for-all in which blissfully deracinated postnational subjects revel in ludically mystified states of ahistoricity. The continued force of nationalism, especially nationalism grounded in religious cultures, must be recognised as an emotionally charged component of the construction of the narratives of cultural identity that people at all levels of society use to maintain a stable sense of self. (2006: 4)

Ezra and Rowden define transnational cinema as straddling multiple cultures, as interstitial, as existing ‘in the in-between spaces of culture … between the local and the global’ (2006: 4), a definition which encapsulates the hybridity of multilingual cinema. This allows multilingual film to at once reside within the French canon, while simultaneously reaching beyond it, moving towards the foreign while also drawing the foreign into the French. In similar ways, Hamid Naficy’s book An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking (2001), interrogates the representation of minority groups and the language of the ‘other’. Naficy draws language into his conception of what has come to be understood as transnational cinema, in his coining of the term ‘accented cinema’. Seeking to ‘unpick the fixities of stable notions of cinema and national identity’ (Phillips 2003: 343), Naficy explores the inherent hybridity of accented films’ identities, emphasising the importance of voice in films defined by cultural plurality. In his germane piece ‘Situating accented cinema’, he writes that ‘most accented films are bilingual, even multilingual, multivocal and multiaccented’ (2006: 120). Naficy does not enter into specific analyses of multilingual dialogue in film, yet his in-depth study of the ‘interstitial’ and the multicultural in cinema is valuable nonetheless.

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14  Decentring France An analysis of French multilingual cinema therefore benefits from approaching the label ‘French film’ from this hybridised standpoint. Exploring the symbolism of the prefix in ‘transnational’, Hwee-Song Lim poses the question: ‘can transnationalism valorise the “trans” at the same time as it reinforces the national?’ (2007: 41) and this question remains at the heart of much transnational scholarship. Lim’s question is fundamental. On the one hand, transnational film theory allows us to acknowledge the inherent cross-cultural, ‘trans-’ nature of multilingual film, while on the other hand continuing to propose labels of national cinema as useful, if problematic. Such a conceptual framework therefore helps us to resolve the cultural paradoxes that arise between the French and the foreign in the analysis to come in this book. In similar ways, discourse on globalisation also provides helpful frameworks through which to examine the flows of social power between different cultural groups. For example, Jan Blommaert’s The Sociolinguistics of Globalization (2010) sees language and globalisation as intertwined in the contemporary age. Film scholars such as Kate Ince use globalisation terminology in their film analysis, such as ‘glocal cinema’, to examine the conflicting forces which characterise multilingual film (especially co-productions). The dramatic tension developed in multilingual films such as Welcome hinges on the conflicting pull of the global and the local, the internal and the external, the French and the foreign. These films, in their concern for both the French and the foreign, are in a state of continual identity crisis, using multilingualism to articulate their identities as both French products and ones bound up in the complexity of the globalised world. Ince’s ‘glocal cinema’, which highlights the paradoxical ‘Frenchness of the multiculturalism [that multilingual] films examine’ (2005: 92), allows us to unpack the conflicting forces at play in these films, forces which so often express themselves through language. Despite these tensions between national and transnational, ‘French cinema’ as a term still holds valuable currency in the contemporary age. Indeed, Andrew Higson writes in his 2006 article ‘The limiting imagination of national cinema’, a response to his own 1989 ‘The concept of national cinema’: It would be impossible – and certainly unwise – to ignore the concept [of the national] altogether: it is far too deeply ingrained in critical and historical debate about the cinema, for a start … in some contexts it may be necessary to challenge the homogenising myths of national cinema discourse; in others, it may be necessary to support them. (23)

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Introduction 15 Thus, while national cinema identifications are slippery and fallible, they also provide a crucial framework through which to examine films that may or may not challenge traditional conceptions of language, nation and society. To speak of a French cinema is not to box French films into a narrow, monocultural definition, but to acknowledge the plurality of voices, identities and modes of production that characterise the cinema of twenty-first-century France. Power Par pouvoir, il me semble qu’il faut comprendre d’abord la multiplicité des rapports de force qui sont immanents au domaine où ils s’exercent, et sont constitutifs de leur organisation. (Foucault 1976: 121–2) It seems to me that power must be understood in the first instance as the multiplicity of force relations immanent in the sphere in which they operate and which constitute their own organization. (Foucault 1998:  92)

Power is a paradoxical concept. It is at once universally comprehensible and resistant to definition. The Oxford English Dictionary defines power at its simplest as ‘the ability to do or act’, yet its scope reaches far beyond this ‘ability’. It is also described as an ‘influence or authority’, ‘political or social ascendancy or control’, ‘authorisation, delegated authority’, ‘an influential person, group, or organisation’ and succinctly: ‘influence’. Ability, authority, force, control, influence: the conception of power is at once a fundamental and an elusive one. Power is amoral and apolitical; it can manifest in seemingly positive senses (strength, protection) and ostensibly negative ones (oppression, manipulation, violence). Power is ubiquitous, social and relational. It affords agency, and can be won and lost. However, the most fundamental defining element of power is not that it exists, or that it can be had, but that it can be used. Power is not static, but enacted. A king is not simply powerful because he calls himself so. Institutional power is gained and earned through social action; through kingly behaviour, assertion of authority, command of obedience and subjugation of others. As a result, a king can in fact be powerless, should he fail to exert his authority and serve merely as a puppet for those who can control his actions from behind the scenes. In his Histoire de la sexualité I, Michel Foucault pinpoints the fact that power is not an object that can be held or owned. Instead, power is strategy, action, process; resistant to hierarchical notions of a single centre of domination; ‘relations of power-knowledge are not static forms of distribution, they are “matrices of transformations”’ (131, ‘les relations de pouvoir-savoir

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16  Decentring France ne sont pas des formes données de répartition, ce sont des “matrices de transformations”’ (1998: 99)). In such a picture of power relations, language or discourse is at the forefront of such strategy: Il faut admettre un jeu complexe et instable où le discours peut être à la fois instrument et effet de pouvoir, mais aussi obstacle, butée, point de résistance et départ pour une stratégie opposée. Le discours véhicule et produit du pouvoir; il le renforce mais aussi le mine, l’expose, le rend fragile et permet de le barrer. (133) We must make allowance for the complex and unstable process whereby discourse can be both an instrument and an effect of power, but also a hindrance, a stumbling-block, a point of resistance and a starting point for an opposing strategy. Discourse transmits and produces power; it reinforces it, but also undermines and exposes it, renders it fragile and makes it possible to thwart it. (101)

For Foucault, power is a volatile, ever-shifting process of establishing and enacting role relations (what he calls ‘rapports de force’ (1976: 121)), rather than a static object or state to be held by one agent over another. As Céline Spector summarises, in Foucault’s writings ‘le pouvoir est stratégie et non substance’ (‘power is strategy, not substance’, Spector 1997: 68) and thus is enacted, enforced and exchanged through social action, and namely through language. Some theorists, like Pierre Bourdieu, speak of ‘possessing’ power (1991: 106), yet it is Foucault’s concept of enacting power, emphasising that it ‘exists only when it is put into action’ 1982: 788 (‘le pouvoir n’existe qu’en acte’ 2001: 236)), that allows for a clearer understanding of the social power at stake, and at play, in multilingual dialogue. The possibilities for using languages to exert power are endless in contemporary French film. In Un prophète, the Arabic language is used to manipulate and control, while Corsican is used to eavesdrop, infiltrate into otherwise closed groups and ascend rank in the mafia. In London River, French language use (along with English, Arabic and Mandinka) allows a pair of non-French characters to unite, investigate and access information that would otherwise be unavailable to them. In Human Zoo, Serbo-Croatian language becomes a tool for threatening one character and reassuring another at the same time. In Dheepan, Tamil becomes a secret code for negotiating strategies to gain legal passage into the French territory. In multivalent, situated and messy scenarios, characters of French, mixed and foreign backgrounds use languages as tools (and at times as weapons) for attaining their goals. Such power is amoral in itself, and may be used for moral or immoral ends (for protecting one’s family or trapping one’s enemy). Yet this is beside the point. If power and language are

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Introduction 17 social action, then strategic use of multiple languages, by even the most socially disenfranchised, is the ultimate manifestation of power as ‘strategy and not substance’. Shohat and Stam’s polycentric multiculturalism, then, allows us not only to see language use as social action, but to envision the multitude of potential spheres of social power that can be opened to cultural and social groups in contemporary France. Thus, despite the immense weight of socio-economic disadvantage experienced by the Tamil characters in Dheepan or the Arab characters in Un prophète, even in their most vulnerable moments, language can present itself as an opportunity for advancement and control.

French film and social frames For the vast majority of cinema history, multilingualism has been absent from French films. Even those films which deal with multiculturalism and international movement in which multilingual dialogue could be expected to proliferate, such as travel and war, remain eerily monolingual. However, in the early twenty-first century, and especially from 2005 onwards, this has begun to change. According to CNC records of annual film data, in 2005 the number of multilingual films released in France leapt from under ten to forty-four,2 a number which has continued to rise. Well into the second decade of the twenty-first century, both cinema and film scholarship are catching up to the multilingual reality of the contemporary French world. Beyond France Multilingual cinema is a particularly salient phenomenon in France, both in terms of production and reception. Cinema scholarship on multilingual French films is also considerable, when compared with the dearth of research into other multilingual cinemas. However, multilingualism is not a trait confined to French cinema alone, as such international multilingual films as Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino 2009, USA), Babel (Alejandro Iñárritu González 2006, USA/Mexico), Sotto Falso Nome (Robert Ando 2004, Italy) and Lost in Translation (Sofia Coppola 2004, USA) attest. Many prominent non-French multilingual films also include French-language dialogue, including Babel, Inglourious Basterds and Tarantino’s 2004 film, Kill Bill Vol. 1. There is also a frequent overlap between French national and broader European filmmaking practices. Co-production is a clear example of such an overlap, and results in as a number of multilingual Franco-European ‘superproductions’ (Danan 1996: 74)

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18  Decentring France such as Joyeux Noël (Carion 2005). There are also other European cinema regulation bodies, such as the EU-wide film-funding association Eurimages, which directly affect multilingual filmmaking. Associations such as Eurimages often encourage collaboration between EU members, leading to pan-European dialogue. It is also important to acknowledge the embedded multilingualism of certain national film industries such as India’s Bollywood, whose historical relationship to the English language (i.e. British colonisation), domestic multilingualism (in Hindi, Bengali, Urdu, Dari, etc.) and reasons for producing multilingual films are so complex and singular that it would be unwise to group them under that umbrella term of ‘world cinema’. Nollywood and its use of both English and local Nigerian languages is also significant in this respect, as is South African cinema and its mix of African languages, English and Afrikaans (UNESCO 2012: 2). I cannot pretend to provide meaningful insight into such film industries, which are distinct in so many ways from French cinema history. However, it is necessary to acknowledge the complexity of the language dynamics at play in films from these regions, in order not to over-emphasise the uniqueness of multilingual French cinema on the contemporary global stage. Why 2005? A year during which France’s complex multicultural identity and hybrid social fabric was thrown into the spotlight, 2005 was a crucial time for multilingual film production in France. As multilingual films were released in their dozens, issues of cultural fracture and racial disconnect came to a head in many other areas of French society. This played out through such widely publicised events as the revolts which began in October and proliferated in many of the nation’s multicultural and socio-economically disadvantaged banlieues. These demonstrations arose in response to suspected police discrimination which led to the deaths of two Clichy-sous-Bois teenagers of Malian and Tunisian descent, Zyed Benna and Bouna Traoré. During the revolts, a state of emergency was declared across the country for three months, three people were killed, many police were injured, almost 3,000 people were arrested and over 10,000 cars and many public buildings were set alight (Rearick 2011: 147). As Carrie Tarr reports, the reaction to this social unrest was vitriolic, with then-Minister of the Interior, soon-to-be President Nicolas Sarkozy publicly labelling the rioters as ‘racaille’, an offensive and racially charged slang term loosely translatable as ‘scum’ (2007b: 34). For much of the second half of 2005, public discussion in France was marked by the disruption of these manifestations which, while

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Introduction 19 spreading across the country, remained centralised in Paris’s most culturally fractured cités, such as Clichy-sous-Bois and La Courneuve (Nettelbeck 2007: 316). The political and cultural importance of the 2005 riots should not be underestimated. While the violence lasted for three weeks after the 27 October deaths, long-term instability led to the events: as Nicolas Bancel writes, ‘the riots of 2005 in France must be understood as the logical upshot of the social and economic disaster that are the French banlieues. But they also express the anger of populations – for the most part postcolonial minorities – doomed to abandonment and marginalisation, and with no mechanism for voicing their concerns’ (2013: 215). The subsequent announcement from right-wing politicians such as Nicolas Sarkozy of government crackdowns on immigration only fuelled the tension driving longterm socio-economic and cultural issues in France. Indeed, not only did the effects of the riots linger for far longer than the official state of emergency, but their causes stretched far back into colonial history. Saer Maty Ba notes ‘occurrences such as the Paris banlieues (housing estates) uprisings of 2005 may not be grasped without a prior understanding of the multi-directional migration flows and refugee movements between Europe and Africa’ (2012: 295). The 2005 appearance of films which work through the complexity of such issues, including La Petite Jérusalem, Caché and 13 Tzameti (Géla Babluani), are therefore of great importance. As a counterpoint to these divisive events, 2005 also saw the appearance of progressive transnational themes in French cinema. Guy Austin identifies 2005 onwards as a period in which the (de) colonisation of Algeria became increasingly represented in French film, citing such examples as Rachid Bouchareb’s Indigènes and Michael Haneke’s Caché (2009: 115). Bancel even writes of ‘the legacy of 2005’, arguing that ‘the year 2005 marked a turning point and a moment of a paroxysmal crisis in France in terms of the redefinition of the nation’s rapport with respect to its own identity and to the imaginary representation of its community’ (2013: 208). Thus, as multilingual films began to appear in far greater numbers from 2005, so too did awareness of multicultural issues intensify in the sociocultural and cinematic French climate. The popularity of such films logically followed, with a steadily increasing number attracting more than a million box office entries in France. In particular, 2014 was a banner year for commercially successful multilingual films. In that year, the three highest-grossing films in the French box office, Qu’estce qu’on a fait au bon dieu? (Philippe de Chauveron, 12.3 million entries), Supercondriaque (Dany Boon, 5.3 million entries) and Lucy (Luc Besson, 5.2 million entries) were all French (most years at least

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20

Decentring France

one Hollywood film is in the top three) and all included dialogue in languages other than French. Figure 1 Percentage of multilingual films with 1m+ French box office entries 25

20 15 10 5

0 1985

1990

1995

2000

2005

2010

2015

In 2005 alone, France either fully funded or co-produced a total of forty-four films whose dialogue included languages other than French. Of these forty-four films, a number are particularly significant for their narrative and thematic foregrounding of multilingualism. These include such important secondary case studies as Christian Carion’s Joyeux Noël (English, French, German, Latin), Jacques Audiard’s De battre mon cœur s’est arrêté (English, French, Mandarin, Russian, Vietnamese), Karin Albou’s La Petite Jérusalem (Arabic, French, Hebrew), Djamel Bensalah’s Il était une fois dans l’oued (Arabic, French), Cédric Klapisch’s Les Poupées russes (English, French, Italian, Russian, Spanish), Merzak Allouache’s Bab el web (Arabic, French), Eran Riklis’s La Fiancée syrienne (Arabic, English, French, Hebrew, Russian) and Radu Mihaileanu’s Va, vis et deviens (Arabic, French, Hebrew). France’s financial contributions to the two major multilingual Hollywood productions of the year, Munich (Steven Spielberg, Arabic, English, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Italian, Russian) and The Interpreter (Sydney Pollack, Arabic, English, French, Portuguese) are not without their significance, either. Of course, 2005 scholarship cannot logically focus on the films of the same year. This of course confirms that multilingual film existed before 2005. French multilingual film began to gain momentum at the advent of the twenty-first century, with films such as Michael Haneke’s Code inconnu: récit incomplet de divers voyages (2001), L’Auberge Espagnole (Cédric Klapisch 2002) and Tony Gatlif’s Franco-Algerian road movie Exils (2004). However, the quantity

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21

of multilingual films released in the 2000–4 period, not to mention the extent to which these films engage on a thematic and narrative level with multilingualism, is distinctly less significant than that of the post-2005 period. Concrete lines can rarely be drawn in cinema history, and certain films released in 2004 and over the end-of-year period, including L’Esquive, Le Grand Voyage (Ismaël Ferroukhi), Exils and Ma Mère (Christophe Honoré), are also linguicentric films. Yet the release of important films is not the only reason 2005 was a crucial year for French multilingual cinema; a range of scholarship exploring multilingual film also appeared that year. Chris Wahl’s was one of the first to speak of the concept of multilingual film. While Wahl does not concentrate in detail on issues of power, he does make explicit reference to how ‘the power of language’ permeates multilingual cinema (2005: 5).The year also saw Tessa Dwyer analyse ‘polyglot cinema’ as indicative of ‘a new global sensibility’ (2005: 295). Like Wahl, her analysis hinges on a number of case studies from various cultures. While neither Wahl nor Dwyer refer primarily to French cinema, the former being based in German studies and the latter translation studies, both identify France as one of the chief producers of multilingual films. Alongside this scholarship, Dirk Delabastita and Rainier Grutman also cast a critical eye over the increase in multilingualism in cinema, the workings of diegetic interpreting and the ‘interpreter’s power to “make a difference”’ (2005: 22) as well as their role as cultural and linguistic ‘bridge-builder’ (25), and the implications of this complex position. The translation studies standpoints of scholars like Delabastita, Grutman and Dwyer (plus the later work of Carol O’Sullivan (2008, 2011)) lend a perceptive critical eye to multilingual interaction in films, especially in the loaded interpreting sequences that appear in so many multilingual films. Any examination of French cinema scholarship from 2005 would be incomplete without reference to Carrie Tarr’s influential monograph Reframing Difference: Beur and Banlieue Filmmaking in France, published in that same year. While Tarr’s primary interest is in Maghrebi-French film production and reception, rather than in multilingualism, her work engages with language in multiple ways. In particular, Tarr explores the role of multilingualism in the construction of (multi)cultural and (multi)national identity. Reframing Difference continues to bring issues of alterity and linguistic difference to the forefront of French cinema studies, paving the way for more sustained examinations of the role of multilingualism in this context. In her foregrounding of multiculturalism in French cinema, Tarr is joined by others such as Tim Bergfelder, Elizabeth Ezra and Antonio Sánchez, all of whose work was published in 2005 as well.

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22  Decentring France The year 2005 was thus a markedly prolific one for French multilingual film production and scholarship on multilingual cinema. Of course, issues of language and multiculturalism have long made their presence felt in cinema studies, as shown by such seminal earlier works as Hamid Naficy’s An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking (2001). However, prior to 2005, dedicated analyses of French multilingual films were few and far between, usually focusing on 1930s films or Western European co-productions. Diverse, politically charged and culturally complex multilingual films, as well as scholarship reflecting on them, took off in France halfway through the first decade of the twenty-first century in an unprecedented way. Postcolonial legacies Any study of relations between French and other languages ­(particularly those of South-East Asian and North/West African tongues) in the contemporary era must take into account the legacy of colonialism. Mary-Louise Pratt writes that ‘colonialism produces a multilingualism structured in relations of domination and subjugation’ (2012: 24) and colonial-era film usually perpetuates such relations. Contemporary cinema departs in almost all ways from such linguistic representation. Yet while the portrayal of the interaction between French and (post) colonial languages like Arabic in contemporary multilingual films differs vastly from that of colonial films and even later neo-colonial films like Indochine (Régis Wargnier 1992), it would be naive to consider contemporary language relations as existing in an ideological vacuum, severed from the language politics of the past. Colonial power structures may no longer officially exist, but they remain in palimpsestic ways that continue to impact relationalities between Western and North African or other decolonised communities. As Shohini Chaudhuri suggests, ‘post-colonial theory looks at the after-effects of the age of empires as well as the ways in which those power relations have not been fully transcended’ (2005: 10) and postcolonial studies of French and francophone communities are thus relevant to this book. Providing a background to this conundrum, Caroline Eades takes on the representation of French and other languages in colonial film in her book Le Cinéma post-colonial français (2006), in which she considers power as a central factor in all colonial linguistic exchanges. Unlike the power dynamics at play in contemporary films like Polisse, Entre les murs, Un prophète, Dheepan, Welcome, La Graine et le mulet, London River and Des hommes et des dieux, however, the power relations observable in colonial film are unilateral. Examining the case of ‘colonial’ cinema (whether originating from the colonial age itself or from a more recent era, depicting an earlier period), Eades remarks

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Introduction 23 that the role of indigenous languages is primarily a decorative one, with languages often relegated to background noise rather than meaningful dialogue (313). She underlines how colonising French characters will often ignore the existence of languages other than French, save for a smattering of linguistic tags (such as orders to plantation workers or passing comments to native house staff (315)). In these films, French remains the primordial, if not the only, functional language at play in colonial life. Eades emphasises the correlation between this sidelining of native languages and the reinforcement of French as representative of colonial power. She sees the relegation of colonised characters (and therefore the speakers of colonised languages) to those of servants, concubines or other dominated figures as feeding into the notion of the French language as power: Le fait que ces films continuent à n’octroyer qu’un rôle secondaire aux personnages colonisés et à mettre l’accent sur leur position de sujétion et de service envers le colon renforce la place presque exclusive de la langue française. The fact that these films continue to provide only secondary roles to colonised characters and to emphasise their position of submission and service towards the coloniser reinforces the almost exclusive place of the French language. (315)

Eades’s analysis, in many ways, treats very different films to those examined in this book. Yet it is nonetheless important to examine the role of French in colonial film. Eades emphasises how the linguistic homogenisation which occurred throughout colonisation spawned a legacy which would become immensely difficult to shrug. The elimination of native language learning in favour of French and the trivialisation or prohibition of native language use contributed to an enduring portrayal of French as culturally superior to colonised languages, silenced the native voice and equated the French language with historical power. In films as chronologically and geographically disparate as the Berber resistance tale Itto (Jean Benoît-Lévy and Marie Epstein 1934) and the Indochina war film Indochine, even when French is depicted in a negative light (as dehumanising, impersonal or an instrument of cruelty), it is still represented as more powerful, influential and useful than the indigenous languages of the colonised. Contemporary language relations are no longer always inscribed within such a rigid, legalised and pervasive hierarchy of oppression. Multi­lingualism can appear in many contexts and under many guises in twenty-first-century film. Yet it would be foolish, in the postcolonial era, to consider the fallout of colonialism as existing entirely in the past. As Shohat and Stam insist in ‘The cinema after Babel: language, difference, power’:

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24  Decentring France If all languages are created equal, some are made ‘more equal than others’; inscribed within the play of power, languages are caught up in artificial hierarchies rooted in cultural hegemonies and political oppression. (2006: 107)

This legacy has made itself felt well into the postcolonial era. Following on from this philosophy of the absolute centrality or superiority of French is the idea that French cinema is defined by its link with the French language. This suggests an inherent link between the French language and ‘the Frenchness of French cinema’, to borrow Ginette Vincendeau’s term (2010). Michel Chion’s influential 2008 book Le Complexe de Cyrano: la langue parlée dans les films français suggests that the French language is embedded in the concept of the very identity of French cinema as a whole.3 There is, of course, great value in examining the lingering hegemonic influence of the coloniser’s language and culture on those of the once-colonised. The risk in adopting a Eurocentric approach to an analysis of multilingual French cinema, however, is that we may impose a Franco-centric understanding of power relations on contemporary multilingual films, without acknowledging the range of potential power sources at play within them. Multilingualism is a form of knowledge and as Edward Saïd claims in his seminal book Orientalism, ‘to have knowledge over a thing is to dominate it, to have authority over it’ (1978: 32). Yet multilingual cinema is beginning to show that this form of knowledge is not confined to knowledge of only French or other Western tongues. Instead, all languages have the potential to empower their speaker in specific situations. In treating the centralised nucleus of metropolitan France as our sole vantage point, we risk losing sight of what is at play in alternate spaces.

Superficial versus strategic multilingualism The conundrum of quality versus quantity is central to defining a corpus of contemporary French multilingual cinema, and in distinguishing between those films which articulate the relationship between language and power and those which do not. As is to be expected, not all films which include even substantial amounts of multilingual dialogue are automatically relevant to this book, nor do they all engage with linguistic power dynamics. Instead, multilingualism can appear as an exoticising marker, as a source of reductive humour or as shorthand for labelling secondary characters as non-French. As a general rule, the more multilingual dialogue a film contains, the more likely it is to engage in a meaningful way with language

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Introduction 25 as a central concept. However, it is important not to be led astray by the amount of multilingual dialogue, when examining the actual importance of language in a film. Carol O’Sullivan demonstrates how the quantity of multilingualism in a film is not always telling of its importance: ‘the significance of textual heterolingualism is not necessarily a function of the quantity, but of the nature and quality, of foreign-language use in a text’ (2011: 70). For example, in Polisse the majority of scenes take place in French. Nonetheless, the few multilingual scenes the film contains are remarkably rich. On the other hand, a number of Hollywood films show us that a film can contain a large quantity of multilingualism, without engaging with the concept of language in any considerable way. Films such as Munich, Triage (Danis Tanovic 2009) and The Tourist (Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck 2010), while they share Arabic, English, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Italian, Kurdish, Russian, Spanish and Swahili dialogue between them, use language solely as decoration or exoticism. This means that the identification of a multilingual film as such rests not only with auditory characteristics (that is, with the fact of multiple languages being audible in a film). For in contrast to Wahl’s ‘postcarding’, the film must engage with multilingualism on a thematic and narrative level. In other words, the film must not merely be multilingual, it must be about multilingualism. How can one identify such a quality? For one, many multilingual films draw explicit attention to their multilingualism. Characters may conscientiously and strategically code-switch in an exchange. They may overtly refer to the importance of linguistic understanding and the value of speaking multiple languages. They may complain about not being able to understand one another, often in a pidgin mix of languages, struggling to communicate their frustration. They may explicitly engage in the process of language learning, either in the institutionalised arena of the language classroom, a solitary venture through a pocket dictionary or audio tape, or informally from another character. They may solicit the services of an interpreter. In whichever manner it is represented and to whichever end, multilingualism is an essential thematic concern, plot device or narrative element in these films. Ultimately, the identification is an informed, yet subjective, one, and requires close viewing and scrutiny of the film’s themes and its treatment of language difference. In a banal yet potentially damaging portrayal of multilingualism, languages can be used not to define interpersonal power dynamics, nor even for their basic semantic meaning, but as ‘foreign’ sounds which signal a character’s non-French background. Often, foreign dialogue used for this purpose will be brief and unsubtitled. Foreign

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26  Decentring France language may be used as an identification of nationality, to give a character an exotic flair or as background noise to legitimise a scene’s location in a foreign setting. This can be observed in the unsubtitled babble of Vietnamese voices in the plantation of Indochine (Régis Wargnier 1992). Often, the multilingual dialogue is more important for its sound than its meaning in these cases. Dialogue in languages other than French can be used to denote otherness and to distinguish foreign characters from French ones. Such manifestations often carry a sinister and unsettling tone. Non-French dialogue, rarely subtitled, serves to show how far a French character is from home; to contrast the comfort and familiarity of the French-speaking world with the alien discomfort of the foreign. The incomprehensibility of language is often presented as threatening or isolating for the protagonist. An example of this is Luc Besson’s Lucy, in which the monolingual anglophone protagonist is imprisoned by a Taiwanese underworld gang, whose menacing nature is reinforced by their babble of Chinese dialogue and refusal to translate into English for her benefit. In one of these scenes, Mandarin script is scrawled on the dirty walls of the gang’s hideout, yet Mandarin-speaking viewers have revealed the script itself translates to disjointed food-related words (‘orange’, ‘tomato’ and even ‘keep hygienic’ (Sibor)). It is not the semantic meaning of the written Mandarin text that is important for Besson, but its symbolic threat of otherness. Lucy thus uses language difference both as shorthand for ‘foreignness’ and a means of imposing distance and alienation. Multilingualism is also often represented as humour in cinema. It may be cast as amusing due to characters’ inability to understand each other, or through the discrepancy between an excerpt of foreign dialogue and its translation. (The American protagonist’s exasperation with a loquacious photographer’s Japanese instructions, and the incompatibility of his interpreter’s sparse translation, in Lost in Translation comes to mind.) Dialogue in languages other than French may simply be portrayed as what Derakhshani and Zachman call ‘comical representation of linguistic misunderstanding’ (2005: 134), playing on the ambiguous sound of words across language barriers. For example, in L’Auberge Espagnole, when the English character Wendy attempts to conduct a conversation with her flatmate’s French mother, she is horrified by the woman’s use of the word ‘fac’ (‘faculté’, or ‘university’), believing the woman is swearing ‘fuck’ in English at her. In concerning ways, films will even make attempts at humour by suggesting that a language sounds inherently funny, such as the mockery of the Picard dialect around which Dany Boon’s 2008 blockbuster comedy Bienvenue chez les

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Introduction 27 Ch’tis revolves. The above categories do not preclude the possibility of power dynamics or politics coming into play. Humour, for instance, may be at the expense of a speaker of a non-dominant language by implying a level of ridiculousness or ignorance sprouting from their use of their own language and not the French protagonist’s. It may also serve to crystallise class differences between characters, such as in the 2011 international success Intouchables. Also, as John Kristian Sanaker has remarked, situations in which multilingualism functions as an element of realism may, paradoxically, work to silence speakers of non-dominant languages (2008: 150), favouring a linguistic ‘in-group’ (Delabastita and Grutman 2005: 174). A key example of this is Julien Duvivier’s Pépé le Moko (1937), in which a Parisian gangster takes cover in an Algiers kasbah. In the absence of an interpreter, the many Arabic-speaking inhabitants of the kasbah cannot communicate with the French protagonists and therefore find themselves allotted no dialogue beyond background chatter. Likewise, multilingualism as cultural ‘flavour’ often results in a relegation of non-dominant language dialogue to secondary, accessory or artificial passages, often unsubtitled, which function more as auditory decoration than as meaningful communication. This, of course, implicates the language at play in these situations in a linguistic hierarchy which positions the film’s dominant language (French) as more important, complex and meaningful than the film’s secondary languages. Nonetheless, despite the lingering shadow of power in these examples, these representations of multilingualism remain distinct from those of interest to this book. The function of multilingualism in this study is not as exotic speech, decorative noise or humorous chatter, but as a crucial narrative element, a tool and a strategy for wresting, maintaining and redistributing power among characters. Multilingualism in contemporary French cinema is valorising, legitimising, empowering.

The multilingual corpus Contemporary French multilingual cinema contains a plethora of films composed of multiple languages. Postcarding is still a phenomenon which appears in the contemporary era, but strategic and meaningful multilingualism has overtaken superficial renderings of language difference. The eight films which make up the corpus of this book are some of the most complex, illustrative and revealing contemporary multilingual films. Indeed, each explores the politics of

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28

Decentring France

multilingualism and power in unique and profound ways.4 Part of the justification for selecting these eight films as a primary corpus is related to the films’ critical and commercial reception. It is important that the films under examination are not minor, neglected or marginal films; each represented an important film event in France, either in relation to box office success, film festival circulation or recognition from critics or awards ceremonies. Un prophète, Welcome and Entre les murs each drew more than a million box office entries. Polisse garnered a substantial 2,306,000, making it the eighteenth highest-grossing film in France in 2011; and Des hommes et des dieux drew a massive 3,159,866, fourteenth of all films for the year 2010. Naturally, some films experienced greater financial success than others, yet each had a significant impact on the French cinematic landscape. Not only have each of the key case studies in Figure 2 Number of multilingual films nominated, Prix César 14

12 10 8 6

4 2

0 1970

1975

1980

1985

1990

1995

2000

2005

2010

2015

Figure 3 Number of multilingual films nominated, Prix Louis Delluc

2020



8

7

6

5 4 3 2 1

0 1975

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1980

1985

1990

1995

2000

2005

2010

2015

2020



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Introduction

29

this book attained impressive box office numbers in France, they have also attracted considerable critical praise. The two most prestigious French film awards are the Césars (founded 1976) and the Prix Louis Delluc (founded 1937). As shown in Figures 2 and 3, the number of multilingual films awarded at these ceremonies has swelled in the contemporary era. Part of what makes these films relevant is this reception: each struck a chord with French audiences and critics. Accompanied by their commercial and sociocultural success, this critical influence establishes the corpus as a collection of high-profile, ‘successful’ French films. Figure 4 is a breakdown of the eight films’ critical success in France and in the most prestigious international film award arenas; the Cannes Film Festival, the BAFTAs, the Venice and Berlin film festivals and the Best Foreign Language Film award at the Academy Awards. The choice of a multilingual film for nomination for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar is particularly telling, as the film has been selected by France to represent the best French cinema has to offer. Film Polisse

Entre les murs Un prophète

Césars

Delluc

Lumière

2 wins 2 wins +10 +4 noms. noms. 1 win Nom. 2 wins +4 noms. +2 noms. 9 wins Win 2 wins +3 noms. +2 noms.

Cannes

Prix du jury +5 noms. Palme d’or Nom. Grand Prix Nom. +10 noms.

Des 3 wins Nom. 2 wins Grand Prix hommes et + 8 noms. +2 noms. + des dieux runner-up Palme d’or Dheepan 9 noms. 2 noms. Palme d’or La Graine 4 wins Win 2 wins et le mulet +1 nom. +1 nom.

Welcome

10 noms. Nom.

1 win +4 noms.

London River

Oscars Euro Film

1 win +1 nom. 2 wins +2 noms. 2 noms.

1 win

Other

BAFTA 1 win +1 nom. BAFTA 1 nom.

Venice Silver Lion +5 wins +1 nom. Berlinale 2 wins Berlinale Silver Bear +2 noms.

Figure 4 Awards, primary corpus

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30  Decentring France These films are thus important contributions to the French cinema of the twenty-first century. As the preceding data show, they have made a considerable impact on the cinematic landscape in France.Yet beyond their ostensible commercial and critical success, these films are also valuable for the ways they interpret the linguistic complexity of our ‘multiscalar, polycentric world of signs and symbols’ (Kramsch 2012: 123). Language use in such films is not simply a matter of convenience, and French (or any Western tongue) is not the only language of value. Instead, contemporary French multilingual films use language difference to articulate tensions between colonial and postcolonial France, between French and other, between the mythical concept of a monocultural France and the complex reality of the contemporary globalised universe. As this book will reveal, in such films, the possibilities for using multilingualism as a tool and an asset are endless.

Notes 1 These include nationalities of cast and crew, locations of shooting and editing and, most importantly, languages used. 2 See Appendix A. 3 Chion’s pioneering research on the role of the auditory (ambient sound, music and language) in film has contributed to laying the groundwork for sustained studies of film dialogue, a historically maligned object of study compared to the dominance of ‘visucentric’ studies (2003, 2005). 4 While none of the eight case studies are from 2005, many of the multilingual films released in that year will be referenced throughout this book.

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2 A brief history of multilingualism in  French cinema

F

rench multilingual cinema is primarily a contemporary pheno­­ menon. Not only have vastly more multilingual films been released in France since 2005 than in any earlier period, but a far greater number of contemporary films engage with multilingualism in profound ways than ever before. Multilingualism is a central aspect of these films’ dialogues and narratives. However, it would be misleading to present multilingual cinema as a phenomenon invented in the twenty-first century. The twentieth century may have seen comparatively few French films featuring other languages, yet multilingual films have in fact existed since the advent of sound cinema. True, very few French films with multilingual dialogue represent multiple language use as a means of exerting social power (Jean Renoir’s 1937 La Grande Illusion being a key exception). Likewise, few go beyond simple linguistic realism to explore the philosophical and social ramifications of using multilingualism and translation. Before the 1980s, languages typically associated with migration and the Third World, such as Arabic or other African languages, were practically non-existent on the French screen. When they began to appear in notable proportions from 1985 onwards, they were invariably represented as disadvantaging and problematic for their speakers. In these and many other ways, the multilingual films of the twentieth century sit in stark contrast to the more socially progressive representations of multilingualism that characterise the French cinema of the contemporary period. Nonetheless, multilingual cinema still has a long history in France. Languages other than French have cropped up intermittently in French film, from the pacifist political leanings of the interwar period, through the fragmented film movements of the 1950s to the 1970s, the Anglocentric cinéma du look trend and Arabocentric beur cinema movement, up to the early twenty-first century. Across all of these time periods, the European and broader international practice of co-production and cross-cultural collaboration has contributed to the growth of multilingual film in complex ways. Each period has its specific sociocultural, linguistic and political concerns, which are

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32  Decentring France reflected in the ways in which other languages – and the tensions between French and other languages – are represented on-screen.

(Co-)production contexts With its national funding body (the CNC), national film promotion centres (UniFrance), government-mandated financial support from major television networks (Canal+) and EU funding programmes (Eurimages), the French film world has a strong connection with the national cultural economy and government. Indeed, since 1959, the CNC has run a lucrative funding programme known as the Avance sur recettes, which collects taxes on box office tickets, television rights and video sales, and redirects the funds back into financing French films. First-time and independent filmmakers in particular are unlikely to be able to finance their projects without government assistance through CNC funding. Gaumont and Pathé have been staple film production companies since just after the advent of the cinématographe at the turn of the twentieth century. However, Hollywood-style, self-funded production companies in France barely extend beyond Luc Besson’s huge Warner Brothers-affiliated studio, EuropaCorp. In fact, huge television production companies like Canal+ are generally higher earners in France than film studios. Indeed, Canal+’s rights to show certain French films on television are dependent on their funnelling funding back into the French film production system, via taxes and their affiliated film production company, Studio Canal. Perhaps more so than any other country, French cinema and French cultural government bodies are inextricably linked. Considering this robust network that connects filmmakers, production companies, taxes and government subsidies, the growth of multilingual French cinema is impacted by French film policy (co-)production practices and public funding schemes. There has never been an official ban, nor an official financial discouragement, on producing films in multiple languages in France. French cinema does not impose official linguistic quotas on films specifying a specific required proportion of French, unlike other French-speaking regions like Québec, where films must include at least 50 per cent French dialogue (Marshall 2001: 87), as a form of linguistic and cultural preservation. Instead, film policy regulations and the broader French cinematic climate have grown increasingly favourable towards multilingual film production. A number of funding bodies have been established by the CNC which explicitly support film projects whose dialogue, cast or crew contain significant multicultural elements. In particular, the CNC’s Aide aux cinémas du monde funding scheme, introduced in 2010, exists

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Multilingualism in French cinema  33 solely to assist in the creation of transnational and multilingual cinema, and as of 2014 had funded projects in connection with seventy-three countries (Burgin, McGregor and Nettelbeck 2014: 403). Though it was absorbed along with the Fonds Sud Cinéma fund into the Aide aux cinémas du monde in 2012, the previous CNC scheme, Aide aux films en langue étrangère, was even more directly aimed at funding multilingual film projects. The EU-wide Eurimages network also exists to encourage film projects across European borders and thus in multiple European languages. The official contracts of co-­productions, through which France and at least one other country create a film in collaboration, also implicitly promote multilingualism through their multinationality. Though many co-production agreements exist between France and other francophone countries such as Burkina Faso, Canada, Luxembourg and Senegal, which may result in films with French-only dialogue, there has been no explicit preference for co-productions between France and francophone countries over others. Indeed, two of its most frequent collaborators are the UK and Australia. The logical result is a range of linguistically diverse films, including films produced with francophone countries that feature multiple languages within their borders, such as the Wolof-speaking Senegal. The development of this array of co-production agreements, cultural prizes, funding schemes and international film circulation bodies has undoubtedly contributed to creating a cinematic environment in which multilingual film production has become increasingly possible, and indeed desirable, on a critical and commercial level. To illustrate this shift towards supporting multilingual film production in France, Appendix B outlines every change to the French film policy and production world that has facilitated and even explicitly encouraged multilingual film production in France. These agreements and funds also appear to reflect a linguicentric ideology shared by a number of multilingual filmmakers. For example, Philippe Lioret has mentioned anecdotally that he would have been willing to include far more English dialogue in Welcome had the storyline required it, while Christian Carion has stated that he would have refused to make Joyeux Noël, had he been forced to do so solely in French. In fact, due to Carion’s insistence on making Joyeux Noël in French, English, German and Latin, the lingua franca on set became English, a language Carion does not speak fluently, a fact that reinforces the importance of language to the film. Yet despite these encouraging developments in French cinema policy, there remains a lingering tendency to prioritise the French language over others in French film production. This may be partly due to the fact that much film funding remains under the control

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34  Decentring France of private film companies such as Gaumont, Pathé, Wild Bunch and Studio Canal (who are not held to the same level of transparency as the CNC and whose agendas are not made public). However, the CNC retains a considerable role in the fate of film projects, especially directors’ first films or small-budget projects. The primary means by which film projects are assessed for CNC funding is still the standard Agrément de production scheme. Application for this scheme involves submitting a complex series of documents outlining the details of the planned project, which tend to be the kinds of films most frequently concerned with the dynamics of multilingualism. In response to the information provided in these forms, a film is assessed and assigned a score which determines its level of eligibility for CNC financial ­assistance. Although the word is never explicitly used in this process, the score effectively refers to a film’s ‘Frenchness’: the questions revolve not only around budgetary issues, but also nationality of cast and crew, filming locations and, most importantly, languages included. This could be seen to implicitly discourage incorporation of multilingual dialogue in order to qualify for increased funding. Extensive research and enquiry during the preparation of this book turned up no data on preferences for monolingual French projects, or any official or unofficial language quotas, held by the CNC or used in their assessment of Agrément de production schemes. Nonetheless, numerous scholars have highlighted the imperfect nature of this system: according to Ian Christie, ‘it is easy to question and even ridicule such criteria, with points awarded for the nationality of director, writer, composer, and the like. But the provision of substantial tax concessions and subsidies clearly requires objective criteria’ (2013: 24). The changes to the CNC and French cinematic economy as a whole shown in Appendix B, however, contribute to combating this issue and it can be argued that French cinema as an industry is growing more sympathetic to multicultural and multilingual film on a production level.

Struggling with sound By definition, the silent period cannot truly be considered to have grappled with issues of multilingual dialogue. Nonetheless, it would be simplistic to dismiss silent cinema as languageless, or cinema’s struggle with the dilemma of linguistic rendering as beginning only with the incorporation of audible speech. In his seminal research into film sound, Un art sonore, le cinéma (2003), Michel Chion rejects the very label of ‘silent cinema’, proposing the alternative ‘le cinéma sourd’ (‘deaf cinema’: 11). In ‘deaf cinema’, characters are not mute,

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Multilingualism in French cinema  35 but can be seen speaking profusely, addressing other characters and reacting to one another’s words. The soundtrack may not transmit the sounds of speech, yet speech is far from absent from these films. In deaf cinema, auditory dialogue is replaced with written intertitles, interspersed between scenes, which summarise the characters’ supposed words. This renders it easy to transfer the film across languages, requiring only a translation of the intertitles to repackage the film for a new linguistic audience. Chion warns of the risks of considering these films as unconcerned with linguistic plurality (12–13). For example, many silent film images are peppered with written language (signs, letters, labels, etc.) which, while either universally comprehensible or translated through intertitles, can create an element of internationality or multilinguality in the translated version. Nonetheless, rhetoric on the potential of film from the period touts the ability of cinema to transcend cultural and linguistic boundaries and thus function as a form of super-code or universal language: Promoters were quick to recognise the benefits of couching the cinema’s internationalism in terms of its democratic and diplomatic potential. This emphasis upon unity and togetherness advanced the notion that the cinema was actively traversing geographic and economic or class barriers. A particularly potent metaphor emerged whereby silent cinema was understood to speak a universal, non-verbal language and to exist therefore in a realm beyond translation. (Dwyer 2005: 301)

Early cinema historians had great hopes for the medium of film to function ‘as a universal language that would undo the curse of Babel and unite humanity in the shared idiom of the image’ (Cronin 2013: 743). In a tense political climate reeling from (and mobilising for) world war, the curse of the Tower of Babel revealing its worst consequences, the medium of cinema presented an opportunity for a unifying and pacifying art form. Critics, politicians and even filmmakers like D. W. Griffith pinned high hopes on this medium as a potential peacemaking device, one which transcended language barriers and appealed to disparate cultural groups equally (Serna 2014: 124). Yet with the advent of technology that allowed for audible dialogue in the late 1920s, the concept of film as a ‘universal language’ in itself was eroded. In its wake came the challenge of rendering cinema across languages, and the need to consider the sociocultural ramifications of a cinema that could talk. The early days of sound cinema saw filmmakers adopt a number of strategies for negotiating the new challenge of language. Many early sound films did not include entire sequences of dialogue, but combined audible speech with intertitles, musical sequences and the

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36  Decentring France exaggerated, mime-infused acting styles of silent film performances. As films transitioned further into fully-fledged sound projects, the strategy of the Multiple Language Version (MLV) arose: a short-lived, expensive and extremely labour-intensive practice of remaking an entire film, using the same sets but different casts, in order to create films in a number of languages (see Vincendeau 1988). In such early films, multilingual dialogue within the one film went against what the MLV represented. As a result, despite the philosophical concerns surrounding the cinema and language, until the 1930s, in France and abroad, cinema remained almost solely monolingual.

Between the World Wars The first period of French cinema history to produce a noteworthy selection of multilingual films is the prolific inter-war period of the 1930s. Reeling from the shock of the First World War and in the shadow of the impending Second World War, this cinematic period saw the release of a number of pacifist films depicting Franco-German (and some other Western European) friendships or love affairs. A key example is Julien Duvivier’s 1932 Allô, Berlin? Ici Paris! in which two young telephone operators, a French woman and a German man, fall in love across languages and phone lines. In a similar vein, Victor Trivas’s 1931 English, French, German and Yiddish-language No Man’s Land tells the tale of a group of French, English, Russian Jewish and German soldiers who must work together to survive when they are trapped in a dugout between trenches. The 1931 FrancoGerman co-production La Tragédie de la mine (Georg Wilhelm Pabst), about a group of trapped French and German miners, followed in No Man’s Land’s footsteps. Pabst’s following film, L’Atlantide (1932), also featured French and German dialogue. However, perhaps the most striking example of multilingual interwar French cinema is Jean Renoir’s 1937 First World War prisoner-of-war film La Grande Illusion, in which ‘language differences are a cause and a symbol of non-communication from the start’ (O’Shaughnessy 2000: 128). In La Grande Illusion, almost equal parts of English, French and German, with an excerpt or two of Russian and some references to Latin, are spoken. Michaël Abecassis remarks upon the centrality of language in Renoir’s film: Jean Renoir has exploited the issue of plurilingualism in La Grande Illusion. The film takes place in a multilingual environment where … language difference and degrees of formality and informality in the camps establish codes between the speakers that create distance, tension and lack of understanding or, on the contrary, a sense of solidarity. (2010: 43)

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Multilingualism in French cinema  37 Indeed, the complex web of Western European languages lies at the heart of the film. Leo Braudy has also evoked the way in which Renoir’s film foregrounds issues of language difference, suggesting that the La Grande Illusion implicitly promotes multilingualism, and criticises monolingualism in turn: The way Boeldieu and Rauffenstein easily converse in French, German and English is favorably contrasted with the way Maréchal fruitlessly tries to tell the [monolingual] English officer of the French escape tunnel. (1989: 125)

Released five years later than the friendship tales of Allô, Berlin? Ici Paris!, No Man’s Land and La Tragédie de la mine, La Grande Illusion debuted in a much more divisive and loaded political landscape than Duvivier, Trivas and Pabst’s films. Banned by the Nazi occupied forces in France, its director forced to flee to the safety of the USA, La Grande Illusion remains one of the most reflective and complex films about multilingual interaction of the twentieth century, one which showcases the centrality of language in scenarios of intercultural conflict and cooperation. As Alison Smith points out, Renoir’s infamous 1937 film acts as a precursor and reference point for a number of wartime-set contemporary multilingual French films (2010). These include Carion’s Joyeux Noël (2005) and L’Affaire Farewell (2009), as well as the 2010 films about the ‘Vél d’Hiv’ Paris round-up of non-French Jews during the Holocaust, La Rafle (Rose Bosch) and Elle s’appelait Sarah (Gilles Paquet-Brenner). These pacifist Franco-German films of the 1930s were shaped and funded by the newly approved wave of co-production agreements. A strategy for uniting European film against the perceived economic and cultural threat of Hollywood cinema, co-productions increased exponentially in the aftermath of the First World War (Celestin 2013: 31). In fact, this early period of cinema continues to influence contemporary film through its promotion of European co-production strategies. In this way, the contemporary climate, which also promotes collaborative European cinema, owes much to the pioneering efforts of the co-production era of the 1930s.

The 1950s and 1960s With the cultural lockdown and censorship laws of the Occupation and the parallel flourishing of Hollywood, French cinema was crippled by the Second World War. When film production started up again in 1946 (not coincidentally, the year the CNC was established), the challenges of the war remained at the forefront of France’s

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38  Decentring France cultural – and cinematic – consciousness. As a means of dealing with post-Second World War trauma and rupture, in a similar vein to the Franco-German friendship films of the 1930s, the 1950s and 1960s saw a small number of light-hearted comedies and parodies which played with the comedic value of miscommunication between European languages. Frequently, these films emphasised friendship between people of different European nationalities, despite their linguistic differences. These include the enormously popular La Grande Vadrouille (Gérard Oury 1966), which recounts the story of a motley collection of French, English and German soldiers attempting to shirk their responsibilities during the Second World War. Such was its popularity that La Grande Vadrouille remained the largest French box office hit in France for many decades, until the 2008 release of another multilingual buddy comedy, Bienvenue chez les Ch’tis (Dany Boon). In the 1950s, certain popular gangster thrillers flirted with dialogue in English or Italian, such as Massacre en dentelles (André Hunebelle 1952), L’Ennemi public numéro 1 (Henri Verneuil 1953) or Du rififi chez les hommes (Jules Dassin 1955). Other successful multilingual films of the period include cult crime tales like the English, French and German-language Les Tontons flingueurs (1963 Georges Lautner) and Henri-Georges Clouzot’s 1953 Le Salaire de la peur, which includes dialogue in English, French, German, Italian, Russian and Spanish. Despite the resounding success of films like La Grande Vadrouille, the most defining film movement of the late 1950s and the 1960s was that of the nouvelle vague. Rupturing with the glossy, high-budget productions of the preceding years, the nouvelle vague rejected studio sets for outdoor and real-life settings, artificial lighting for natural light, fixed cameras for frenetic handheld movement and static theatrical cinematography for emotive new strategies like jump cuts and improvised dialogue. Several filmmakers from the period demonstrated interest in the tension between languages, including Eric Rohmer (La Collectionneuse 1967), Louis Malle (Zazie dans le métro 1960), Alain Resnais (La Guerre est finie 1966) and François Truffaut (Jules et Jim 1962). However, the most prominent nouvelle vague filmmaker, Jean-Luc Godard, is particularly known for his interest in linguistic themes. Godard’s seventh feature film, Bande à part (1964) features a number of scenes in an English-language classroom, the 1960 A bout de souffle’s female protagonist is American, and the quadrilingual dialogue of the Brigitte Bardot star vehicle Le Mépris is frequently unsubtitled, being translated diegetically by way of an English, French, German and Italian-speaking interpreter. Across his decades-long career, Godard has directed seventeen films which feature languages

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Multilingualism in French cinema  39 other than French, ranging from other Western European languages to far Eastern European, Asian and African ones). Godard’s interest in multilingualism began in the 1960s, but continues to the present day, with films like 2004’s Notre musique, 2010’s Film socialisme and 2014’s Ponts de Sarajevo. These three films in particular are worthy of mention for the sheer number of languages they feature between them: Arabic, Bosnian, Catalan, English, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Romanian, Russian, Serbo-Croatian and Spanish.

The 1970s For the most part, the 1970s was a quiet decade for multilingual cinema. Perhaps the most important film of the period was CostaGavras’s French and Greek-language political thriller Z (1969). Z presents an example of what Lukas Bleichenbacher calls ‘linguistic replacement, in which dialogue is rendered in a certain language, where, logically, other languages would have been used by the fictional characters’ (2008: 179). The film includes a Greek director, Greek actors, Greek filming locations and a Greek historical context, based on a true Greek story. Yet the vast majority of the film’s dialogue is in French, with no diegetic acknowledgement of this fact. The only Greek dialogue is some ambient chatter and background bouzouki music. There is even mention of France as a foreign country, yet French remains the film’s dominant language, in place of the more logical language of Greek; a choice that remains unexplained. This use of linguistic replacement recalls Bleichenbacher’s analysis of Roman Polanski’s The Pianist (2002), in which the American actor Adrien Brody is unproblematically represented as a Polish Jew, and in which the use of English by all ‘Polish’ and ‘German’ characters (excepting some ambient dialogue and street signs) is both unbroken and unmentioned (2008: 190). Costa-Gavras’s later films, including 2002’s Amen and 2008’s Eden à l’ouest (in which a fake language is concocted from reversed French, so the migrant protagonist can retain an anonymous, almost mythical ‘Eastern’ identity), are much more interested in the power of languages, and the politics of multilingual interaction. Yet Z’s treatment of language is comparatively shallow. Another notable example from the 1970s is Bernardo Bertolucci’s French and English-language drama Le Dernier Tango à Paris (1972), known most widely by its English-language title Last Tango in Paris. This film, controversial for its frank depiction of sexuality, features many examples of seemingly neutral, arbitrary or innocuous codeswitching. Each protagonist understands and can communicate to

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40  Decentring France some degree in both English and French, yet the American male lead, Paul, is more comfortable in English, while the French female lead, Jeanne, prefers to speak French. Bertolucci enjoys underlining that each character has an idiosyncratic accent in the other language, making minor mistakes which amuse the other character. Many scenes involve Paul speaking entirely in English, and Jeanne responding entirely in French. Thus code-switching, which occurs throughout the film, is casual and practical, and not associated with power. By contrast, while France did not produce much linguicentric cinema during this time, a much more linguistically rich, partly French-supported, African cinema flourished in the 1970s. West African directors such as the Senegalese Ousmane Sembene, the first African filmmaker to gain substantial recognition in France, produced a modest range of films featuring French and African languages during this period. For example, in Sembene’s 1975 Xala, characters not only speak Wolof, but the protagonist’s adolescent daughter, the film’s moral compass, refuses to speak any other language. She scorns French as the language of Western evils and defers to her native language as a matter of pride. Sembene’s other linguistically diverse films from the period include Mandabi (1968, French/Wolof), Emitaï (1971, French/Wolof) and Ceddo (1977, with no French and in Arabic, English and Wolof). It would be a long time, however, before languages like Wolof began to take on similar roles in France. A similarly political filmmaker, Algerian actor-director Med Hondo’s postcolonial cinema of the 1970s combines French and Arabic, such as in his 1970 Soleil O and 1974 Les ‘Bicots-nègres’ vos voisins (each co-produced by France and Mauritania). Hondo’s later film Sarraounia (1986, co-produced by Burkina Faso, France and Mauritania) is also noteworthy for its representation of highly marginalised languages which have been barely heard in French cinema: Dyula (a Mandé language of Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire and Mali) and Peul, or Fula, a language spoken in various dialects across vast swathes of Central and Western Africa. While these films often feature scenes set in France and themes of French (de)colonisation, filmmakers like Sembene and Mondo identify their work as primarily African. However, as Alice Burgin has explored in her work into French financing of francophone West African cinema (2012), there persists a strong financial and cultural link between the French filmmaking system and the cinema of French-speaking African countries.

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Multilingualism in French cinema  41

Le cinéma du look The 1980s movement of the cinéma du look, with its slick soundtracks, blending of high and low art, disillusioned young protagonists and glossy surface aesthetics, occasionally delved into representations of language difference. However, this did not often extend beyond brief sequences of English dialogue. Jean-Jacques Beineix’s thriller Diva (1981), for one, features an American opera singer touring through Paris who code-switches between French and English. Léos Carax’s oeuvre also features some sequences in English, such as in the 1984 Boy Meets Girl. The transition of such prominent French directors of the period as Luc Besson (The Fifth Element 1997) and Jean-Pierre Jeunet (Alien: Resurrection 1997) into Hollywood cinema in the 1990s, a transition Isabelle Vanderschelden sees as being ‘from national to postnational’ (2008: 92) provides further evidence of the impact of English on this era of filmmaking. Before making the move to his later Hollywood films, however, Besson experimented with language difference in his cult Le Grand Bleu (1988) and his following film La Femme Nikita (1990). While le cinéma du look was a key moment in the development of twentieth-century French cinema in general, it remains one of the less diverse and experimental periods for multilingual filmmaking. Nonetheless, these directors have continued to evolve as they have moved into the contemporary period: while Beineix has dropped out of the film scene, his last feature being Mortel transfert in 2001, both Carax and Besson have continued to direct multilingual French films. In 2012, Carax’s surrealist fever dream Holy Motors experimented with English, French and Mandarin dialogue. Released two years later, Besson’s Scarlett Johansson vehicle Lucy, a sci-fi action thriller set between Taiwan and Paris, includes English, French, German, Italian and Mandarin dialogue. Despite the film’s racist overtones, and unfortunate misrendering of Chinese script, Lucy treats multilingualism, and specifically the value of speaking English, as a central narrative element. Significantly, both Holy Motors and Lucy enjoyed high-profile receptions. Holy Motors drew more critical praise, while Lucy dominated the French and international box offices, its Hollywood success largely attributable to the presence of Johansson and Hollywood veteran Morgan Freeman. Indeed, Lucy became the most financially successful French film export in history, mostly due to its success in the USA. In Vanderschelden’s view, Besson’s multilingual films ‘combine national, international and “postnational” elements, at production and textual level, and deliberately link nations and

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42  Decentring France cultures, rather than simply erasing cultural specificity’ (2008: 98). Therefore, while le cinéma du look only tentatively dabbled in multilingualism, its leading directors have since contributed important multilingual films to French cinema, all the while retaining many of the distinct aesthetic impulses of the 1980s movement in their newer work.

Beur and banlieue cinema During the 1980s and 1990s, French cinema saw a marked increase in film production by Franco-Maghrebi directors (first- and particularly second-generation North African immigrants in France). Such films are mostly situated on the periphery of French cities, in the working-class projects known as banlieues, and focus critical attention on themes of cultural isolation, social discrimination and economic disadvantage, as well as overt instances of racism or crime. While identified as two individual film trends, the beur and banlieue film share many characteristics. Beur cinema generally refers to films directed by filmmakers of Franco-Maghrebin background or origin, with narratives focused on the experience of North African migrants and their children on French soil. Banlieue cinema, by comparison, encompasses films set in the fractured outer urban environments of French housing projects, known as HLM (habitations à loyer modéré) or banlieues. As many beur communities inhabit banlieue environments, many films fall under both categories. However, the label is important when distinguishing between films that do not share both characteristics, such as La Faute à Voltaire (2001), a beur film set in inner Paris and filmed by the Franco-Maghrebin Abdellatif Kechiche, or La Haine (1995), a banlieue film set in an HLM but directed by white French filmmaker Mathieu Kassovitz. Films from these cinéma de banlieue and cinéma beur movements, with their ‘thematisations of imposed exile’ (Bloom 2006: 133), often feature (albeit brief) excerpts of typically migrant languages such as Arabic and, in the twenty-first century, Bambara, Berber and other African languages. None of these languages featured in any significant way in French-made films before this period, with multilingualism mostly confined to Western European languages up until the mid 1980s. The movement thus brought the Maghrebin and migrant voice to French cinema for practically the first time. Dayna Oscherwitz explains the historical significance of the cinéma beur movement in her 2010 book Past Forward: French Cinema and the Postcolonial Heritage:

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Multilingualism in French cinema  43 Beur films have reinserted the history of colonialism and immigration into the national past. These films also attempt to restructure or redefine collective identity, linking it to local and regional rather than national spaces. (12)

Changes in this period led to a considerable increase in French cinematic explorations of the Maghrebi immigrant experience, the exposure of multilingual Franco-Maghrebi actors, the portrayal of Maghrebi cultural practices and the representation of multilingual dialogue. Such pioneering beur and banlieue multilingual films as Mehdi Charef’s Le Thé au harem d’Archimède (1985) and Gérard Blain’s Pierre et Djamila (1987) cast a critical eye over the figurative and literal margins of the French metropolis. Primarily confined to the multicultural fringe communities of the subsidised housing flats of the banlieue, these films place issues of cultural and linguistic diversity under the microscope. While the quantity of multilingual dialogue in these films is limited, languages other than French are consistently represented as emblematic of intercultural conflict and the fragmented experience of identity, particularly of second-generation immigrants, torn between the influence of their parents’ native North Africa and the pull of the youth culture of their country of birth. Beur and banlieue films of the mid 1980s and 1990s rarely, if ever, represent a multiplicity of languages in the same way as contemporary multilingual films. Certainly, as Cristina Johnston states, in beur and banlieue film, ‘language has a key role to play in the construction and expression of ethnic identities, a role which has an impact not only within individual speech communities, or within the boundaries of the nation state, but also in a transnational and globalised context’ (2010a: 39). Yet where contemporary French multilingual films often present typically marginalised languages such as Arabic as tools for harnessing power, such languages in beur and banlieue films are invariably represented as disempowered and disempowering. The majority of these films are in fact bilingual rather than multilingual, and predominantly feature combinations of French and informal Arabic. Nonetheless, this cinematic movement is relevant not only for lending a platform to African languages for the first time, but for its engagement with issues of language and power, albeit in a very different way. Foreign-language use in such films is an emblem of non-belonging, of foreignness and disenfranchisement; as Carrie Tarr writes, ‘language is a source of conflict’ (2005: 35). The young protagonists of these films frequently deny their knowledge of languages other than French, or restrict their use to the sphere of the home, favouring the more socially acceptable language of French in the

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44  Decentring France public domain. Multiple language use is rejected by the young male protagonists who dominate these storylines, as in films like La Haine (Mathieu Kassovitz 1995), Douce France (Malik Chibane 1995) and Hexagone (Malik Chibane 1994). Some radical films go so far as to represent foreign-language use as an ailment or social virus, such as in the neo-surrealist Un vampire au paradis (Abdelkrim Bahloul 1992). From such varied films as Le Thé au harem d’Archimède to Inch’Allah dimanche (Yamina Benguigui 2001), native North African tongues are spoken most often, and with the greatest pleasure, by the least integrated and least independent members of the family; usually the first-generation immigrant mother. Salih Akin even identifies a direct correlation between acquisition of the French language and personal freedom for Zouina, the protagonist of Inch’Allah dimanche: ‘the more she learns French, the more independent she gets to be in her life … the inversion of power in the film is thus presented as a consequence of learning French’ (2010: 121). Nevertheless, some beur and banlieue films, such as Wesh-wesh, qu’est-ce qui se passe? (Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche 2001), Samia (Philippe Faucon 2000) and 100% Arabica (Mahmoud Zemmouri 1997), present increasingly favourable depictions of language difference. Samia and other films in particular represent young female protagonists as enjoying a more positive relationship with language diversity than their male counterparts, both speaking French and embracing their parents’ native language. These female-centred films deal with multiple languages: in Karin Albou’s 2005 La Petite Jérusalem, the ambitious protagonist Laura embraces her Hebrew language use along with her Jewish origins. Other recent beur and banlieue films, such as Merzak Allouache’s Bab el web (2005), in which the Algerian protagonist communicates with international women through an online chat room, draw astute connections between multilingualism and globalisation practices, in particular the rise of the Internet and the subsequent communication age. Yet the beur and banlieue films of the late twentieth century mostly represent languages other than French as implicated in enduring postcolonial hierarchies, in which the dominant language is incontestably French. Alongside the cinéma beur and cinéma de banlieue movements, the 1990s also saw the release of several multilingual films which featured stories about European movement. These include Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Franco-Polish La Double Vie de Véronique in 1991 and his 1993–94 Trois couleurs trilogy (Trois couleurs: bleu (1993), Trois couleurs: blanc (1994) and Trois couleurs: rouge (1994)). Others are Luc Besson’s La Femme Nikita and Olivier Assayas’s Irma Vep (1996).

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Multilingualism in French cinema  45

The twenty-first century The twentieth-century trends detailed above were followed by a number of multilingual films in the early years of the twenty-first century. From 2000 onwards, the beginnings of contemporary multilingual cinema can be observed in the oeuvre of a number of critically and commercially acclaimed filmmakers. While issues of multilingualism and power dynamics are less observable in these early twenty-first-century examples, these films are noteworthy for their increased representation of foreign-language dialogue (with many films including five or six distinct languages) and their foregrounding of themes of multiculturalism, globalisation and the challenge of negotiating language barriers. One of the most prominent of these filmmakers is the Austrianborn Michael Haneke, who films and produces many of his projects in France. In his multilingual films, Haneke shows an interest in ‘the failure of communication in modern multicultural cities’ (James 2001: 1), through which he explores the breakdown of nations, borders, cultural identity and the self. His multilingual films are characterised by unintelligibility, incommunicability and the incapacity to bridge the void between nations, cultures and individuals. Language, or multilingualism, is less of a resource in these films and more of a challenge. For Haneke, linguistic diversity is often not a bridge, but a wall. A key example of Haneke’s multilingual French cinema is Code inconnu: récit incomplet de divers voyages (2001), a film comprising Arabic, English, French, French Sign Language, German, Mandinka, Romanian and Romany. In Code inconnu, characters fail to interact, share experiences and create a meaningful bond with one another. With its mix of French and eight other languages, the film represents the metropolis of ‘Paris as a porous, transnational space’ (Tarr 2007c: 66), but also as a locus of paradoxical isolation. Likewise, in Haneke’s 2001 La Pianiste and 2005 Caché, the various multicultural characters are thwarted, divided and alienated in their dealings with others, which take place in Arabic, French and German. In the same vein, his 2003 film Le Temps du loup follows a broken family stranded in a rural landscape in the wake of an unnamed apocalyptic disaster. Le Temps du loup captures ‘the place of language in the experience of displacement’ (Mamula 2013: 2), a persistent characteristic of Haneke’s cinema. Throughout the film, the family fails in all attempts to gain information, support and meaning from those around them, despite attempts to communicate in French, German and Romanian. While Haneke’s cinema is quick to recognise the increasing multilinguality of contemporary France, his films rarely represent language

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46  Decentring France ­difference as empowering. Instead, he shows it to be a source of conflict and a site of ontological loss. Another key player in multilingual French cinema of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries is the prolific and critically esteemed Claire Denis. Of French origin but raised in francophone Africa, Denis deals in complex and sensitive ways with issues of postcoloniality, intercultural identity, culture clash and the experience of multilingualism in a fractured and globalised universe. Having begun her filmmaking career in the late 1980s with the Cameroon-based Chocolat (1988), Denis cemented her reputation with her Djibouti-set story of French Foreign Legion soldiers in Beau travail (1999), a film composed of dialogue in French, Russian and Italian. Denis continues to film in both France and various African countries, while also delving into representations of disparate cultures such as that of Russia, parts of South-East Asia and the South Pacific (as in her 2004 film L’Intrus, set in France, Switzerland, South Korea and French Polynesia). Her films are inherently transnational, not only in terms of production but of narrative, ‘prob[ing] the liminal space between self and other and the borderlands between one nation and another’ (McMahon 2008: 463). L’Intrus, a film whose characters constantly traverse national borders, is dominated by combinations of multilingual speech in English, French, French Polynesian dialect, Korean and Russian. Her 2002 cannibalism study Trouble Every Day is punctuated with English speech and her more contemporary multilingual films include 35 Rhums (2008, French and German) and Les Salauds (2013, English and French). Thus, language remains a central impulse in Denis’s work. Haneke and Denis’s cinemas are similarly defined by themes of displacement, isolation and linguistic and cultural clash, often superimposed with a mournful, contemplative soundtrack and tone. The early twenty-first century, however, also features films of a more lighthearted and comedic nature. For example, Cédric Klapisch’s popular L’Auberge Espagnole (2002) is an essential multilingual film from the period, depicting a Barcelonan household of Western European university students, who speak in Castilian Spanish, Catalan, Danish, English, French, German and Italian. Klapisch has since released two sequels to L’Auberge Espagnole: Les Poupées russes (2005), which adds the less occidental European language of Russian to the mix, and Casse-tête chinois (2013), which relocates the characters to the cosmopolitan anglophone metropolis of New York City, and adds Chinese characters and dialogue. This period onwards also saw the release of a number of ‘omnibus’ films, in which a number of shorts by different directors are edited

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Multilingualism in French cinema  47 together into a full-length production. These include the 2004 Visions d’Europe (Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Italian, Lithuanian, Luxembourgish, Maltese, Polish, Portuguese, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish), the 2006 Paris, je t’aime (Arabic, English, French, Mandarin, Spanish) and the 2007 Chacun son cinéma (Danish, English, Finnish, French, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Mandarin, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Yiddish). The number of languages in these films is overwhelming, although the interaction between such languages is limited by the medium, given that each short film is separated in a narrative sense from the others. Other high-profile filmmakers producing multilingual French films in the early 2000s include Tony Gatlif and Costa-Gavras. Following his successful 1997 tale of a French man’s journey into a Roma community, Gadjo Dilo, Gatlif continued his examination of the French experience abroad with the 2004 road movie Exils, in which Arabic, French, Romany and Spanish play central roles. Having dabbled in language with his thriller Z, Costa-Gavras released the acclaimed Amen in 2002, which explores the history of the Holocaust Final Solution in English, French, German and Italian. This diversification and increase in multilingual French film production in the early twenty-first-century parallels a number of European events of the period. These include the 2002 introduction of the euro, a number of major changes in French and EU immigration policy, an increase in race and social riots and, on the cinematic front, a proliferation of Franco-European co-production agreements. Indeed, around this time five major shifts in migration policy deeply impacted France’s multicultural communities: the 2007 proposal from Immigration Minister Brice Hortefeux to provide certain African migrants with funds to return to Africa, Nicolas Sarkozy’s establishment of the Ministry of Immigration, Integration, National Identity and Co-development of France in the same year, the 2010 and 2011 Roma repatriation drives and the 2013 creation of the Schengen Information System immigration policing database. These many changes set the scene for contemporary multilingual film; a cinema fundamentally concerned with the tension between French and other languages.

Conclusion While this review introduces a diverse range of films which have engaged with multilingualism over history, the number of multilingual films from the twentieth century is still limited when compared with the contemporary era. Without underestimating the impor-

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48  Decentring France tance of key multilingual predecessors like La Grande Illusion and Le Mépris, multilingual French cinema remains a markedly contemporary phenomenon. Post-2005 French cinema has not only seen an exponential increase in the number of films including multilingual dialogue released each year, for the representation of the status of languages other than French has also evolved to a more dynamic one. Nonetheless, contemporary multilingual French cinema does not exist in an historical vacuum, and multilingual filmmaking in France has a long-standing and complicated heritage.

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3 Decentred perspectives: case studies It is, then, often on the periphery rather than at the centre that the more significant negotiations of identity take place. (Cooke and Vassallo 2009:  21)

T

he multilingual cinema of contemporary France operates both within the national centre and on its peripheries, both in dominant French spaces and beyond the borders of the Hexagon. In multilingual films, tensions and politics concerning France as a nation and Frenchness as an identity come to the fore, as do the shifting role and importance of the French language. However, concerns surrounding French and Frenchness are far from the only cultural and linguistic focuses of these films, for multilingual French cinema by nature examines multiculturalism in France, and the multiplicity of cultural identities and linguistic practices that operate within it. As a result, multilingual cinema not only foregrounds and values languages other than French, but consequently decentres the French language from its once-monopolistic central role in French cinema. To borrow Mary-Louise Pratt’s words, these films portray ‘societies that are multilingual force-fields of conflict, collaboration, entanglement, coercion, resistance, proximity, and distance, in which multiple social orders coexist, with new institutions repeatedly layered on, and interacting with, prior ones’ (2012: 24). Multilingual films do not erase the French language, the history of colonialism or historical conceptions of what it means to ‘be French’. Instead, they decentre them, contributing new narratives and perspectives on language, culture and power. This allows for a more dispersed, complex and multipolar sociolinguistic landscape. In response to this progressive decentring, the ordering of case studies in this book is far from arbitrary. Just as the French language and the centralised concept of France become decentred, so too do these films portray a geographical decentring. We begin in central Paris in Polisse and Entre les murs, then travel to the banlieue in Un prophète and Dheepan. From the urban periphery, we head to another culturally loaded but very different space with Welcome and La

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50  Decentring France Graine et le mulet, whose border-crossing stories unfold in the port cities of Calais and Sète respectively. Then, in London River and Des hommes et des dieux, we step off French soil entirely, travelling to the English capital and to the former French colony of Algeria to explore characters whose lives are marked not only by France, but by former colonies, foreign countries and other European states. Such a decentring of space, resistant to Eurocentric hierarchies of social power, evokes the concept of the rhizome put forth by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in their 1980 book Capitalisme et schizophrénie. In a literal sense, the rhizome refers to a system of rootstock growth, seen in species such as ginger and bamboo. Such species grow in a random and uncentred fashion, without predictable or consistent form and in any number of directions. The rhizomatic structure is composed of multiple parts, yet these parts’ relation to one another is destructured rather than hierarchical. Deleuze and Guattari take this unstructured, heterogeneous image as a means of considering an alternative to hegemonic power relations. Will Higbee describes the rhizomatic root as one which ‘propagates in a fragmented, discontinuous and multidirectional way – spreading laterally rather than vertically’ (2007b: 86) and sees it as a useful motif for approaching intercultural relations in a non-Eurocentric manner. Higbee applies Deleuze’s rhizomatic viewpoint to an analysis of transnational Franco-Maghrebi films, proposing the term ‘transvergence’ in order to better understand the multicultural power relations within them. His understanding of the rhizome speaks to the power relations which can be observed in multilingual film, particularly in his favouring of the concept as ‘non-centred and non-hierarchical, [inherently ­characterised by] a deconstruction of the concept of centre and margin’ (87). Metaphorically, the rhizome therefore presents a system of development dissociated from hierarchy. Instead, it reorders, even dis-orders, relationalities. The rhizome thus offers an alternative means of considering relationships between cultural groups, and subsequently their respective languages, moving away from fixed, colonialist notions of dominator–dominated power relations. As Higbee explains, with the rhizome, ‘what we are presented with is a way of thinking about knowledge, culture and power relations that rejects the idea of an epistemology structured around notions of hierarchy or fixed centre or binary structure’ (2007b: 86–7). When applied to the place of languages other than French in multilingual cinema, the rhizome thus reveals a non-stratified framework through which to view the links between languages. For Deleuze and Guattari, ‘un rhizome ne commence et n’aboutit pas, il est toujours au milieu, entre les choses, inter-être, ­intermezzo’

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Decentred perspectives: case studies  51 (1980a: 13, ‘a rhizome has no beginning or end; it is always in the middle, between things, interbeing, intermezzo’ (1980b: 25)). Of course, a rhizomatic approach to studying multilingual cinema does not mean adopting a blindness to any unequal power relations between groups, expressed in language, which continue to exist in the postcolonial universe. Rather, the rhizome offers a perspective on relationalities which allows us to recognise the polycentric uses of multilingualism in contemporary French cinema, viewing language relations as complex and rhizomatic rather than fixedly hierarchical, and allowing new and contrasting power dynamics to show through. Thus, contemporary French multilingual film resituates languages other than French in such a way as to decentre the place of French, and to promote a polycentric space in which the strategic use of diverse languages can constitute an act of power. This decentring calls into question important issues surrounding traditional French cinema’s figuring of the relationship between centre and periphery: Viewing multilingualism through the lens of centre–periphery dynamics helps to bring forth the ideological tensions which are evident in issues of language boundary-making, language ownership, commodification, and authenticity. It also highlights the ways in which speakers seek novel solutions and develop innovative and creative language practices. (Kelly-Holmes and Pietikainen 2013: 1)

In multilingual films, France and French are undeniably important. But a Francocentric perspective is not the only vantage point from which characters experience the contemporary universe. France may continue to be a predominantly centralised country in cultural and economic terms, but multilingual cinema envisions a map of multiple linguistic centres. Multilingual characters live in, move between and travel through these centres – and beyond them. Contemporary multilingual films do not posit Paris as sole cultural nucleus in France, or the Hexagon as sole cultural nucleus in the world. Of contemporary globalisation, Jan Blommaert writes ‘the world has not become a village, but rather a tremendously complex web of villages, towns, neighbourhoods, settlements connected by material and symbolic ties in often unpredictable ways’ (2010: 1). In much the same way, multilingual films see French and global spaces as comprising a complex network of cultural and linguistic power centres; of a web of language contact zones. For Mary-Louise Pratt, contact zones are ‘social spaces where cultures meet, clash and grapple with each other’ (1991: 34). Contact zones may arise in urban spaces, to which diverse cultural groups are drawn due to economic opportunity. Paris, for example, is home

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52  Decentring France to dominant French cultures and norms, but also to a multiplicity of cultural groups, diasporic neighbourhoods, migrant employment opportunities and public institutions. The number one tourist destination in the world, it is not only a magnet for French and migrant groups, but for expatriates, exchange students, diplomats and other creative or specialised workers from around the world. Chapter 4 (‘Capital centres: Polisse and Entre les murs’) explores the ways in which once-marginalised languages can occupy this contentious urban space, and renegotiate the linguistic landscape of the Parisian capital from within. In Polisse, a diverse group of police officers use and encounter combinations of French, English, Romanian, Italian and especially Arabic in their Belleville workplace. Only a couple of kilometres east of the Polisse setting, Entre les murs situates a diverse group of teenagers of French, francophone and other migrant backgrounds ‘between the walls’ of the quintessential French institution, the school. Helen Kelly-Kolmes and Sari Pietikainen write that ‘the centre is typically defined in terms of its advancement, metropolitanism, and political, economic, and trade power, while the periphery is characterized as marginal, the opposite of the centre, the boundary or outer part of it’ (2013: 1). Discourse thus posits the urban periphery as a neglected site of stagnation by comparison with the activity of the centre. However, language contact zones are equally active on the urban periphery as within its centre. The banlieue and its housing projects, with their mix of working-class French and first- and secondgeneration migrant populations, are also a magnet for multicultural interaction. These areas were originally home to French populations having moved from the countryside to the city for manufacturing or other urban employment options, as well as migrants from other Western European countries, in particular Italy. However, from the 1970s and 1980s, these environments drew increased numbers of international migrants of low socio-economic status, particularly from former French colonies in North Africa. This has resulted in a concentrated environment of unrivalled multilingualism in urban France. In Chapter 5 (‘Urban margins’), the films Un prophète and Dheepan illustrate how the language of the non-French other can become a tool for social advancement, in ways that the French language itself cannot. In Un prophète, the protagonist Malik is a former inhabitant of a Paris HLM. But though he no longer resides in the multilingual zone of the cité, he remains in the banlieue: at the nearby Brécourt prison, on the Paris outskirts. In this space (a microcosmic public institution much like the school in Entre les murs) multilingualism in French, Arabic and Corsican is a powerful driving force in ­establishing the rigid prison

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Decentred perspectives: case studies  53 hierarchy. In Dheepan, the dilapidated HLM is the site of translanguaging in Tamil, French and English. In both films, the banlieue is not simply a dominated environment inhabited by oppressed groups, but an infinitely complex multicultural space in which language plays a pivotal role. But while the Paris centre and its urban periphery may be the most obvious language contact zones, contemporary France is also host to hotbeds of multilingualism far beyond its capital region. As Chapter 6 (‘Coastal borders’) explores, the far south-eastern border of the country is an equally multicultural and linguistically diverse space. Home to the cities of Marseilles, Sète and Nice, the Mediterranean is the first port of call for many migrant groups, particularly those travelling from North Africa across the Mediterranean Sea. As La Graine et le mulet shows, many migrants remain in these border spaces, separated from their home countries only by a few hundred kilometres of water. The region has historically provided a multitude of employment opportunities for those with experience working in fishing, boat-building and other professions linked to the water. In the mid-twentieth century, boats would even arrive in Marseilles from as far as Vietnam, bringing a sizeable South-East Asian diaspora to the region. Today, such boats are far more likely to carry refugees from the Middle East and the Horn of Africa, in far from secure circumstances, as films like Eden à l’ouest relate. And as Human Zoo shows, the region is also a point of passage for those moving between France and Eastern Europe. In these contact zones, languages from French to Arabic to Vietnamese to Serbo-Croatian circulate in complex ways, and films like La Graine et le mulet investigate the power of language to define and redefine cultural identity. However, the southern coast is not the only pluricultural French border region that stands out in multilingual cinema. Chapter 6 also examines the western border on the English Channel as a tense and politicised space that is traversed not only by French and British peoples, but thousands of migrants seeking to reach the UK. The notorious ‘jungle’ migrant camps of Calais, in which thousands of undocumented migrants hoping to reach British shores have congregated and created improvised living areas, is a prime example of the incredible cultural hybridity of the once-provincial area. In Welcome, a comfortable, Calais-dwelling French man finds his conception of hospitality and cultural identity redefined by the arrival of an adolescent Kurdish-Iraqi migrant in his life. La Graine et le mulet follows a different narrative curve, as an ageing French man of Tunisian birth attempts to open up a couscous restaurant on a boat in the Mediterranean town of Sète. As Welcome and La Graine et le mulet both show,

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54  Decentring France the French coastal border is far from a peaceful Western European beach region, but a tense, politically loaded and even dangerous zone in which provincial French populations, British border control enforcers, settled North African migrants and diverse groups of clandestine refugees and migrants converge. In such a space, French is a valuable, if not essential skill. But the role of French is decentred by the dominance of Middle Eastern and other foreign languages, as well as the globalised lingua franca of English. And yet, even on the very precipice of the French territory, even as its characters step physically into the waters that separate France from Britain and North Africa, these coastal regions are not the most scattered, or decentred, language contact zones that dominate multilingual cinema. Chapter 7 (‘International spaces’) investigates French multilingual films located outside the French nation entirely. Indeed, while films like London River and Des hommes et des dieux are majority French productions (with some secondary co-production partners), they barely take place on French soil at all. In London River, a combination of English, Maghrebi-British, Guernsian and Malian characters use French as a culturally ‘unanchored’ lingua franca. As Mireille Rosello writes, in such a film ‘French is far more than the language of one of the European states: like English, it is present on a transnational stage that invites us to decouple the language from the (European) nation’ (2012a: 221). In Des hommes et des dieux, the political reach of French extends far beyond French borders to the former colony of Algeria. In both London River and Des hommes et des dieux, French is a valuable skill and a widely circulating lingua franca. Yet the French nation is decentred both as narrative focus and as physical setting. This recasts French as what I call an ‘unanchored language’, opening these films up to complex new possibilities for the role of France and French as decentred entities in multilingual cinema. This is not to suggest that multilingualism cannot exist or flourish in locations outside these specific contact zones. Films like Le Grand Voyage show us how multilingualism dominates narratives that take place in provincial or pastoral locations (although the film’s road setting could be viewed as a contact zone in itself). The Algerian protagonist of Inch’Allah Dimanche, Zouina, finds herself in a multilingual setting in her quiet, suburban Lyons neighbourhood. Other multilingual films such as 35 rhums (Claire Denis 2008) are located in the Paris suburbs, but in more unassuming, residential corners than the traditional setting of beur or banlieue films. However, far more often than not in French cinema, multilingualism is concentrated within recognisable contact zones, in which cultures, groups and

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Decentred perspectives: case studies  55 languages meet in concentrated and contentious scenarios. The city, the banlieue, the border and the international space, which are more often impacted by globalisation, immigration, travel and multiculturalism than other areas, are quintessential settings in which multilingualism circulates and evolves in intensified ways. These films, and the following chapters which explore them, thus share Shohat and Stam’s stance of uncovering the rhizomatic nature of language relations in multilingual film. They reject traditional Eurocentric approaches to film analysis, which ‘envision the world from a single privileged point’ (1994: 2). Each of the eight films I have chosen investigates the power dynamics and language politics of a particular sociolinguistic ‘centre’ or ‘contact zone’, a French or international space in which languages and cultures converge for postcolonial, economic or political reasons. These films are not random choices, but representative examples of rhizomatic patterns and trends within multilingual cinema. The flow of the analysis chapters which follow, from ‘Capital centres’ to ‘Urban margins’ to ‘Coastal borders’ and ‘International spaces’, thus reflects the decentring trajectory of language, space and power at the heart of these films.

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4 Capital centres: Polisse and Entre les murs

W

e begin in north-eastern Paris, in the districts of Belleville and Gambetta. In these multicultural quartiers, the films Polisse and Entre les murs explore interactions between different cultural groups as they play out in public institutions. In both the police procedural Polisse and the schoolroom drama Entre les murs, multilingualism is a feature of everyday life within the city, and language difference is essential to (re)negotiating social hierarchies between historically dominant and dominated cultural, religious and ethnic groups. These films each take place entirely ‘between the walls’ of the French cultural nucleus, a centralised capital city whose borders are literally and rigidly defined by the dividing barrier of the périphérique. Yet in contrast to traditional conceptions of the Parisian centre as the realm of dominant French cultural and linguistic norms, these films present many varied possibilities for embracing multicultural identities and using multilingualism. Twentieth-century cinema depicts Paris as a space in which the cultural ‘other’ is denied liberty, mobility and agency. If the non-French or non-white French multilingual individual is permitted to enter the central urban space, they will invariably experience discrimination and domination by mainstream culture and authority. Of course, the xenophobic sociopolitical structures which led to such a dynamic in films like La Haine and La Faute à Voltaire have far from disappeared from more contemporary films. Such characters continue to encounter tensions related to race, ethnicity, religion and class. Yet Polisse and Entre les murs, along with a host of other contemporary multilingual films situated in central Paris, envision a more diversified range of experiences for the multilingual other within the city. Historical imbalances between cultures and genders persist, and make themselves felt in these two newer films. Yet their principal multilingual characters, Nora and Souleymane, each of French birth but African descent, find themselves in situations in which their African language use is valuable, and indeed essential, inside Parisian borders. Each operating within a public French institution, Nora as an officer in a police station and Souleymane as a student in a school,

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Capital centres: Polisse; Entre les murs 57 these characters find themselves in situations in which their competency in both French and the African language they learned from their parents is a distinct asset. Such films do not depict a utopia in which multilingual individuals do not experience disadvantage, as Souleymane’s ultimate defeat shows. Nonetheless, the representation of African languages in Polisse and Entre les murs within legitimate French institutions and within the French capital city offers a radical update to the traditional cinematic mapping of the Paris centre as the domain solely of dominant French identities, cultural norms and linguistic practices. Instead, these films redefine the capital centre as a polycentric and multilingual space in which linguistic interactions can take myriad forms and the Arabic and Tamazight languages are not always relegated to the margins.

(De)constructing hierarchy In historic representations of Paris, an inner–outer dynamic applies not only to the city’s geographical layout, but to its cultural make-up. In films like 100% Arabica, Hexagone and La Haine, dominant French culture resides within the urban nucleus, and non-French, ‘other’ culture exists beyond the city’s borders. If the other enters the central Parisian domain, as in La Haine, they are victimised, isolated, dominated and even violated for penetrating a space in which they do not belong. Indeed, the black African, beur and Jewish characters of La Haine may enter Paris freely, via its long-distance RER train system that connects the city and the banlieue. But upon their arrival, they are denigrated by representatives of dominant French culture, as they are ejected from a gallery opening, then arrested, beaten and tortured by police. The beur character, Said, even experiences racial profiling from a white, drug-dealing associate the characters know personally. And when the men miss the last RER home, fail to jack a car and lack the funds to pay for a taxi or a hotel room, they are rendered homeless for the night, able to walk the city’s streets but unable to enter any of its inner spaces. Even in more recent films like Intouchables and Bande de filles, in which characters of non-French origin hold jobs as cleaners that permit them to enter inner Paris spaces, such characters do not actually share these spaces with Paris inhabitants, as they work at night. A lack of interlocutors for these women (for such characters are invariably women) not only prevents them from using their own language in this urban centre, but hinders them from developing their French language skills. Other idealistic newcomers to the city, such as Jallel in La Faute à Voltaire, are disillusioned when they discover how

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58  Decentring France closed Parisian society remains to them. Indeed, Jallel’s assumption that he is safe to move around the city leads to his exile; his arrest for working illegally inside the Nation metro station signals his expulsion not only from the nuclear French metropolis, but the Hexagon itself. In all these films, the presence of the other within the confines of the capital city serves merely to reinforce the racial, cultural and linguistic hierarchy that ultimately isolates them within, and then expels them from, this central space. In many ways, the socio-economic lines between affluent central Parisians and economically disadvantaged banlieue dwellers persist in ever-more damaging ways in the contemporary world. However, these lines can be traversed and redrawn, and many films show how contemporary Parisian culture is in fact layered, plural and dispersed. Despite the city’s nuclear geographical layout, and its majority white French-speaking populace, a wide range of multicultural and multilingual identities can not only exist within this space, but embrace their cultural background and use their knowledge of languages other than French in useful and meaningful ways. It is helpful here to return to the work of Hamid Naficy, who sees power relations in the cinema of the globalised world as responsive to, but not limited to, traditional hierarchies: Multiplicity feeds into and feeds off the horizontality of our globalized world, where compatriot diasporic communities are in touch with each other laterally across the globe, instead of being focused on an exclusive binary and vertical exilic relationship between the former home country and the current homeland. (2010: 15)

The refashioning of the nature of the centre itself is displayed most poetically in Entre les murs. Aptly named not only for its location ‘between the walls’ of a French school, but also of the French capital, Entre les murs presents a space in which a diverse range of cultural identities have a place, a role and a reason to inhabit the centre. In this space, the microcosmic classroom, illustrative of the city and nation beyond its walls, shifts from a hierarchical to a polycentric space. Language lies at the heart of this shift, including standard and literary French, non-dominant and slang forms of French and multilingualism in a mix of European, Asian and African languages. The traditional classroom environment is inherently stratified, a social and institutional hierarchy maintained in large part through language. Even the physical setup of the classroom supports this hierarchy: students are arranged in uniform rows, facing the raised platform or other differentiated space where the teacher stands. In this controlled space, the teacher is equipped with privileged means

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Capital centres: Polisse; Entre les murs 59 of expression: the right to speak at any moment (including the right to interrupt students) and access to the resource of the blackboard, extending their linguistic presence in the room to the written form. The teacher addresses the students in the tu form, while the students are required to respond with vous, further reinforcing an imbalance of social power in linguistic terms. These conventions serve to highlight, support and legitimise the teacher’s unique position as authority figure. Conversely, students’ access to verbal expression is moderated, embodied in the convention of raising a hand to earn permission to speak, and the social contract that requires them to read from a text, write on the board or answer a question, when prompted by the teacher. If students refuse to honour this contract, they are subject to criticism, punishment and, in extreme cases, banishment from the school environment entirely. In these ways, the classroom is not simply a room, but a theatrical space. The post-1789 classroom is one guided by Republican principles, in which, as Annie JouanWestlund explains, ‘la langue française est un instrument d’égalité et de discrimination’ (‘the French language is an instrument of equality and of discrimination’, 2014: 122). Thus, while democratic values are designed to provide all students with equal access to education, this dynamic does not – and indeed cannot – extend to an equal linguistic footing for teacher and students. In the classroom, language is an economy controlled by the teacher. In many ways, the teacher protagonist in Entre les murs, François Marin, attempts to uphold this linguistic economy, frequently speaking over his students, using the blackboard, insisting students raise their hand to speak and demanding students read or answer questions on command. When one student stands to go to the bathroom, Marin forces him to sit back down, raise his hand and ask permission to leave the room before standing again. When another student addresses him in the tu form, he sends him to the principal’s office (‘il m’a tutoyé donc il fallait que j’impose une limite’ (‘he addressed me as tu so I had to draw a line’)). Having failed to gain the majority of his students’ respect, Marin relies upon the infrastructure of the traditional classroom environment to exert and maintain his teacherly authority. Yet this infrastructure frequently unravels, as multiple students interrupt and ignore Marin, openly criticise his pedagogical approach or refuse to follow his orders. In one key scene, offended by his insistence she read a passage aloud from a book against her will, a student named Khoumba takes a vow of silence in the classroom. Announcing this vow in the form of an emotive letter entitled ‘Le respect’, Khoumba declines to participate in Marin’s linguistic economy. Lacking the ability to challenge Marin’s authority

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60  Decentring France in spoken terms, Khoumba rejects her teacher’s control by drawing on a resource she does possess – silence – and withdrawing from the linguistic power play in the classroom altogether. Language (or its opposite, silence) is thus used as a tool to both legitimate and undermine the status quo. The film’s scenes of conflict reveal the flimsiness of the classroom hierarchy, exposing Marin’s own vulnerability, as well as the arbitrariness of the idea of ‘correct’ language, and thus of dominant French norms. Indeed, the use of language to challenge the hierarchy in Entre les murs extends beyond mastery of official French language, to encompass even the most ‘incorrect’ or socially maligned linguistic forms. The school’s yard, classrooms and inner chambers thus become sites of contestation, in which, to borrow Meredith Doran’s term, ‘what it means to speak and to be French’ (in Strand 2009: 264), and what it means to have and to wield power, is up for negotiation. This dynamic leads the film to present a polycentric view of language difference in which all forms of expression possess an inherent value, and the potential for ­conferring power, within a microcosm that represents the French capital at large. These films are not naive. Multicultural others still experience a wide range of forms of disadvantage, both within and beyond the capital centre. However, the possibilities for representing and understanding the roles multilingual characters can play in this space are multiplying. Opportunities are arising for multilingual characters (be they of French, mixed or other origin) to hold positions of authority, and to exert social agency, within this mainstream environment. Perhaps most radically, the other character is not forced to abandon their own cultural heritage or knowledge of languages other than French in order to take on these positions. Instead, in films like Polisse and Entre les murs, characters are able not only to retain their plural identities, but can effect change with and through their multilingualism. Therefore, languages like Arabic and Tamazight are not silenced or erased, nor are they simply tolerated. This effects a shift in the typical Parisian social hierarchy. The city’s internal make-up no longer conforms solely to reductive, Eurocentric definitions. As the following analyses of multilingual scenes in Polisse and Entre les murs show, traditional hierarchical mappings of Paris are now far from the only option for understanding language and culture in the city.

Arabic in Paris Polisse is a social realist drama which follows the personal and professional lives of the police officers of a child protection unit, based in the multicultural Paris district of Belleville. Taking as its focus a broad

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Capital centres: Polisse; Entre les murs 61 group of characters, including the police officers, their families, victims and culprits, Polisse is largely viewed through the eyes of a visiting photographer, Melissa, played by filmmaker Maïwenn, her diegetic camerawork mirroring of her real-life directorial role. As Melissa spends several weeks with the officers, preparing a photo series, both she and the audience witness the officers’ everyday experiences on the job, which range from the banal to the brutal. Capturing the extremes of this challenging line of work, both Melissa and Maïwenn’s cameras jump between relaxed office scenes, tense police work, family life and disturbing imagery of the exploitation, neglect and abuse of children. Released in 2011, Polisse was awarded the Prix du Jury at the Cannes Film Festival, as well as two Césars and ten further César nominations in the same year. The film opened the Paris Cinéma Festival of 2011 and sold an impressive 2.3 million box office tickets in France alone. The film has an episodic structure; many of the scenes operate as individual vignettes detailing different cases, rather than as plot developments in a cohesive narrative. While these narrative shifts can be jarring, they lend the film a grittiness often associated with television crime dramas like The Wire (Wheatley 2012: 74), a fact for which the film has been both criticised and praised. The film also features an ensemble cast; despite Maïwenn herself playing a central role and hip-hop artist Joey Starr being marketed as a headlining actor, Polisse has no obvious protagonist, and each officer receives their own cases, back story and screen time. In fact, in a rare move, the cast was nominated for several César awards as an ensemble, with Frédéric Pierrot, Nicholas Duvauchelle and Joey Starr sharing the nomination Best Supporting Actor and Karin Viard and Marina Foïs sharing the nomination for Best Actress, while Karole Rocher was nominated for Best Supporting Actress and Naidra Ayadi (who plays Nora) won Best New Actress. The result is a film which benefits from a multitude of characters, subplots and languages. Polisse’s dialogue is mostly in French, but also includes speech in Arabic, Italian, Romanian and Romany. Indeed, the quantity of multilingualism throughout the film is minimal; only 20 per cent of the scenes contain multilingual dialogue.1 Yet the role of languages other than French in the film is significant. Logically, multilingual films with a large proportion of multilingual dialogue, such as Un prophète or Welcome, will usually devote a large amount of narrative energy to linguistic themes. However, this is not always the case, as some films include a large percentage of multilingual dialogue, yet fail to engage with language on any meaningful level. For example, the blockbuster Taken (Pierre Morel 2008), features a generous proportion of dialogue in Albanian, Arabic, English and French, yet is mostly

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62  Decentring France unconcerned with the narrative potential of multilingualism. In films like Taken, multilingualism is used for decorative measures, for denoting ‘foreign’ characters or as a location marker, rather than as a theme or plot point. Conversely, many films with a limited quantity of multilingualism, like Polisse, can still foreground multilingualism as an important plot device. Such films show how a critical distinction between quality and quantity is essential to understanding multilingual films. Translation scholars Delabastita and Grutman pinpoint this quality versus quantity conundrum when they write: The actual quantity of foreignisms in a text is rather less important than the qualitative role they play within its overall structure, i.e. their potential as functional elements. Instead of dismissing foreign language samples as mere comic relief, or ‘as an irrelevant, if not distracting, representational factor’ (Sternberg 1981: 224), it might be more rewarding to see if and how they acquire a deeper significance with regard to plot-construction or even become a controlling metaphor governing character discourse and behaviour. Such effects may actually be obtained by using very few foreign elements. (2005: 17)

Accordingly, multiple language use is central to a number of key scenes in Polisse. These include an unsettling extended sequence, during which the entire unit launches an early-morning raid on a large Roma camp pitched on the northern outskirts of the city. In this scene, during which scores of neglected and exploited Roma children are removed from their families, the strains of Romany and Romanian language which permeate the soundtrack are emblematic of the social fracture that characterises this controversial and marginalised Parisian subculture. Along the same lines is one of the film’s most emotionally affecting scenes, in which a homeless mother of unspecified African origin begs the officers to find foster accommodation for her young son, so that he does not have to sleep on the street. Her pleas take place in a stilted mix of broken French and her unsubtitled mother tongue, and capture the intense isolation and suffering that has led this homeless migrant woman to make such a critical decision. In scenes of a vastly different content and tone, Italian dialogue also features throughout the film; Melissa’s ex-partner is Italian, and their twin daughters speak a mix of French and Italian at home. In its status as a fellow continental European language, Italian conversation in the film is much more convivial than the film’s dialogue in Arabic, Romanian and Romany. Indeed, Italian appears much more as an identifying trait for Melissa’s ex-partner than a narrative device. The language is never specifically referred to, but used in an automatic way between family members. Thus, code-switching between French

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Capital centres: Polisse; Entre les murs 63 and Italian in Polisse is not strategic, but a matter of practicality and convenience, as the characters pool their vocabulary across the two languages. Imbalances of social power or tense cultural rifts between these two languages are simply not present in the way they are for the other languages represented in the film. Therefore, multilingualism manifests in many different situations in Polisse, ranging from casual to tense. One particular multilingual scene in the film explores the politics of language difference in a profound way. The scene hinges upon the use of the Arabic language, portraying it as a crucial factor in the characters’ mutual pursuit of dominance over one another. The scene depicts a police interrogation: a middle-aged, unnamed man of Maghrebi origin is being questioned by a young Franco-Maghrebi female officer, Nora. It transpires that the man is planning to send his young daughter to North Africa to force her into a marriage with her cousin. The daughter has approached Nora for help. The case affects Nora on a personal level, as she shares a cultural background with this young victim. In the beginning of the scene, Nora tries and fails to exert her authority over the suspect, who clearly does not respect her. As their exchange grows more heated, the use of the Arabic language becomes instrumental in each character’s attempt to silence the other. The code-switching between Arabic and French reveals not only the practical implications of using these languages in the one exchange, but their symbolic importance. Thus, shifts between languages also dictate shifts between genres in a loaded debate. The scene begins in French. Stubborn and unruffled, the suspect acknowledges neither the immorality of his treatment of his daughter,

Figure 5  Polisse (Maïwenn, Les Films du Trésor)

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64  Decentring France nor the fact that Nora possesses the institutional power to interrogate him and issue commands. It is clear that Nora’s threats, made in the capacity of a police officer operating under French law, fail to affect the suspect. nora: [French] Just between us, off the record. Your daughter told me you want to send her back to Africa and force her to marry a cousin. Is that true? suspect: [F] Yes, it’s true, so what? I’m her father. She has to get married someday. nora: [F] Oh yeah, ‘she has to get married someday’… do you think you own her? suspect: [F] I’m the one who decides. nora: [F] Oh yeah? So, you did your homework before coming to the police.You know it’s not in the penal code. But you know what? Soon it will be. And once you’ve married off your daughter, and she’s been raped – because it’s rape, you know; you’re going to force her to have sexual relations with a man when she doesn’t want to. Well, I will be there. I will be there, and I will get you. suspect: [F] What’s your problem? nora: [F] What do you mean, ‘what’s my problem’? I’m the one who says there’s a problem, ok? You’re at a police station here. suspect: [F] I don’t want to talk to you.

Nora makes a number of futile attempts to convince the suspect of her power as a representative of the French justice system, as well as of the charges, including accessory to rape, that she vows to ensure he will face. As the suspect grows scornful and dismissive, Nora becomes enraged. Standing up and reaching into her desk drawer as she speaks, she brandishes her gun, handcuffs and badge as physical proof of her authority as a police officer. nora: [F] No. I’m the police. [takes badge out of drawer, shows it to him] There, I’m the police, ok? [shakes handcuffs at him] I’m the police, ok? [shakes gun at him] See? I’m the police. And it’s me who asks the questions, and you answer me.

This display calls upon the social and institutional contract that attributes Nora a superior level of power. The system has not only equipped her with physical proofs of her authority, including weaponry, but has also conferred on her a superior access to language: the power to decide who speaks and when, to pose probing questions and to dictate the terms of the interrogation. Yet despite this show of insti-

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Capital centres: Polisse; Entre les murs 65 tutional authority, the suspect simply stares at her, arms crossed in protest. Nora is well aware that the suspect does not consider her to be a serious threat, due to the same sexist prejudices which drive his treatment of his own daughter. He appears smug in the face of her heated response, a faint grin on his face. Swapping from the formal vous to the less respectful tu, she directly accuses him of sexism. nora: [F] And why don’t you want to talk to me? Is it because I’m a woman?

It is at this point that the initial code-switch occurs. Threatening to derail Nora, it is the suspect who first calls on the Arabic language as a resource. Switching from French to Arabic, the suspect uses his native language to criticise Nora, suggesting that a woman’s place (especially a woman of Maghrebi descent’s) is in the home, not the workplace. suspect: [Arabic] Aren’t you ashamed? Go home.

The switch from French to Arabic sees the suspect judge Nora in the same way he judges his daughter, infantilising her in his use of a patriarchal tone and shifting the conflict from a judicial to a personal one. However, in a strategic manoeuvre, Nora nips this strategy in the bud. Reclaiming the Arabic language, she turns it against the suspect. Nora latches on to the suspect’s judgemental tone, she pulls out her copy of the Qur’an from her desk and rifles through its pages. At the same time, she also code-switches into Arabic. With this linguistic shift, Nora also shifts the focus of her judgement and accusation from legal to personal, attacking the suspect’s moral character. From being a criminal in the eyes of French law, the suspect becomes a traitor to the humane principles of Islam. nora: [A] What? ‘Aren’t I ashamed’? And what about you? Aren’t you ashamed? [suspect mumbles an offensive phrase in Arabic, unsubtitled and inaudible to the audience] nora: [A] Oh! You do not speak to me like that, understood? Are you sure you’ve read the Qur’an? Well, show me. Tell me where it’s written. If you’re a man and a good Muslim, show me where it says that a father can force his daughter to marry against her will! Show me! You think you’re going to teach me the Qur’an? Where does it say that a woman cannot work? Show me! You think you’re Muslim? You tarnish us! Tarnish us! The Qur’an teaches respect, understood?

In the wake of this speech, and for the first time in their exchange, the suspect falls silent.

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66  Decentring France Although languages as abstract entities do not exist in hierarchies of value, languages as lived operate within hierarchies of power. Language and power intersect not only in obvious conflicts concerning official tongues, but also wherever the question of language difference becomes involved with asymmetrical political arrangements. As a potent symbol of collective identity, language is the focus of fierce loyalties that exist at the razor edge of national difference. (Shohat and Stam 2006: 127)

Shohat and Stam emphasise the importance of stepping away from Eurocentric conceptions of language (the West and the Rest, the coloniser and the colonised) to recognise how power can be multipolar; how the distribution of power among cultural groups is not necessarily stratified; how power can ‘come’ from anywhere and everywhere. Though they acknowledge the persistent marginalisation of certain languages and cultures in certain dominant social systems (‘But if all languages are created equal, some are made “more equal than others”’ (107)) they also insist on seeing how marginalised languages can operate independently of such systems, or adopt new meaning and characteristics within them. In the Polisse interrogation scene, Arabic, as a ‘lived’ language with immense personal and cultural importance to the two characters, becomes not a secondary skill but a valuable resource, not a disadvantaging attribute but a ‘potent symbol of collective identity’. The language politics at play in Polisse, therefore, are polycentric in that they foreground the many poles of cultural influence which drive the central conflict, seeing language as representative of a range of ethnic and religious issues which, despite being ‘foreign’ in origin, are directly relevant to this particular slice of contemporary Parisian reality. In the scene, both characters are bilingual. Thus, the shift from French to Arabic is not a practical one. Instead, it is symbolic: the shift between languages becomes a shift between cultural identities, for ‘language is culture, and those who “inhabit” different languages might be said to inhabit different worlds’ (107).2 The use of Arabic becomes a strategy for the suspect to oppress Nora, as well as a counter strategy for Nora herself, who refuses to accept this oppression, concurrently aligning herself with, and distancing the suspect from, Islam. Thus, with the code-switch from French to Arabic, the conversation is transformed from a standard interrogation between a suspect and a police officer to a moral debate between two members of the same religion. This dynamic does not elide Islam and Arabic, nor does it assume all Arabic speakers are Muslims. Nonetheless, the nature of the relationship between the two individuals is redefined. This scene recalls Strand’s research on Entre les murs and L’Esquive, which applies equally to Polisse:

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Capital centres: Polisse; Entre les murs 67 [The film sees] language less as a tool of communication and more as a social marker: one which is loaded with emotional and cultural baggage that extends far beyond the lexical content of the words [and] sends warning shots across intergenerational and class battle lines. (2009: 267)

In transitioning from French to Arabic, the protagonists also exclude a number of other police officers who, at the outset, eavesdrop on the interrogation. While French is a language understood by all in the room, Nora and the suspect are the only ones who understand Arabic. This likewise contributes to the genre shift at play in the codeswitch, transforming the conversation from a public, official exchange to a private, emotional one. The use of a language not spoken by Nora’s colleagues (who nevertheless continue to support her through their attentiveness and body language) adds a personal element to the debate, while simultaneously evoking a form of reverse cultural and linguistic marginalisation in the exclusion of the scene’s non-Arabic speakers. Language is not the only key factor at play in this scene; codeswitching is accompanied by shifts in a number of non-verbal factors as well. In particular, there are several physical objects which influence the exchange. These include Nora’s use of her possessions, both judicial (gun, handcuffs, badge) and religious (Qur’an). There is a potential threat of violence in her exhibition of the gun and handcuffs in particular (Pratt 2009: 1529); while Nora would never shoot the suspect, her right to wield her gun in front of him, a right he does not possess, underlines her authority and adds a menacing edge to her speech. Creating a similar effect, from the code-switch onwards, Nora stands, placing herself physically above the suspect. When the suspect attempts to stand in response, Nora and her colleagues hiss and gesture at him to remain seated. Even the very presence of these other officers is significant: the fact that Nora belongs to a group, an institution which surpasses the suspect both in number and strength, fortifies her position over him. She even calls upon another absent group to which she belongs, that of ‘true’ Muslims who respect the Qur’an, via the first-person plural form in her disgusted Arabiclanguage retort ‘you tarnish us’. Nora’s identity as multicultural, Muslim and female is central to this scene. The initial controversy which has brought the two characters together notwithstanding, their verbal conflict is brought to a head not simply due to the characters’ differing legal stances on the situation, but due to the suspect’s stance on women’s rights and how they relate to Nora’s gender and ethnic background. It is fair to assume the suspect would have been resentful and suspicious of any

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68  Decentring France police officer due to their profession and the position any police interrogation would place him in. Yet he explicitly chooses to denigrate Nora by referring to her personal identity. This brings questions of intersectionality into play. Polisse’s conflict takes place across gender and ethnicity lines, and pits one practising Muslim against another, evoking intersectional theory on ‘the subversive and disruptive effects that can be produced by marginalised ethnicities’ (Herrera Vivar, Lutz and Supik 2011: 5). While refusing to sideline the significance of gender, race, ethnicity and religion in this scene, I call on Herrera Vivar, Lutz and Supik’s claim that language itself should be considered an intersectional axis (6) in this argument. Polisse’s interrogation scene hinges on the politics of language difference, yet also underlines the multitude of axes of difference at play. Indeed, despite these multiple intersectional factors, at its core this excerpt prompts us to question the extent to which code-switching can constitute a seizure of power. The interaction between the suspect and Nora in Polisse is a struggle for domination, but this does not mean the scene concludes with a clear victor. Even if Nora succeeds in forcing the suspect to take her seriously (or at least to treat her with a greater level of caution), it is doubtful that she will succeed in changing his opinion regarding his daughter’s fate. To a certain extent, the conversation is a failure for both characters, the scene ending without any clear resolution. Due to the film’s episodic structure, we do not find out what happens to the suspect and his daughter further down the track. Nora’s exploitation of her proficiency in Arabic, and knowledge of the Qur’an, certainly silences the verbally abusive suspect, and may indeed force him to reconsider his preconceptions about her. But it would be overly simplistic to suggest that the debate results in a veritable triumph for Nora. Despite this murkiness, code-switching is crucial to the scene. Throughout this moral and cultural conflict, language remains a central weapon in the (re)negotiation of relationships. The use of Arabic in the interrogation scene, while initiated by the suspect, is instrumental to Nora’s strategic attempts at domination. Polisse understands multilingual interaction as a ‘contact zone’, to return to Mary-Louise Pratt’s term (1991: 34). A polycentric view of the linguistic contact zones in Polisse helps unscramble the power dynamics at play. Language manifests itself in the interrogation scene of Polisse as situational, as an indicator of symbolic space and speech genres. As characters move between languages, they move between ideological spaces, each with their own respective sociocultural impulses and moral stakes. As the scene unfolds, we come to see that these spaces function according to a ‘polycentric view, [in which] the world has many dynamic cultural

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Capital centres: Polisse; Entre les murs 69 locations, many possible vantage points [and] no single community or part of the world, whatever its economic or social power, is epistemologically privileged’ (Shohat and Stam 1994: 48). When the characters inhabit the ‘space’ of the French language, the relationship between Nora and the suspect is delineated according to official, legal and French institutional parameters. Nora’s identity is primarily defined by her profession, and the suspect’s place is dictated by his criminal transgressions. The use of the French language anchors the exchange in its physical surrounds: the metropolitan French territory (the capital, no less) and the police station, a secular public institution, in line with French Republican values. Within the parameters of this French space, Nora logically expects a specific system of role relations. She outlines the asymmetrical distribution of social power which sees the suspect in a position of submission and vulnerability and she, the police officer, in a position of official superiority. According to this dynamic, speech and physical movement (including the potential for violence) are more freely available to Nora than to the suspect she is interrogating. In Nora’s view, her professional standing should eclipse all her other traits, namely her gender, in determining the power relations at play. As dictated by French customs and law, the exchange should unfold according to these legal conventions. Yet the suspect’s refusal to participate in this dynamic muddies the power relations Nora tries so hard to enforce. In the face of her insistence on her own social power, he evokes other identitary characteristics which, in his view, undermine Nora’s authority: her gender and North African Muslim background. By moving into the parallel ideological space of the Arabic language, he attempts to use these characteristics to overthrow the French legal framework of power relations he feels Nora is imposing on him. In switching into Arabic, the officer–suspect relationship quickly fades away. For a moment, the suspect appears to have turned the tables against Nora, in his Arabic-language dismissal, ‘Aren’t you ashamed? Go home.’ In moving into his own ideological realm, in which he feels justified in his actions, the suspect appears to invoke religious and sociocultural aspects of his identity that allow him to exert dominance over women. Yet his turning of the tables is only fleeting. In reclaiming this strategy of code-switching as power strategy, Nora likewise moves into the ideological space the Arabic language affords her. Leaving her French police officer identity behind, she seizes on her religious identity and the principles of Islam, principles written in Arabic script in the Qur’an she holds in her hand, to undermine the man’s claim to authority. In so doing, she uses the ideological context

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70  Decentring France framing the use of Arabic to reassume a position of dominance, this time more successfully. A vertical, Eurocentric approach to this shift between languages and ideological spaces would serve little in understanding how language difference impacts the power relationship between these two characters. Historical understandings of the (post)colonial dynamic between French and Arabic, which would see the former as epistemologically dominant and the latter as epistemologically dominated, are not helpful here. Instead, it is a polycentric framework which shows us how language serves each character as a tool for (re)negotiating the power dynamic each is fighting to impose on the other. As a result, both the French and Arabic languages present their speakers with a range of sociocultural, legal and, most importantly, moral stakes through which to combat the other. The final result of this combat is ambiguous, as we do not learn the outcome of the case. Yet what is valuable about this scene, in the context of contemporary French cinema, is the valorisation of each of these languages as home and host to a range of tools for exerting authority. The movement between these ‘homes’ (to borrow Bourdieu’s terminology (1979)) radically impacts the nature of the exchange. But perhaps more radical still is the representation of this movement as horizontal, rather than hierarchical, rhizomatic rather than monopolar. Ultimately, the scene rejects any Eurocentric reading of language in the city, favouring a picture of multilingual relations better matched to the polycentric reality of globalised France. In Polisse, the Arabic language takes on a powerful agency, despite being used in a public French institution in Paris. While languages can certainly be inscribed in dominant systems of power, they can also operate as ‘the focus of fierce loyalties that exist at the razor edge of national difference’ (Shohat and Stam 2006: 127). In this film, Arabic is a language understood by a select few, yet one imbued with enormous personal, cultural and moral currency. The use of this once-colonised language in the scene under examination becomes a literal strategy of one-upmanship between two Franco-Maghrebi characters, a strategy which highlights the multivalent spheres of cultural power at work in Polisse’s Parisian environment.

The disadvantage of the monolingual In a similar vein, Entre les murs also examines high-stakes, socially loaded interactions between French and non-French groups inside a public Parisian institution. A pared-back social drama, Entre les murs broaches questions of social inequality, cultural conflict and linguistic

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Capital centres: Polisse; Entre les murs 71 micro-politics within the setting of a quintessential French Republican institution: the school. In this codified environment, language operates as a means of maintaining order, exerting authority and establishing hierarchical relationships between staff and students. In the film’s French-language classroom, the teacher values standard and literary French as the hallmarks of culture, and denies the validity of alternative linguistic forms. In his view, to master language in such a space is to use grammatically correct, Académie Française-approved French. Yet despite the rituals and surroundings designed to support this view, Entre les murs’s classroom is in fact a much more complex and rhizomatic space. Through a series of student–staff conflicts, the film’s characters challenge traditional conceptions of language, culture and power. The linguistic economy of Entre les murs comprises multiple official languages: French, Spanish (taught as a foreign language), Arabic (used as a linguistic tag by some students) and Tamazight (spoken by a student and his Malian mother in one of the film’s key scenes). However, the film also paints a portrait of a linguistically complex environment in which students constantly code-switch between standard and slang forms of French. Such a diverse language contact zone leads to contestation over what it means to ‘speak French’ today. In this space, the boundaries of the French language, and the terms of the schoolroom social contract, are up for negotiation. Rather than representing the French language as a monolithic concept, the film explores language as a site of ‘tensions between multiplicity and unity, between diversity and uniformity, between “same” and “other”’ (McDonald and Rubin Suleiman 2010: xi). Upon its release in 2008, Entre les murs made a significant impact on the French and international film world, garnering more than 1.6 million box office entries in France alone. It received a 2009 César for Best Adaptation, a 2009 Independent Spirit Award, and nominations for four other Césars, the 2008 Prix Louis Delluc and the 2009 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Most prestigiously, the film was awarded the coveted Palme d’or at the 2008 Cannes International Film Festival, the first French film to be awarded this since the 1980s (and kicking off a string of subsequent French wins, for Amour in 2012, La Vie d’Adèle: Chapitres 1 et 2 in 2013 and Dheepan in 2015). However, Entre les murs’s success was not limited to theatres and festivals. In its critical depiction of the contemporary French classroom and the failure of the system to fulfil its role for today’s students, the film laid bare intergenerational, interracial and intercultural issues, and sparked considerable public discussion. Jouan-Westlund even calls the film a ‘phénomène de société’

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72  Decentring France (‘social phenomenon’, 2014: 112). Cantet and the film’s writer and principal actor, François Bégaudeau, were drawn into debates with public figures such as the Inspector General of Education, Xavier Darcos, over the role of multiculturalism and education in French society, and the ways in which classroom conflict should be represented on-screen. In particular, Darcos followed up a television appearance with a series of newspaper articles, including an interview published in L’Express in which he criticises Cantet’s representation of a dysfunctional classroom that deviates from ‘les valeurs traditionnelles’ (‘traditional values’, Debril 2008). Such a response may appear unusual, considering Entre les murs is not a documentary in the traditional sense. Yet in its use of amateur actors, improvisation, and a semi-biographical narrative, the film came to be known under the label ‘ficto-documentary’, suggesting a delicate mix of fiction and non-fiction that lent the film an air of realism and authority. Today, Entre les murs is one of the most frequently taught films in French schools and French studies university courses abroad. In its evocation of a microcosmic space, the symbolism of the film’s title is fitting. With the exception of one brief establishing scene, in which the film’s teacher protagonist sips an espresso at a nearby brasserie, the entire film is shot inside a public middle school. The school, unnamed in the film but shot at the collège Françoise Dolto, is located in the north-eastern reaches of the twentieth arrondissement in Paris. Working-class and multicultural, the area has been described by figures like Darcos as a ‘zone difficile’ (‘rough area’, Debril 2008). However, it is significant that not only does the film take place ‘between the walls’ of the French school, but of the French capital (and indeed of the Hexagon). Starring François Bégaudeau as the teacher François Marin, Entre les murs is based on Bégaudeau’s 2006 memoir of his own experiences teaching in a similar school. The narrative features a mix of autobiographical moments from B ­ égaudeau’s career combined with fictional scenes. The cast features only a handful of professional actors, with the vast majority of characters played by actual Dolto students, who participated in improvisation workshops with Cantet and Bégaudeau in the year preceding shooting. Most characters share the first names of the actors who play them. Heightening the improvised feel of the film, each classroom scene was shot with three cameras, from three different viewpoints. This strategy creates a destabilising fragmentation and disordering of space, in which the eye bounces from one character to another as they engage in frenetic verbal jousts that defy the ideal of the orderly classroom. Set within the narrative framing of a school year, Entre les murs follows Marin, a white, Ecole Normale Supérieure-educated French

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Capital centres: Polisse; Entre les murs 73 teacher, as he clashes with his diverse and rebellious student group. As the year progresses, Marin’s class becomes increasingly resistant to his traditional teaching style and language use. In the school setting, professional roles, institutional rules and social customs are constantly enacted. Yet these roles, rules and customs are not static, but malleable, and as the film unfolds, the classroom becomes a site of perpetual linguistic contestation. In Entre les murs, language and space, as both practical and symbolic elements, are inextricably linked. In the school’s tense environment, in which the class and race divide is laid bare, language is the key not only to reinforcing institutional hierarchies, but to dismantling them. The further inside the walls of the school we go, the higher we ascend the rungs of institutional power. Closest to the external walls, the courtyard is the realm of the students. Next, as we travel inside the buildings, the classroom is (if only nominally) the realm of the teacher. Finally, the school’s inner reaches are the realm of the staff and executive committee, where students are admitted only on official matters and punishment is dealt. These settings are both physically and symbolically hierarchical. As Alex Lykidis explains, ‘the film introduces us to three primary spaces – the classroom, the faculty lounge and meeting room, and the playground – each establishing a distinct set of parameters that permit certain kinds of speech acts and discourage others’ (2012: 4). Yet, even in the upper echelons of the school’s system, non-standard language can penetrate to disrupt the dominant order. In the inner workings of the school, we arrive at the film’s climax: a hearing to determine whether Souleymane, a student who had become violent during a classroom clash, is to be expelled for his behaviour. The stakes are incredibly high for this 15-year-old student, who risks being dealt a double banishment: the committee’s decision not only determines whether he will be expelled from the school, but exiled from the French nation, as his father has threatened to send him to Mali as punishment. The hearing is an official and ritualised proceeding, in which the committee (principal, teachers and several parents) take on their authority positions with solemnity, and in which Souleymane and his mother are virtually powerless participants. Marin’s word against Souleymane carries far greater weight than Souleymane’s against his teacher in this context. However, even in this environment, the language of the other enters as an anomaly which threatens to undo the system at play. Part-way through the hearing, it becomes clear that Souleymane’s mother does not speak French. As the only person in the room proficient in both French and his mother’s native language of Tamazight,

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74  Decentring France

Figure 6  Entre les murs (Laurent Cantet, Haut et Court)

Souleymane is called on to interpret, and thus to facilitate the hearing which may lead to his expulsion. Processes of translation and multilingualism suddenly become crucial to the scene. Indeed, without Souleymane’s interpretation, the committee meeting cannot continue. In the early stages of the meeting, Souleymane whispers in Tama­­ zight to his mother, interpreting the French-language conversation for her benefit, as he has evidently done many times for her before. However, when Souleymane’s mother begins to respond heatedly to him in Tamazight, the committee members step in. principal: [French] Excuse me … [Mother continues to speak to Souleymane in unsubtitled Tamazight in a raised voice] mother: [F] Messieurs, Mesdames. [switches to Tamazight, utters a few solemn phrases] [the committee stares at her in silence, unsure how to proceed] teacher: [to Souleymane, F] Can you translate? [pause] souleymane: [in a low voice, F] She says I’m a good boy. mother: [Tamazight dialogue] Souleymane: [French] I do my homework. I help my brothers and sisters with their work when I can. mother: [Tamazight dialogue] souleymane: [F] I always wash the dishes and help her when I can. [silence]

Throughout this scene, Souleymane’s mother’s dialogue remains unsubtitled. As a result, the viewer is placed in the same position of trust as the committee members, and Souleymane maintains a unique position of linguistic superiority both over the film’s characters and its audience (provided the latter does not understand both Tamazight and French). The explicit choice on the part of the filmmaker to omit

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Capital centres: Polisse; Entre les murs 75 subtitles from this scene deprives Souleymane’s mother of meaningful expression in the film, and highlights her exclusion from dominant French culture. But it also places Souleymane in a crucial position that could not be held by any other character. For both teachers and viewers are dependent upon Souleymane, for his interpretation of his mother’s dialogue, and for the continuation of the meeting in general. Ultimately, Souleymane’s consent to interpret for his mother means that he allows the hearing to continue, and in an example of troublesome power dynamics, he is indeed expelled. Yet despite this result, the role this multilingual character is asked to play at this crucial moment is nonetheless remarkable. In the teachers’ world, marginalised languages like Tamazight have no place, at least not in the school, and certainly not in the syllabus. However, outside the classroom, Tamazight is not only a lived reality for French citizens like Souleymane, but a useful skill. Of course, his mother’s ignorance of French causes her immense disadvantage. Monolingualism is shown to be what Claire Kramsch calls a ‘handicap’ (2006: 102) in both directions – for teachers and parent alike. It is not simply knowledge of Tamazight, but knowledge of both French and Tamazight and the ability to move among them, that is valorised in this scene. But in a display rarely seen in French cinema before the contemporary era, Souleymane’s knowledge of Tamazight, a highly marginalised and minoritarian language in France, becomes relevant and valuable on metropolitan French soil. In this scene, multilingualism is an asset, and the key to advancing the difficult situation. By contrast, monolingualism (in French or Tamazight alike) is what Elizabeth Ellis calls ‘a limitation on cognitive, communicative, social and vocational potential’ (2006: 174). In an instant, from being the most dominated figure in the room, Souleymane becomes the most linguistically adept. From Marin’s prohibition of verlan in the classroom to his students’ repurposing of their own language to manipulate and humiliate their teacher, Entre les murs’s narrative revolves around the ways in which language can be harnessed both to build up and break down power relations in the contemporary Paris school. In the classroom of an earlier era, such as the rigid environment depicted in François Truffaut’s Les 400 coups (1959), the hierarchical relationship between teacher and students is not contested. Language use is uniform and non-standard variations of French have no place. The right to speak is regulated by the teacher, while students who misuse language are disciplined. Even punishment can take a linguistic form, in the ritual of writing lines. Yet in Entre les murs, the French school has become a site of diversity, contestation and crisis. In this space, traditional language hierar-

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76  Decentring France chies are deconstructed and reformed. To Marin’s surprise, it is not those who use only correct French, but those who can use multiple linguistic forms according to what the situation requires, who demonstrate a truer mastery of language. Marin also fails to understand the value of using different variations of French in everyday life, including unofficial or even incorrect versions. Michael Holquist writes that ‘failure to perceive the systemic multiplicity that is at the heart of any spoken language is a linguistically uninformed view that historically and politically is eventuated as linguistic monism’ (2014: 8), and Entre les murs’s protagonist suffers for his inability to value the ‘multiplicity’ of codes that comprise the French language. Cantet’s film highlights the potential for control wielded by characters who understand the power of language and how to use it, and the disadvantage experienced by those who fail to do so. At the end of the school year, Souleymane has been expelled, the educational system endures, Marin retains his position and the teacher–student dynamic still exists. Yet the classroom has grown less ossified and more responsive to the potential importance of diverse linguistic forms. Entre les murs does not offer clear-cut answers to sociocultural problems or to Marin’s various failures, nor does it provide a solution for Souleymane’s abandonment by the system, and indeed by the French nation. Instead, the film presents a revised understanding of what it means to speak useful and valuable language(s) in France, and suggests that monolingualism in French may no longer be sufficient for navigating life in the French centre.

Evolutions in African languages Contemporary French multilingual films present a plethora of different language combinations, each associated with their own historical and political stakes. In Polisse, the relationship between French and Italian, between which a number of the film’s middleclass characters code-switch for reasons of convenience, differs markedly from the loaded rapport between French and Arabic. In Entre les murs, the foreign language of Spanish is a sanctioned part of the curriculum, while Arabic, Mandarin and Tamazight are learned in the home and discouraged in the classroom. It is always important to acknowledge historical context when examining the relationships between languages, and to acknowledge that the relationships between different language pairings are never identical. For example, many multilingual films, like Cédric Klapisch’s European travel tales L’Auberge Espagnole and Les Poupées russes, or Christian Carion’s war films L’Affaire Farewell and Joyeux

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Capital centres: Polisse; Entre les murs 77 Noël, focus on the meeting of French and other Western (and Northern) European languages. Others, such as London River or Welcome, hinge on the changeable relationship between French and English. Such films are informed by the reality of English as a parallel First World and (post)colonial lingua franca, and therefore another traditional archetype of a ‘power language’, like French. In films such as Luc Besson’s Lucy, among many others, dialogue in French and English language takes place between French and American, rather than British, characters, and operates within a Franco-Hollywoodian context. Occidental language pairings thus come with their own socio-historical backgrounds and stakes. While Western European languages are not unconditionally welcomed in French cinema, historically they have played a more harmonious role in film when compared with supposedly ‘Eastern’ languages, especially those of former French colonies. Considering this history, the multilingualism in examples such as the interrogation scene in Polisse or the interpreting scene in Entre les murs operates within the context of a very different historical background. Indeed, the specific relationship between French and Arabic, and even more specifically between metropolitan French and the North African Arabic of the ex-French colonies, situates the scene in the historical context of (post)colonialism and a legacy of either real or perceived linguistic and cultural repression (Eades 2006: 313). Most examples of such ‘(post)colonial’ languages in film, from Pépé le Moko (Julien Duvivier 1937) to Indochine (Régis Wargnier 1992), inscribe foreign-language use in a power system that sees the non-French speaker ignored, maligned or oppressed. Contemporary cinema, by contrast, offers diversified ways for speakers of Arabic and other African languages to interact with French groups. Of course (post)colonial languages also include Vietnamese, South Pacific and Indian Ocean languages and creoles. However, it is mainly in the portrayal of African languages, from Arabic to Wolof, that we can trace the evolution from domination to empowerment in French cinema. To understand the importance of the role of Arabic in Polisse and of Tamazight in Entre les murs, it is necessary to look over the evolution of African language representation in French cinema. By far the most frequent African language represented in French cinema is Arabic, a dominant language of the former French colonies of the Maghreb; Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco. Though Maghreb-set ‘colonial’ films like Pépé le Moko and Itto (Jean Benoît-Lévy and Marie Epstein 1934) feature some background Arabic chatter, the presence of subtitled Arabic-language dialogue in French cinema was negligible before the 1980s. When it began to appear in beur films around this

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78  Decentring France period, it was mostly represented as a language associated with disadvantage and undesirability. A key early example of such a depiction is the Franco-Algerian director Mehdi Charef’s debut film, Le Thé au harem d’Archimède. The film is considered a precursor to the cinéma de banlieue movement, a late twentieth-century phenomenon concerned with the marginalisation of the culturally diverse inhabitants of poor housing estates located on the outskirts of Paris, Lyons and Marseilles. Le Thé au harem d’Archimèdes’s protagonists are Pat, a white French boy, and Madjid, a young beur born in France to Algerian parents. Despite the presence of a considerable number of characters of Arab origin, Arabic appears in only a few brief scenes in the film, all set in Madjid’s parents’ apartment, and spoken solely by his mother. During a scene in which Madjid’s mother reprimands him for being a ‘bad son’ and a ‘bad Algerian’, she speaks to her son in Arabic. In order to force him to become a ‘real man’, she proposes to send him to Algeria, to undertake military service. It is clear throughout this scene that Madjid comprehends at least most of his mother’s Arabiclanguage speech. However, he pretends not so much not to hear his mother (a standard adolescent practice), but not to understand her. He answers her in French, in an insolent tone: ‘je te comprends pas’ (‘I don’t understand you’). This is not only frustrating for his mother, who cannot communicate effectively in French, but insulting, considering her eagerness for her family to maintain a connection to her homeland. For Madjid, a young beur who does not know Algeria at all, but who also has trouble finding his own place in France, Arabic is an unwelcome badge of difference. He wishes to reject his Arab roots, favouring the French street slang of the banlieue youth population. In the film, the Arabic language is representative of the intergenerational conflict rife between first-generation Arabic-speaking immigrants, who wish to retain a link with their home countries, and their children, who seek to integrate into French youth society. As Alec Hargreaves and Leslie Kealhofer propose, in Le Thé au harem d’Archimède, ‘the language use of the first-generation characters – in Arabic or heavily accented French – serves to underscore the extent to which the second-generation protagonists are rooted in the dominant language and cultural norms of France’ (2010: 75–6). In the same vein, Carrie Tarr identifies this linguistic conflict between Madjid and his mother, observing that ‘the rift between them is represented by the breakdown in language’ (2005: 35). For Madjid, Arabic is not a resource imbued with potential social value, but a source of shame. A similarly critical portrayal of the Arabic language can be found in 1992’s Un vampire au paradis, from Franco-Algerian director

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Capital centres: Polisse; Entre les murs 79 Aldelkrim Bahloul. Bahloul’s film revolves around cultural alienation in metropolitan Paris, and posits the Arabic language as a barrier to acceptance into mainstream French society. Un vampire au paradis’s protagonist, Nathalie, is a bourgeois, white French teenager who lives in the sixteenth arrondissement of Paris. Further to the north, around the multicultural, working-class areas of Clichy and Barbès-­ Rochechouart, a mentally ill young man of Maghrebi origin, who identifies as a vampire, is gaining notoriety for attacking and biting women in the street. During a visit to Clichy, Nathalie is bitten by the man, who goes by the name Arbi Nosfer. This clever name combines vampirism with xenophobia: it features a pejorative first name (arbi is an offensive term for arabe) while winking at the F. W. Murnau’s vampire archetype, Nosferatu (1922). However, in a twist on the typical vampire narrative, rather than dying or transforming into the undead, Nathalie begins to manifest an unlikely symptom. Without understanding what she is saying (reducing the language to sounds, rather than meaning), Nathalie experiences fits during which she inexplicably speaks in Arabic. The Arabic language is transferred through a bite from Arbi to Nathalie, like an infection. Hearing this exotic tongue spouting from their daughter’s mouth, Nathalie’s parents are horrified, and set out on a mission to ‘cure’ her at all costs. Her father delves into the clamorous, Arab-influenced cafes and residences of Clichy, Barbès and ultimately Algeria, in search of a solution to his daughter’s predicament. Like Charef, Bahloul’s work is steeped in the tradition of le cinéma beur (he has also directed such Franco-Maghrebi films as Le Thé à la menthe (1984)). Clearly Un vampire au paradis is not racist in itself; Bahloul does not mean to suggest that the ability to speak Arabic is actually an affliction. Instead, he seeks to show how fluency in the Arabic language (accompanied by its social and cultural connotations) has traditionally been perceived by French society as a disadvantage, rather than an asset. Rather than actually demonising Arabic, the film exposes mainstream French fears of the language and its associated cultures. In each of the above films, the negative portrayal of Arabic cannot be ignored. Equally interesting is the absence of Arabic from such iconic beur and banlieue films as Raï (Thomas Gilou 1995), Hexagone and even the much-acclaimed La Haine, which are not multilingual. In the same way, despite the steady influx into France of migrants from francophone West Africa, especially Senegal and Mali, there is an almost complete absence of Wolof, Mandinka, Tamazight and other African languages in French cinema from the time. Non-standard versions of French, including fast-paced street slang and verlan code,

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80  Decentring France dominate these films, even to the extent of being unintelligible to a standard French-speaking audience; La Haine and Hexagone were screened with subtitles in some French cinemas (Higbee 2007c: 41). Such films thus sport their own situated vernacular. Yet despite this vibrant, diverse dialogue, migrant languages are noteworthy for their absence in most beur and banlieue films. At the turn of the twenty-first century, however, portrayals of Arabic and African languages in French cinema began to evolve. Code inconnu: récit incomplet de divers voyages (Haneke 2001) sees its characters speak in Malinka and Arabic, while Rachid Bouchareb’s Little Senegal (2001) depicts Wolof and Arabic-language use as a fact of its French-dwelling characters’ everyday lives in both France and the US. The year 2004 saw the release of a film which provided a particularly sympathetic vision of Arabic; the Franco-Moroccan director Ismaël Ferroukhi’s Le Grand Voyage, which Mireille Rosello sees not so much as beur cinema, but as a ‘babelized road movie’ (2011: 258). The film follows a young, second-generation Franco-Maghrebi man, Reda, as he drives his Muslim father across Europe and into the Middle East, to fulfil the latter’s lifelong dream of making a pilgrimage to Mecca. This displaces the typical second-generation beur protagonist from the ghettoised surrounds of the banlieue to the European road and, ultimately, the first-generation immigrant character’s spiritual home of Mecca. Language is still representative of generational difference in this film; the father cannot speak French well, while his son cannot speak Arabic, only understanding a small amount of Moroccan dialect. However, while Reda shows no active interest in learning his parents’ tongue, he is content to converse with them (he in French, they in Moroccan Arabic) and does not criticise, mock or discourage them from their native language use, as Le Thé au harem d’Archimède’s Madjid does. This shows that the preference for one language by one generation and another by the other does not necessarily prohibit functional communication. As Rosello explains of Le Grand Voyage: Reda and his dad have a relationship to language that tolerates, if not welcomes, different levels of competence and different uses of different languages. His dad speaks one language and understands his son in another. (2011: 267)

As they travel through the Western countries of France, Germany, Serbia and Bulgaria, the son’s multilingualism carries great value; he negotiates passport issues, accommodation arrangements and various purchases in combinations of French and English. However, as they near their ultimate destination, the father’s linguistic abilities begin to overtake the son’s. It is the father who communicates with officials,

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Capital centres: Polisse; Entre les murs 81 handles money, food and shelter arrangements and befriends locals and fellow pilgrims. Significantly, it is also he who must interpret for his son (from the standard Arabic spoken among pilgrims to the Moroccan dialect he partly understands). In these scenes, Reda’s competency in French and English has no currency: Arabic is the reigning language. By the time they arrive in Mecca, Reda is at a loss to communicate with the majority of the people he encounters, while his father interacts freely with those around him. Le Grand Voyage’s portrayal of Arabic is a modest development from examples like Le Thé au harem d’Archimède or Un vampire au paradis, especially as the father’s knowledge of Arabic grows in value in direct proportion to the distance he gains from metropolitan France. The monolingual first-generation father certainly has more in common with the monolingual firstgeneration mother in Le Thé au harem than with his son. Yet the film is a pioneering example of the portrayal of Arabic as an asset – albeit in an arabophone context – in a contemporary French film. Both Maghrebi and francophone West African cinemas have long included languages like Arabic, Mandinka, Bambara, Songhay, Hausa and Wolof. Algerian cinema in particular has foregrounded dialogue in both Arabic and French, as shown from its inception with films like the hugely successful La Bataille d’Alger (Gillo Pontecorvo 1966). The French funding of cinema from these regions since the advent of an auteurist cinema industry in countries like Algeria and Senegal around the 1970s, including the work of Ousmane Sembene, Abderrahmane Sissako and Med Hondo, should not be underestimated. However, the substantial representation of the languages other than French spoken in these regions has only extended to French cinema in the 2000s. Despite this comparatively recent change, the presence of African languages has been steadily increasing in quantity and complexity since 2005. Contemporary films like Polisse and Entre les murs foreground and valorise the use of the postcolonial migrant language ‘between the walls’ of the French cultural nucleus. It is often in the city that relationships between the French mainstream and alternative identities are negotiated, and these films present not only French, but other Western, Eastern and African languages as each possessing their own worth within this centre.

Conclusion Ultimately, through their portrayal of dialogue in French, Arabic and Tamazight, Polisse and Entre les murs reconfigure traditional power dynamics between dominating French and dominated other languages

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82  Decentring France between the walls of the French capital city. It is not the aim of this chapter to suggest that contemporary multilingual films such as Polisse and Entre les murs present a utopic or simplistic vision of language politics in France. Indeed, cultural divisions and inequalities are at the heart of Polisse and Entre les murs’s narratives, which frequently explore persistent problems of cultural fracture in French society. The cultural and socio-economic rift between the films’ middle-class French characters and a number of socially ostracised African, Asian and Eastern European characters are crucial elements of both films. Of course, it is of critical importance that Souleymane’s case ultimately leads to his defeat, and Nora’s case underlines persistent sexism. The Parisian centre still remains a comparatively – though far from entirely – hostile space for the multilingual other. But multilingualism in many different languages still presents the potential for power and control. The radical nature of these scenes results not from the representation of a reality in which multilingual characters of non-French origin achieve all their goals and experience no difficulty in doing so. Instead, it results from the radical refashioning of the place of non-French, non-European language in high-stakes, institutionalised situations inside the French metropolis. Arabic in Polisse and Tamazight in Entre les murs are remarkable for their status as an asset (albeit an unexpected one) to their speakers. These films show us how Arabic and Tamazight language use can contribute to (re)defining the importance, value and relevance of non-mainstream culture. All this occurs within the confines of the French capital city, the ultimate space in which the multicultural other has historically been disenfranchised, excluded and denied a voice. In stark contrast to the regressive depictions of African languages found in films like Le Thé au harem d’Archimède or Pépé le Moko, Polisse and Entre les murs match Cristina Johnston’s view of contemporary multilingual films, in which ‘the figure of “the other” is no longer placed beyond the confines of the national in linguistic, social, or any other terms, but rather is firmly embedded within the national, modifying and challenging from within, and underlining the existence of a far more pluralist and plurilingual identity’ (2010b: 97).3 These films recognise the sociopolitical conflicts which continue to impact cosmopolitan French society, as well as the personal hardships their protagonists continue to suffer due to their gender and race. But they also demonstrate the capacity of a language other than French to function not as an emblem of repression or marginalisation, nor as an overly optimistic, all-empowering device, but as a means of attaining and expressing agency in meaningful ways. Such films thus present new roles that diverse multilingual characters can play in such a centralised cultural space, redefining the centre from within.

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Notes 1 Original data. 2 Emphasis in original quote. 3 Emphasis my own.

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5 Urban margins: Un prophète and Dheepan

W

e now move from the city to the banlieue for Jacques Audiard’s 2009 Un prophète and 2015 Dheepan. Each of these banlieue-set films is composed of multilingual dialogue and features characters who frequently code-switch as a strategy for dominating one another. Un prophète is set in the Brécourt male prison, ruled and divided by two conflicting cultural gangs: the Arabs and the Corsicans. The young Franco-Maghrebi protagonist, Malik, finds himself simultaneously subjugated by, and torn between, these two groups, as he attempts to survive as an outsider in a violent space. Meanwhile, the titular protagonist of Dheepan uproots himself from a life-threatening situation in Sri Lanka to a dilapidated, mob-controlled HLM, Le Pré Saint-Gervais, in the north-east Paris suburbs. In many symbolic and literal ways, the fractured site of Le Pré is as racially charged and physically dangerous as Brécourt. Often it is even more so, considering the criminals’ free access to weapons and the decreased police surveillance, and the space parallels the war zone Dheepan’s characters have left behind. Each film is thus located in an outer Paris space which most Parisians dare not enter, and which presents a multitude of opportunities for mob initiation, violent conflict and even death. In these high-stakes suburban spaces, both Malik and Dheepan’s ‘foreign’ identities cause them to experience exclusion and discrimination at the outset of these bleak films. Their use of Arabic and Tamil respectively contributes to their marginalisation in the eyes of white French characters. Dheepan and his wife Yalini’s ignorance of French in particular causes immense problems for the recent refugees. Yet as the films progress, these troubled protagonists manage to revalue their non-French backgrounds and to establish themselves as an important force in the banlieue. In Un prophète, Malik transforms his fluency in the three languages of the prison (Arabic, Corsican and French) into a means of e­ xclusion and manipulation, overturning the power dynamic between himself and his oppressors. This chapter explores how Malik’s multilingual power play comes to a head in his performance of what I call a ‘treacherous interpreter’, whereby he exploits the measure of trust ritually

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Urban margins: Un prophète; Dheepan 85 assigned to the translator to manipulate his adversaries and wrest himself a unique position of power. As Malik manipulates language, the film calls into question not only the shifting status of marginalised languages, but also highlights the delicate yet crucial role of translation in the contemporary universe. In a similar way, the interpreter at the beginning of Dheepan, whose power play is examined in the first pages of this book, also takes advantage of a marginalised language (Tamil) and a French character’s monolingualism, to influence the immigration officer’s decision and control the outcome of his fellow Sri Lankans’ asylum request. It will be a while before Dheepan’s protagonists learn to manipulate language in the same ways. However, towards the end of the film, Dheepan’s proficiency in both French and Tamil becomes essential to him both infiltrating certain groups and skirting around others, negotiating himself and his family a comparatively safe position in their dangerous new home. In both films, multilingualism and translation offer unique opportunities for advancement that challenge traditional perceptions of the value of languages. With its focus on strategic and treacherous interpreting, this chapter draws on Delabastita and Grutman’s understanding of the ‘enormous scores of power’ (2005: 21) held by the interpreter, and subverts the concept of the ‘power language’ in contemporary France. It likewise builds on the tradition of beur and banlieue film scholarship, introducing multilingualism as a core concern for literature on these cinematic movements. In these films, characters advance their political and social position not so much through a use of French (though knowledge of this lingua franca is essential), but through a mastery of languages which have long been historically marginalised, even colonised, by the French. In the dangerous settings of both Un prophète and Dheepan, language, power and violence are interlaced in a complex nexus that the protagonists gradually learn to navigate with skill. Contemporary multilingual banlieue cinema thus introduces the concept of the treacherous interpreter, and the language– power–violence triad, to re-envision the place of peripheral languages in contemporary (sub)urban France.

The banlieue on the French screen Since the 1980s, the fragmented and socio-economically oppressed environment of the banlieue has been the setting of many French films. Though focused on the housing projects surrounding Paris, particularly to the north, the banlieues of several major French cities have appeared on-screen, from Lyons (Inch’Allah dimanche) to Lille

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86  Decentring France and especially Marseilles (Samia, Marius et Jeannette (Robert Guédiguian 1997) Tête de turc (Pascal Elbé 2010)). In these environments, the tensions between dominant French society and socio-economically marginalised demographics are brought to the fore. As a general rule in these films, the marginalised or other character struggles to carve out a prosperous life and a set, meaningful identity in urban France. The other is confined to the margins of society, and encounters problems related to poverty, crime, violence, discrimination, unemployment, lack of access to education, isolation and, in extreme cases, deportation and exile, often through the double peine policy.1 If the protagonist of a banlieue film is a first-generation migrant, they usually arrive in France with ideals of making a better life, hoping for economic prosperity, security and inclusion in the French nation. As the film unfolds, this ideal is challenged and eventually eroded. If the character is a second-generation migrant, they are generally more disillusioned, yet still experience the economic and social marginalisation of their parents, compounded with a conflicting transnational identity they struggle, and usually fail, to resolve. In films like Ma 6-T va crack-er, Le Thé au harem d’Archimède, Hexagone, Douce France, Raï and La Haine, the geographic mapping of the modern French city crystallises and intensifies the inner–outer, French–other binary these characters experience as outsiders in France. In their outer suburban dwellings, these characters are physically and symbolically separated from the nuclear French centre by the périphérique highway, which severs one kind of inner living space from a very different outer one, and discourages traversal of the boundary between the two. Indeed, not only do these characters live in the banlieue and experience all the problems that arise from it; they also experience difficulties in attempting to leave it. This occurs not only in a long-term failure to achieve upward mobility, but in a literal and everyday sense – their geographic and social othering is frequently problematised through the motif of the périphérique and the lack of convenient transportation from HLMs into the city. Therefore, despite living only a few kilo­metres from the city, the banlieue feels a world away from the French mainstream, and is often represented as an interminable and inescapable ghetto. In almost all of these films, women hold a disadvantaged position in society, and only a peripheral role in the narrative. The banlieue has far from disappeared from the French screen in the twenty-first century and films like Dheepan and Un prophète, as well as others like Wesh-wesh, qu’est-ce qui se passe? and Bande de filles, continue to represent the city’s HLMs as sites of violence, isolation and deprivation. However, in the 2000s and 2010s, a far wider variety of representations of the banlieue have appeared in French films. In

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Urban margins: Un prophète; Dheepan 87 Kechiche’s schoolroom drama L’Esquive, for example, young inhabitants of the Seine-Saint-Denis setting may experience economic lack and police aggression, yet they also find enrichment in a multitude of cultural identities, linguistic forms and texts, including in the French literary canon. These banlieue dwellers do not travel into the Paris centre, nor do they seek to. In fact, the city of Paris, only 10 kilometres away, is barely mentioned at all. Instead, it is the floral plays of seventeenth-century playwright Marivaux which do the travelling, from the Paris centre to the Seine-Saint-Denis classrooms, rehearsal spaces and school hall that make up the film’s primary settings. L’Esquive’s HLM environment is as visually bleak as settings like Le Thé au harem d’Archimède’s or La Haine’s, yet the interaction between inhabitants, and the flows of culture and power between centre and periphery, paint a far more optimistic picture of banlieue life. In similar ways, while the protagonist of Eric Toledano and Olivier Nakache’s 2011 blockbuster Intouchables comes from a marginalised banlieue background, he is able to establish a legitimate place in dominant French society, and build personal relationships with white, Paris-dwelling characters, without abandoning his FrancoSenegalese cultural identity or attempting to assimilate fully into a narrow, bourgeois slice of French society. Some contemporary banlieue films even leave the HLM environment behind, such as in Claire Denis’s 35 rhums. In this 2008 film, a father of West African birth and his French-born, half-German daughter live in a quiet street just outside the north-eastern border of Paris. In line with banlieue film traditions, the protagonists are of African birth or descent, they inhabit the urban periphery, their apartment is in a twentieth-century high-rise building, their neighbours and friends are mostly of mixed or migrant origin and the father even works as a train driver on the RER. Yet in a shift away from traditional cinéma de banlieue, 35 rhums’s characters do not experience racism, economic hardship or other challenges characters in films like La Haine tend to encounter. Instead, 35 rhums is a peaceful film in which the Parisian suburbs are a settled space where French-born and French-naturalised characters coexist in relative harmony. In its narrative of familial devotion, everyday life and interracial romance, 35 rhums depicts a multicultural banlieue environment that is far removed from the original template of troubled HLM life we see in first-wave beur and banlieue film. Films such as 35 rhums, L’Esquive and Intouchables do not ignore the economic disparity between Paris and the banlieue, nor do they pretend its inhabitants lead charmed lives. However, they do recast the dichotomy between centre and periphery, between dominant French

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88  Decentring France linguistic practices and banlieue language, taking a polycentric view of language politics. In other words, many contemporary French films are still fascinated by the tense environment of the banlieue, but are interested in presenting language difference and multiculturalism in decreasingly Eurocentric ways. Such films portray the banlieue as a hotbed of sociocultural and sociolinguistic negotiation, and present alternative frames for scrutinising the relationship between French and other. In this respect, Dheepan and Un prophète uphold certain traditions of early banlieue film, while recasting the role of non-French language and culture in such peripheral spaces. In both these films, despite their geographic proximity to central Paris, the banlieue does indeed seem a world away. Movement between centre and periphery is curtailed either by prison walls, or by a lack of efficient public transportation. Both the prison and the HLM are sites of physical violence, economic disadvantage, social isolation, lack of opportunity and dilapidation. The sites host a predominance of immigrants and refugees and there is a dearth of meaningful relationships to be established with mainstream French people, as well as of opportunities for immersion into traditional ‘French’ culture. One of those key motifs of early banlieue film, the riot between police and HLM inhabitants, is present in each film. At the beginning of Un prophète, we learn that Malik has been imprisoned for six years for having struck a French police officer during a banlieue riot. And when a powerful local mobster is released from prison in Dheepan, the inhabitants celebrate with raves and gunshots into the night sky. However, despite their bleak tones and violent storylines, both Dheepan and Un prophète are more fundamentally optimistic about their protagonists’ prospects in contemporary France than the cinema of the late twentieth century. Perhaps unexpectedly, each film ends with a kind of happy ending, and the image of a free, safe and united family unit. Language use helps these protagonists protect themselves, advance their social standing and turn their situations to their favour. This language use includes, but is not limited to, French. The protagonists’ success in the banlieue environment is not a result of seamless integration, adoption of French norms or abandonment of their native language. For both Malik and the three protagonists of Dheepan, it is essential to learn French and thus integrate to a certain extent, but it is not necessary to abandon one’s plural identity or non-French background. Instead, multicultural identity offers opportunity for social advancement in itself. In both films, education is presented as a means of transcending the oppression of the banlieue space. This is shown in the young Illayaal’s increased

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Urban margins: Un prophète; Dheepan 89 exposure to French language and literature, Malik’s Corsican studies and the benefits of literacy classes in the prison. In both Dheepan and Un prophète, education is empowering, and the most useful form of education is shown to be the acquisition of language.

The treacherous interpreter Un prophète is a violent prison drama set almost entirely within the confines of the Brécourt male prison, on the outskirts of the French capital. With an intense style and grim tone, the film follows the transformation of Malik, a young Franco-Arab prisoner incarcerated from the age of 19 to 25. Upon entering the prison, Malik is subjected to bullying, racial profiling and sexual assault, and fails to find a place in any of the groups, mostly structured along racial and cultural lines, which make up the prison’s social landscape. Yet the film’s ultimate focus is not on Malik’s victimisation in the prison, but on his evolution from social outcast to gang leader. As Malik progresses through his sentence, his adoption by the prison’s ruling Corsican gang, headed by mafia boss César, places him in a position from which to exert an unprecedented measure of power over his rivals, his allies and ultimately his oppressors. Unsurprisingly, given the film’s setting, Malik’s climb to a position of mafia dominance is effected in part through criminal activity and physical violence. As the plot progresses, it becomes apparent that Malik is not afraid to use violence to establish himself as a key player in the social landscape of Brécourt.Yet what makes Un prophète unique is that Malik’s ascent of the prison’s social ladder is orchestrated not so much through his aptitude for brutality, but through his ability to learn, harness and manipulate multiple languages. Audiard himself describes Malik as ‘the triumph of intelligence over brute force’ (in Vincendeau 2009: 20). Malik arrives at the prison bilingual (though illiterate) in French and Arabic, yet unaligned with any particular cultural identity or group. He does not attempt to make any friends upon his arrival, nor does he request to be lodged in the quarters inhabited by mostly Arab inmates. This renders him useful to the prison’s formidable Corsican gang, which recruits him as a pawn and a go-between in dealings with their Arab rivals. At the outset, Malik is kept simultaneously within the gang and on its periphery, as the members exclude him by speaking Corsican in his presence, rather than French. Yet using his newly acquired literacy skills (he learns to read in the prison’s school), Malik secretly teaches himself Corsican by studying a pocket dictionary and listening in on conversations. He thus assumes a unique linguistic perspective, becoming

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90  Decentring France the only character capable of understanding and communicating in the three languages of the prison. Language subsequently becomes a tool in Malik’s ascent to power, and he exploits his new-found trilingualism in order to eavesdrop on the Corsicans’ secret conversations, to establish a broad criminal network across cultural boundaries and to penetrate both of the prison’s dominant and polarised power centres. In a subversion of traditional linguistic power dynamics, French functions as the lingua franca of the prison and the linguistic common ground of all its inhabitants, yet it is Malik’s fluency in the more marginal tongues of Arabic and Corsican which drive his ascent to power. With its complex web of French, Arabic and Corsican dialogue, Un prophète’s characters consistently employ language as an important strategy in their struggle for dominance over one another. Phil Hoad explains how ‘the film catches the dark side of language – its relationship to power; it can be a badge of belonging and is used to exclude as well’ (2010). The film presents a mise en abyme of the broader cultural and racial tensions rife in contemporary France, a recurring impulse in multilingual film which Strand sees as an ‘echo chamber of society’ (2009: 269). While a considerable proportion of the inmates and staff are French, the prison is ruled by two conflicting cultural gangs. While the Arabs keep mostly to themselves, the Corsicans’ criminal network extends to a number of the prison’s senior guards and their leader, César, effectively controls the prison from within. The jail is a rigid and ritualised space in which the lines between cultural groups are rarely, if ever, traversed. Despite the rigidity of this space and the myriad ways in which linguistic and cultural border-crossing is discouraged, at the heart of Malik’s power play is his strategic use of code-switching. Through an adept use of French, Arabic and Corsican code-switching, Malik transforms his mastery of multiple languages into a means of exclusion, intimidation and manipulation, allowing him to gain control over the Corsicans and eventually to overturn the power dynamic between himself and his tormentor, César. One scene in particular revolves explicitly around code-switching, introducing treacherous interpreting as a potential power strategy. The scene takes place in one of the prison visiting rooms, where Malik is consulting with his friend Ryad, a former inmate also of Franco-Arab descent. Both men have been employed by César to handle a drug-smuggling job for the Corsicans, using their own men. The arrangement has fallen through for a number of reasons, but the Corsicans blame Malik and Ryad. The centrality of language in this scene is clear, as Malik manages the precarious situation through a juggling of both French and Arabic.

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Urban margins: Un prophète; Dheepan 91

Figure 7  Un prophète (Jacques Audiard, Why Not Productions)

The scene begins with a discussion between Malik and Ryad in which French, not Arabic, is their language of choice. Ryad attempts to convince Malik of the gravity of their situation: their employees are threatening to rebel against the Corsicans. ryad: [French] Are you listening? It’s bad. Our guys are good for drugs. Not for other stuff. malik: [F] You were the one who wanted to do it. What are we going to do now? ryad: [F] I can’t force them. When the Corsicans brought out their guns they ran off straight away. Like devils. That bastard Vettori treats us like shit. There was a fight on the way to Paris. Now Khalid wants to kill him. malik: [F] You’ll have to fix it. Find some other guys. ryad: [F] Now? On a contract? malik: [F] Who cares?

Their conversation is brought to an abrupt halt as César and his ally Vettori enter; César accuses Malik and insults Ryad. césar: [F] OK, this stops here. You’ve wasted my time and money with your group of idiots. [points to Ryad] just look at him! ryad: [F] Be careful what you say.

When Ryad defends himself, Vettori threatens him with violence. vettori: [F] I’ll put you out of your misery! [seizes Ryad] malik: [F] Hands off! Stop!

To defuse the situation, Malik draws on his multilingualism. Switching to Arabic, as if to suggest Arabic is indeed his and Ryad’s

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92  Decentring France preferred code (a false but credible suggestion), he placates his friend, promising him that they will not submit to the Corsicans. malik: [Arabic] Ssh! We’ll do it our own way.

César becomes immediately suspicious of this unknown language: césar: [F] What are you saying?

This is a key moment: the first time in the film that César finds himself in a position of linguistic ignorance and therefore vulnerability. Malik lies: malik: [F] I’m trying to make him understand. Can I?

It is with these two phrases that the ‘interpreting’ begins. While he could reasonably continue to protest at the use of Arabic, César cedes the disciplining over to Malik. César is clearly uncomfortable at finding himself in a position of incomprehension and subsequently a lack of control for the first time, yet he is seemingly convinced by Malik’s masquerade. Malik turns back to Ryad, and switches back to Arabic. Before their eyes, he promises Ryad they will kill the ­Corsicans. malik: [A] Listen. We’ll kill them. I promise. We’ll kill them, but they can’t know [it’s coming].

Next, warning Ryad, Malik underscores his interpreting with a display of physical violence. Ryad is so taken aback by Malik’s words that he even forgets to respond in Arabic, reverting automatically back to French, leaving Malik to act out the masquerade on his own. malik: [A] I’m going to hit you. Lower your head. ryad: [F] What? malik: [A] I’ll hit you and you lower your head. [strikes Ryad hard across the face] [long silence]

Switching back to French, he ‘explains’ the blow to the Corsicans: malik: [F] All right, he gets it now. Let’s get on with it, OK?

The Corsicans exit, satisfied that Malik has disciplined Ryad on their behalf. Malik is thus able to exploit his fluency in Arabic and French to placate both sides of the conflict in opposing ways, and maintain his delicate position as intermediary. Code-switching is clearly instrumental here, but does not function alone. For Malik’s ability to juggle both César and Ryad’s agendas relies heavily on the pre-existing generic conventions of translation, or what I call the translation pact. As might be expected, the theory and practice of translation recurs as an important element of many multilingual films. ­ Translation scholars such as Reine Meylaerts underline the inherent link between

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Urban margins: Un prophète; Dheepan 93 multilingual texts and translation: ‘at the heart of multilingualism, we find translation. Translation is not taking place in between monolingual realities but rather within multilingual realities’ (2013: 19).2 In multilingual films, translation may appear either diegetically (usually through an interpreting character) or non-diegetically (through hardcoded or post-production subtitles). Shohini Chaudhuri recognises the essentiality of subtitles or other forms of audiovisual translation to transnational and especially multilingual cinema when she remarks that ‘translation has always been the condition of global screen traffic’ (2009: 251). One way or another, the presumed French-speaking audience (although, of course, many viewers also speak other languages) usually requires some form of translation of non-French dialogue in order to be able to follow the film. This may seem a banal observation, but it is important to remember when considering how central translation is to the viewer of a multilingual film, especially when multilingualism is also used as a form of exclusion and conspiracy within the narrative itself, such as in Un prophète’s treacherous interpreting scene. To view César’s reliance on Arabic>French translation in the scene, and his susceptibility to unknowing manipulation, is to show the viewer how much power the translator holds, whether that translator is Malik manipulating the translation pact to control César and placate Ryad, or the subtitler translating the film’s dialogue for the viewer themself. Scholars such as Hamid Naficy have considered the reluctance of monolingual, Western audiences to watch subtitled films, due to the inconvenience and effort involved in reading written text on-screen in order to comprehend dialogue. Naficy references the dominant Hollywood model and its linguistic monism, which presumes ‘people would not want to read in the cinema’, as an example (2010: 16). But for Naficy, twenty-first-century film audiences are evolving in their attitudes towards subtitled film: ‘however, now both Hollywood and its audiences have changed – they have both become more multicultural and more multilingual’ (16). Naficy writes of a growing acceptance of, and willingness to engage with, subtitles. This has important implications not only for the reception of foreign film in Western cultures in general, but for multilingual film in particular, which by definition must include some subtitling, even when screened in its country of origin. In fact, David Gramling rightly identifies multilingual film as ‘undubbable’ (2010: 363); the linguistic homogenisation dubbing entails would not only erase the multilinguality of a film, but would interfere with the narrative and thematic impact of the multilingual dialogue itself. Subtitling, therefore, plays a key role in making multilingual film intelligible to an audience.

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94  Decentring France Diegetic interpreting sequences abound in multilingual film and are often rich grounds for power struggles. Un prophète in particular demonstrates the considerable stakes that can come into play through the practice of interpreting. However, while subtitles are essential in such complex interpreting scenes as that of Un prophète, in some multilingual films which depict interpreting, no subtitles are provided at all. This invokes another form of power dynamic in which the spectators themselves are directly implicated; the lack of subtitling places the audience in the same position of vulnerability as the character relying on interpreting in the film. This dynamic has already appeared in Chapter 4 in this book, in which we must rely on Souleymane’s French-language interpretation of his Malian mother’s Bambara-language speech for understanding. A similar situation appears in Jean-Luc Godard’s films Notre musique and Le Mépris, released forty years apart, in which multilingual characters not only interpret within the film for other characters, but beyond the film for the audience as well. Such films figure reliance on subtitles as a form of vulnerability, in turn underlining the benefit of speaking multiple languages. In multilingual films which represent interpreting and which play with the conventions of subtitling, therefore, we are constantly prompted to consider the subjectivity and potential untrustworthiness of both oral and written translation, and to acknowledge our own reliance on translation and its potential ramifications for understanding. Unsubtitled interpreting sequences expose us first-hand to ‘the power of translators as gatekeepers’ (Chaudhuri 2009: 252). Cinematic representations of the ritual of interpreting abound in French cinema. In numerous multilingual films, including Welcome, Polisse, London River, Dheepan and Des hommes et des dieux, interpreters are pivotal characters. These interpreters vary in their levels of professionalism. They may be qualified, official employees in films like L’Affaire Farewell (in which both the French and American presidents – overt occupiers of positions of power – are each at the mercy of an interpreter). Or they may be amateur, unofficial exchanges, such as in Welcome, in which the Kurdish immigrant Bilal interprets for his monolingual Kurdish-speaking friend and his French acquaintance, using their only shared language, English. The conditions of these contrasting interpreting scenarios are clearly disparate, ranging from the official to the improvised, yet each of these films centres on the role of ‘a cultural mediator in the form of an interpreter’ (Archer 2010: 4). Likewise, the characters in each of these films enter into the interpreting ritual with the same level of trust and ease, and the interpreter’s words are accepted by both sides without suspicion.

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Urban margins: Un prophète; Dheepan 95 Interpreting provides the ideal scenario for exploring language politics, and for placing multilingualism at the forefront of a film’s focus; as Dwyer states, ‘polyglot films celebrate the multiplicity of language by making (mis)translation central to a film’s rationale’ (2005: 305). The interpreter is represented in these films as a figure equipped with the potential for wielding power. Indeed, the interpreter as a powerful figure is a familiar concept: Delabastita and Grutman emphasise the ‘translator’s central position and thus … the enormous power and responsibility they have in multilingual communication’ (2005: 19). Malik uses the familiarity of translation conventions to support his authority, providing a false translation as a means of manipulating César. Taking advantage of one party’s ignorance in one language to conspire with the other party, a false interpreter such as Malik possesses a treacherous capacity to twist the content being translated. This may be for their own benefit (as in Un prophète) or for that of their allies (as in Dheepan). The practice of interpreting is a ritualised one, which necessarily involves a measure of vulnerability and trust on the part of the subject for whom the interpreter is translating. In order for interpreting to function as a just and accurate means of linguistic and communicative transfer, the interpreter must abide by the rules of the interpreting ritual; that is, by correctly translating spoken material from one language to another, without perverting or adjusting its meaning. The interpreter must provide a faithful translation, and the translation subject must accept the faithfulness of the translation being provided, without being able to confirm its validity. Hence, the scenario involves a verbal pact and an understanding of trust. In interpreting, there is by necessity an imbalance in the linguistic capacities of the participants involved. Namely, the interpreter has the resource of at least two languages at their disposal. By contrast, the subject relying on the interpreter is at the interpreter’s mercy, unable to understand spoken content without the latter’s mediation. In other words, the interpreting subject occupies a position of vulnerability. If the interpreter lies, they will not know it. Should they wish to wield it, this affords the interpreter great potential for control: ‘translators make enormous scores for power and responsibility, if one takes into account both their control over flows of information … and the sheer linguistic and cultural gap to be negotiated’ (Delabastita and Grutman 2005: 21). There is thus potential for an interpreter to hijack a translation sequence and to exploit the subject’s trust, especially if there are personal stakes involved, as in Un prophète:

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96  Decentring France Incomprehension is a matter of the incommensurability of the languages and cultures involved (knowledge, value and belief systems), but it can be seriously aggravated in cases where the cultural constituencies meeting through translation have radically opposed interests and agendas. (19)

Unlike the committee meeting scene in Entre les murs, all dialogue is subtitled throughout the Un prophète visiting room scene, in order for the audience to witness and comprehend the crucial moment of Malik’s manipulation of the Corsicans. The treacherous interpreter thus perverts the content to be translated for their own means, using the ritual of translation as a ruse in order to dupe the subject before their very eyes. Even the film’s title confers new meaning on Malik’s role when considered through the prism of language. This title ostensibly refers to Malik’s occasional visions, in which he hallucinates the presence of Reyeb, the man he was forced to kill, or predicts future events. After one of these visions, in which he anticipates a deer running into a car’s path and makes the driver slow down, one character even exclaims ‘t’es un prophète ou quoi?’ (‘are you a prophet or something?’).Yet the treacherous interpreting scene reveals another layer to the title’s meaning, playing with the linguistic dimensions of the definition of a prophet, as one who speaks for others and who conveys information to which others are not privy. For if a prophet is one who ‘advocates or speaks innovatively for others’ (Oxford English Dictionary), then Malik’s ‘innovative’ multilingualism gives him the tools to do so. As Carol O’Sullivan points out, ‘sometimes the role of interpreter and interlocutor are combined [and] more nuanced portrayals of interpreters and cultural mediators invite a reading of the translator’s position as hybrid and as a nexus of multiple, often competing loyalties’ (2011: 89–90). Thus language, and language difference, fulfils far more than a practical or mimetic function in this scene, and instead ‘creates the space for unreliability or for deliberate misinformation’ (87) and consequently for deep narrative shifts; a turning of the tables between Malik and his tormentors. This is not the only contemporary French film which sees Tahar Rahim (the actor who plays Malik) portray a character whose Arabiclanguage knowledge is of distinct advantage in a present-day French context. In 2014’s Samba (Eric Toledano and Olivier Nakache), the follow-up to Intouchables in which Omar Sy reprises the role of a Senegalese migrant in France, Rahim plays Wilson, an undocumented migrant who presents himself as Brazilian. However, this character’s true name is Walid, and his true nationality is Algerian. After having experienced a barrage of racial discrimination upon arriving in France, Walid has chosen to conceal his Arab identity and construct what he sees as a more palatable South American one.

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Urban margins: Un prophète; Dheepan 97 Yet when Walid and Samba, who are working as window cleaners, must flee immigration police and through the windows of an opulent home, Walid’s true self becomes the key to effecting their escape. The desperate men climb onto the Haussmannian balcony and rap on the windows and a maid of Arab descent rushes over in surprise. As they beg her in French to open the windows, she wavers, comprehending but unconvinced. It is at this point that the audience and Samba alike discover Walid’s true identity, as he switches into Arabic and persuades her to let them through. His use of Arabic forges a link of cultural and linguistic solidarity with the maid and ultimately convinces her to trust him, in a way that French cannot do. The men pass through the apartment and onto the roof, and are able to escape the police and inevitable deportation.

From Sri Lanka to Le Pré The introduction to this book has already examined the key FrancoTamil interpreting scene in Dheepan, in which the interpreter’s ability to manipulate the translation pact gains the makeshift Sri Lankan family much-needed asylum in France. In that scene, all monolingual characters (the French immigration officer and the Tamil family) find themselves at a distinct disadvantage. Fluent only in French, the officer is entirely reliant on the interpreter for understanding. Without the interpreter, Dheepan would be entirely incapable of pleading his case. Yalini and Illayaal remain silent and uncomprehending monolingual participants. By contrast, the monolingualism that surrounds him places the interpreter in a unique position of control. Indeed, it is not the mere presence of multiple languages in the room that presents the opportunity for control; it is the multilingual character’s ability to manipulate these multiple languages to assist the protagonists and dupe the immigration officer all at once that is of significance. Cultural solidarity, Dheepan’s reputation in Sri Lanka and a shared native language combine to make the family’s

Figure 8  Dheepan (Jacques Audiard, Why Not Productions)

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98  Decentring France success possible. This transforms Tamil from a minoritarian South Asian language to a language of critical importance on French soil, a dynamic rarely seen before. The interplay of linguistic knowledge and ignorance will continue to dog the characters throughout Dheepan, moulding their relationships with others and their ability to survive in the French banlieue. Illayaal, the 9-year-old child, is the first to acquire proficiency in French, having been automatically granted a legitimate place in a French-speaking environment: the public school system. This knowledge grants her a position of authority as a linguistic bridge between French-speaking HML inhabitants and her supposed parents, and places her in an interpreting role common to many young firstgeneration or French-born children in banlieue film. Like the young Franco-Maghrebin daughter in Wesh-wesh, qu’est-ce qui se passe?, the teenage Rym in La Graine et le mulet, the bilingual Samia in the 2000 film of the same name and characters in countless other beur and banlieue films, Illayaal’s French education renders her more linguistically adept than her parents and thus confers on her a measure of responsibility for giving a voice to ‘an entire generation without a voice’ (Fauvel 2004: 151). Despite her young age, her multilingualism requires her to undertake ‘collective bargaining and corrective representation’ (Naficy 2001: 77) on behalf of her linguistically isolated parental figures. Dheepan’s own journey to French language acquisition is less clear-cut and more problematised than Illayaal’s. In fact, Dheepan’s relative ignorance of French – or rather his slowness at acquiring the language – actually results in a number of positives. On a daily basis, Dheepan is required to enter into the drug-making and distribution spaces that the HLM’s mob uses, to clean and undertake repairs. Unlike Illayaal, who can physically distance herself from the HLM’s crime world, Dheepan must physically occupy this space of illegal activity. But his real or perceived ignorance of French creates a protective barrier that renders him almost invisible to the mobsters, and prevents him from being drawn into their underworld. Of course, Dheepan tries and succeeds to learn French, but he does not advertise this fact. Actual monolingualism is not useful to Dheepan, but his ability to appear monolingual (even once he has learned French) is an important coping mechanism as he dodges the mob. In learning French, Dheepan is able to make meaningful connections with the ‘good’ members of the HLM, including the kindly community leader, Youssouf, who asks after the family’s welfare and finds Yalini a well-paying job. As his French improves, he becomes more efficient at his mail-sorting job, and shares a closer relationship

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Urban margins: Un prophète; Dheepan 99 with figures like Youssouf. Yet he retains an outward semblance of non-understanding within Le Pré’s most dangerous spaces, using the veil of monolingualism as a protective mechanism. This multilingual character thus oscillates between a public monolingual identity and a private multilingual one to navigate the dangerous situation he finds himself in. By comparison, Yalini is provided with far fewer opportunities for advancing in her French-language learning. This isolates her from society in ways Dheepan (a full-time caretaker interacting with many HLM dwellers daily) and Illayaal (a full-time student) do not experience. Although she is already a fluent English speaker and a more autonomous character than many maternal figures in banlieue cinema, Yalini’s case recalls Leslie Kealhofer-Kemp’s work on the linguistic entrapment of first-generation migrant women through their lack of exposure to opportunities for language learning. Such characters’ experiences in France are characterised by ‘ongoing struggles, including loneliness, isolation, and difficulty communicating in French’ (2013: 233). Yalini’s linguistic trajectory is not depicted as a straight path from isolation to integration; her relationship to language is much more complex. Indeed, one of the most interesting instances of creative language use in Dheepan revolves around Yalini’s job as a housekeeper for Monsieur Habib, the mentally disabled father of the mob boss, Brahim, and her relationship with her employer’s volatile and dangerous son. As Yalini settles into her part-time role, cooking and cleaning for Monsieur Habib, Brahim begins to frequent his father’s apartment more regularly. He praises Yalini’s Sri Lankan cooking, and asks her about herself, even inviting her to watch football with him on the couch. At this stage of the film,Yalini’s French is rudimentary, and Yalini and Brahim’s conversations are not actually traditional conversations at all. Brahim speaks in French, which Yalini barely understands, while Yalini speaks in Tamil, of which Brahim is entirely ignorant. Though Yalini’s Tamil speech is subtitled for the French audience, neither character truly understands what the other is saying. For Yalini, this results in a pleasurable interlude in her otherwise unhappy French life. For in ‘conversing’ with Brahim, Yalini is able to confess the truth of her situation, to speak aloud all that she has been unable to say. When Brahim asks after her family, she stares at him, unsure whether he is expecting her to try to answer in French. In response to her confused silence, he nudges her to speak in Tamil, saying ‘Tu peux me le dire, je ne comprendrai rien’ (‘You can tell me, I won’t understand anything’). Yalini appears visibly relieved when

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100  Decentring France she confesses in Tamil, ‘She is not my daughter. He isn’t my husband, either. It’s all a charade.’ Yalini has been struggling with her false identity, unable to offload her thoughts to Dheepan or anyone else. Needing to maintain the charade to remain in Europe, she cannot confess the truth to anyone who will understand. The translingual – or rather intralingual – exchange with Brahim is therapeutic for her in a way no other linguistic exchange could be. Much like Dheepan’s projection of monolingualism during his work to avoid the mob, the language barrier between Yalini and Brahim also operates as a kind of protection. From her smiles, increased attention to her hair and jewellery and the silk shirt she sews for herself, it becomes clear that Yalini wishes to establish some kind of romantic or sexual connection with Brahim. However, the audience – if not Yalini herself – is very aware of the dangers Yalini would risk in engaging in a relationship with such a violent criminal. Though Brahim could of course exert violence over Yalini, and though sexual activity between the two is entirely possible, the language barrier prevents her from sharing too much with him. He cannot ask her to do any illegal work for him, and she cannot reveal any information that would make her or Dheepan vulnerable. The scenes in which Brahim speaks in French and Yalini speaks in Tamil, therefore, allow her to experience a measure of intimacy without crossing a line. It would be difficult to argue that Yalini’s exchanges with Brahim are related to social power, in the way scenes such as the interpreting sessions in Un prophète and Dheepan so clearly are. Her scenes are not examples of a non-French-speaking character exerting authority or control over a French-speaking adversary. Instead, this delicate use of Tamil offers Yalini another kind of advantage: a simultaneous connection with others, and a much-needed hiding place. In almost all cases in multilingual cinema, monolingualism is a hindrance, a handicap, a state of disadvantage to be overcome. For the most part, ignorance of French is a negative for non-French characters, and must be swiftly overcome if they are to find a meaningful and secure place in society. Yalini certainly experiences the disadvantage of not speaking French in other areas, and once she learns French she becomes better equipped to deal with the challenges of her new life. However, in her scenes with Brahim, language difference becomes an unexpected positive for the isolated migrant character. For Yalini, in these scenes Tamil is both catharsis and camouflage. Yalini’s language set does not remain static throughout the film, however. While she acquires less French than Dheepan or Illayaal (and has fewer opportunities to do so), she manages to attain a decent competency in the language. The first time we hear her speak several

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Urban margins: Un prophète; Dheepan 101 French sentences in a row, it is clear that she has rehearsed her speech. The scene follows one in which civil conflict among gang members has led to gunfire in the HLM courtyard. Clearly suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder, Illayaal is psychologically damaged by the outburst and the family is placed in physical danger. The following day, in an attempt to keep the mob away from his family, Dheepan paints a white line down the middle of the yard, separating the criminal’s building from his own, law-abiding one. Brahim is incensed. After he threatens to kill Dheepan for meddling in his affairs, Yalini confronts Brahim in his father’s kitchen. yalini: [French] My husband is not a bad man. He’s a good man. It’s the war that … [gestures to her head, then lapses into English] … disturbed. [F] You must not hurt him.

As for almost every other character in French multilingual cinema, knowledge of French is a valuable asset for Yalini, both in everyday life and in life-or-death situations.Yalini’s ability to use language, however, is not confined to learning French for public life and confining Tamil to the private sphere. Instead, while French is certainly powerful, Yalini draws upon Tamil and English in different public situations, for different benefits. As shown in the earlier confession sequence, Tamil can have value in its very unintelligibility for French characters. In an interesting turn of events, Tamil also becomes the language Yalini uses for everyday communication, with the Franco-Maghrebin Monsieur Habib. Habib’s illness has rendered him mute, however he comes to understand Tamil enough to respond with body language to Yalini’s questions. This leads Brahim to tease cruelly, ‘tu comprends le chinois maintenant?’ (‘You understand Chinese now?’). Alongside these expected uses for Tamil outside the family home, Yalini also advances in French, to the point where she is able to defend Dheepan to the film’s antagonist. However, though we do not hear her speak more than a few words in the film, we know that the most valuable language in Yalini’s life is not Tamil, nor even French, but English. For one, English is a common lingua franca that Yalini draws on when her French knowledge fails. For example, when the former maid trains Yalini in her new job, she explains that Yalini must knock on the door before entering, but Yalini cannot understand her French words. As an alternative, the woman mimes knocking on the door, to which Yalini interprets in English ‘knock the door?’ and the woman responds, also in English, ‘yes’. Combinations of English and mime can thus bridge the gap in her French knowledge. However, English has a more far-reaching importance for Yalini in Dheepan. For

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102  Decentring France England is the home of Yalini’s cousin and the final destination for Yalini, Dheepan and Illayaal in the film. Indeed, the final scenes show all three (plus a new baby) settled in their new British life, far from the Paris banlieue, where French has less currency than English. Dheepan’s language politics thus operate in a complex web of relationalities, and Yalini’s varying levels of access to three languages do not operate along purely Eurocentric lines. The act of learning French is an important one, but Yalini’s knowledge of English will be more valuable in the long term. Neither does her Tamil become useless after leaving Sri Lanka. Instead, while she struggles in certain situations, her skills in these three languages paint a polycentric picture of language relations, in which each language has its own worth and relevance, depending on the situation. In this picture, French is important. But it is not the sole language of importance, nor even the most important language in Yalini and the other characters’ lives. Beyond the scenes in which French, Tamil and English interplay with one another, Dheepan’s foregrounding of Tamil-only dialogue has its own importance as well. In a rare move, more than 50 per cent of the film’s dialogue – and all of the conversation between characters of Sri Lankan origin – takes place in Tamil. This exposure of a minoritarian language in a highly lauded and circulated French film heralds a change in how – and how much – languages other than French appear in French cinema (for unlike English or Arabic, almost no art or media in France features Tamil language). Such unprecedented visibility of a marginalised cultural group and its native language reflects Elizabeth Ezra and Terry Rowden’s words on transnational cinema: ‘transnational subjects from all levels of the social hierarchy are finding themselves occupying the centre of the frame in a growing number of widely seen films’ (2006: 7). Even Audiard himself recognises the rarity and significance of shooting a French film in a minoritarian language like Tamil, using language to stretch the boundaries of what a ‘French film’ can be: What makes it a French film? Only the name of the director, and the place where it’s shot. Persuading financiers to put €7m into a film about Tamils speaking Tamil – that was the political project, as far as I’m concerned … It’s all about representing different faces, languages, idioms, pronunciations – the lot. (Audiard in Romney 2016)

Of course, the sociocultural significance of a single film should not be overestimated. However, Dheepan has appeared alongside a number of other French films (or majority French-funded co-­productions) with more than 50 per cent non-French dialogue, like Philippe Faucon’s Fatima (2015, French and Arabic), and Abderrahmane Sissako’s

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Urban margins: Un prophète; Dheepan 103 Timbuktu. In fact, Timbuktu’s dialogue includes excerpts of Arabic, English and French, but it is mostly composed of speech in Bambara, Songhay and Tamashek. Other films are even monolingual, such as Deniz Gamze Ergüven’s Turkish-language Mustang (2015) and Laurent Cantet’s English-language Foxfire (2012). Though it features more French than films like Mustang and Foxfire, Dheepan includes the least French of any film examined in this book. Dheepan’s portrayal of multilingualism is noteworthy for its code-switching and languagelearning sequences. But its sheer quantity of Tamil dialogue, which is never minimised or sidelined in favour of unrealistic uses of French, is significant in itself, foregrounding and humanising a language that has traditionally been sidelined and even erased in Western cinema. In a revealing final message, it is the characters’ knowledge of English, and their connections to other Tamil refugees in England, which presents the best opportunity for success and security in Europe. Learning French has been essential to their journey and, in very real ways, essential to their survival. Yet integration into French culture and acceptance in the French nation is not the ultimate key to these characters’ success. Instead, it is knowledge of English, and passage to England, that allows for their happy ending. Dheepan thus casts its gaze beyond the French urban nucleus, beyond typical French solutions for dealing with refugees and migrants, beyond even the border of the Hexagon, to locate its protagonists’ happy ending elsewhere.

Language, power and violence If power is fundamentally linked to force, influence and control, violence is its logical neighbour. For Foucault, language and violence are linked through their connection to power, and constitute two approaches to mastery, whereby ‘l’un se fonde sur la violence exercée par une partie dominante sur une partie dominée, l’autre sur une maîtrise douce et concertée, qui vise à convaincre plutôt qu’à contraindre’ (‘one is based on violence exerted by a dominant party on a dominated party, and the other on a gentle and measured mastery, which seeks to convince rather than to constrain’ (Spector 1997: 12)).3 Language can be a valuable tool, but also a powerful weapon. But if language can be used to exert power in ways that range from the subtle to the openly manipulative, violence is a more extreme alternative for establishing dominance. As Pratt writes, ‘violence is that which lies beyond words, that which erupts when words fail’ (2009: 1516). Such a description places language and violence on a

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104  Decentring France continuum of force. This is not to say that physical violence is always more ‘powerful’ than language, for language offers a broader range of sustainable power relationships. Violence is inherently destructive, whereas exertion of power through language can range from the destructive to the tenable. Malik’s imprisonment for physical assault, and Dheepan’s need to conceal his warfaring background, are examples of how violence can threaten characters’ advancement and even freedom in the French context. As objective concepts, neither language nor power can be defined according to morality, while violence carries implications of immorality. Despite this, in both Dheepan and Un prophète violence is still an important method for controlling others, and ‘violence might erupt when interlocution stops … where there is violence, language is nearly always present, supplying meanings and alibis and inflicting injuries of its own’ (Pratt 2009: 1516). Thus language, power and violence are an interlaced nexus, and the three are frequently featured in complex interrelations in films like Un prophète and Dheepan. I have already argued that the success of Malik’s treacherous interpreting is dependent on an exploitation of the conventions of translation. However, this pact is not the only supporting framework which reinforces Malik’s translational power play. The ruse also relies on the support of physical violence. As previously mentioned, in order to convince César that he is truly disciplining Ryad, towards the end of the sequence, Malik strikes Ryad in the face. He then justifies this move in French as one of punishment on César’s behalf. Extending the masquerade from a linguistic to a physical one deeply legitimises Malik’s claim. Indeed, the blow seems to be the detail which ultimately satisfies César, who subsequently leaves the room without pursuing Malik and Ryad any further. If César was reluctant to accept Malik’s translation of his Arabic-language discourse with Ryad in the earlier stages of the sequence, the introduction of physical violence appears to convince him. This is a deft move to play against the Corsican mafia leader. As Malik well knows, César frequently uses violence himself to punish his subjugates and reaffirm his position of authority. Constantly oscillating between French and Corsican in order to conspire and exclude, César also deploys violence as another form of communicative and persuasive code. Speaking from an Austinian perspective (Austin 1962), Pratt describes this language–violence dyad as one ‘whereby language is required for violence to have meaning or an alibi, while violence gives a speech act its force’ (2009: 1529). In striking Ryad, Malik behaves in the way César himself would, thus convincing César that what he is hearing indeed corresponds to what he is seeing.

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Urban margins: Un prophète; Dheepan 105 Malik’s manoeuvre reflects Pratt’s argument that ‘violence calls forth language to articulate or assign it meaning’ (1529). In a literal way, in that moment, actions speak louder than words. In addition to the multiple languages in strategic use in the prison, violence is a code employed by many of the film’s powerful characters as a means of oppression. Mirroring Isabelle Vanderschelden’s analysis of ‘urban decors which enhance the climate of violence’ (2007: 47), in the early stages of his internment, Malik’s lowly social status and powerlessness at Brécourt are confirmed through endless displays of violence from his social superiors. In the exercise yard, he is beaten by a group of anonymous inmates and robbed of his new pair of running shoes. When the Corsicans forcibly recruit him, they hold a knife to his gut while César explains his assignment; murdering an Arab inmate, Reyeb, who is due to testify in court against the Corsicans, and who is known to be sexually interested in Malik. Following this altercation, he panics and calls the prison guards to his cell, but when they arrive, they beat him into submission, gagging him with a plastic bag. Even Malik’s first opportunity to rise up the prison ranks is a violent act; it is the bloody murder of Reyeb, using a razor hidden in his mouth, which initiates him into the Corsican gang. And in perhaps the most confronting scene of the whole film, when Malik begins a side operation dealing drugs in the prison, a venture which brings him into contact with a larger network in the prison and affords him increased personal wealth and security, César puts him back in his place by torturing him with a spoon pressed hard into his eyeball. In almost every aspect of prison life, violence operates as a supremely effective system used to establish and solidify the prison’s political structure. In fact, the use of violence often mimics the use of foreign languages in the prison, as an exertion of authority, a method of control and a means of maintaining the rigid hierarchical system of the prison’s social microcosm. Although most of the inmates reveal themselves to be physically violent, including Malik and many of the members of the Arab gang, the most prolifically and infamously violent of the film’s characters is César. In César’s world, language is powerful, but violence is even more so. Throughout Malik’s early days with the gang, the members frequently hit or push him, while forcing him to undertake domestic chores. With the threat of a violent death hanging over his head, Malik is effectively enslaved by the Corsicans and forced into the role of a maid. Thanks to their relationship with one of the senior guards, the mob is even in possession of weapons which other inmates cannot access, further allowing them to operate as a functional crime syndicate, rather than a band of prisoners.

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106  Decentring France Thus, in multiple ways, the Corsicans harness physical violence to bolster their position of authority over Malik, and to hold him in a position of submission. Yet violence is far from the only method they employ to maintain this dominator–dominated dynamic, for their use of the Corsican language is also instrumental to perpetuating this dynamic. On multiple occasions, Malik is filmed sweeping and mopping around the seated Corsicans’ feet, while César and the other members confer on important plans, not in French (which they are all perfectly fluent in), but in Corsican. This renders Malik unable to contribute or understand, keeping him under the group’s thumb, yet separate from its private dealings. The use of Corsican in these seemingly innocuous conversation scenes pins Malik into a position of ignorance and thus inferiority. Similarly, the use of the Corsican language with the gang’s ally, one of the senior prison guards, functions as a badge of solidarity and insider status, symbolically significant but also practically useful for conspiring without the knowledge of law-abiding French guards. In these dealings, Malik is disenfranchised through his linguistic ignorance and vulnerability to physical violence alike. When Malik decides to take steps to acquire this secret language, he understands the skills it could afford him and how the Corsicans would wish him to remain ignorant of it. Therefore, he does not ask them to teach him, nor does he reveal his desire to learn. Instead, having learned to read French from Ryad, he secretly teaches himself Corsican from a pocket dictionary, listening silently during the day and rote learning feverishly in the privacy of his cell at night. While he is still subjected to periodic bouts of violence, Malik chips away bit by bit at the Corsicans’ linguistic method of oppression. In so doing, to borrow Mireille Rosello’s words, the film thus ‘provides us with an alternative perspective on the relationship between language acquisition and cultural integration’ (2012b: 312), depicting the acquisition of non-dominant language on French soil as the unexpected key to infiltrating the dominant culture in this particular slice of contemporary French life. Thus, language and violence are used at times in competition and at times in dialogue, but in both pairings ‘the link between … violence, power and brutality’ (Hardwick 2008: 191) is made abundantly clear. Indeed, as Shohat and Stam argue, ‘the inequitable distribution of power itself generates violence and divisiveness’ (1994: 47)4 and the hierarchical power structure of the multilingual prison environment breeds violence. One scene in particular indicates the complexity of the relationship between language and violence, between these alternate systems of power and manipulation.

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Urban margins: Un prophète; Dheepan 107 The scene takes place nearly an hour into the film, when Malik has long has been initiated into the gang and has grasped a basic understanding of Corsican. César is speaking to his lawyer in Corsican on his mobile phone, while Malik sweeps César’s cell. The two are alone, César’s gang having been transferred out of the prison the previous evening. The Corsican-speaking inhabitants of the prison have been reduced to César, Ilbanez (the complicit guard), a couple of remaining prisoners and (hitherto unknown to anyone else) Malik. When César hangs up the phone, Malik seizes the opportunity to make the important revelation. malik: [F] You keep your phone on you? Why don’t you give it to some­­one else? [César ignores him, his eyes closed] malik: [Corsican] … I speak your language. [César opens his eyes in bewilderment] césar: [C] Did you understand me when I was on the phone? malik: [C] You were speaking to a layer. césar: [C] A what? malik: [C] … La … lawyer? césar: [C] Lawyer. Who taught you? malik: [F] You … and the others. [C] Looking, listening. césar: [F] You mean spying? malik: [F] I wasn’t spying at all. I was just learning, listening. césar: [F] I don’t understand. If you weren’t spying, what were you doing? Fucking around? malik: [F] Not at all … if I’d just been fucking around, I wouldn’t have told you about it. césar: [F] So why are you telling me? Because the others are gone? [long pause] [C] Look at me, Arab. Because the others are gone, right? malik: [F] Yes. césar: [F] Does anyone else know? [Malik shakes his head. César sighs, turns away, then turns back instantly to strike Malik hard across the face. Malik shrinks back in shock and pain] césar: [F, sarcastically, looking down at his hand] Oops, it has a life of its own. Come, sit. Get your ass over here! [Malik sits across the table from him, meekly] césar: [F, handing the phone across the table] You’ll keep it now. Keep it, but don’t use it. Not everyone is like Ilbanez. If they find it, you’re fucked. Keep going with the cleaning, washing the clothes. Ilbanez will transfer you to the cell next door. I’ll have them make you a porter. You’ll be paid, you’ll be able to buy things, go anywhere.

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108  Decentring France [C] You’ll be my eyes and ears. malik: [F] What about the others? césar: [F] What, my friends? You watch them like everyone else.

In this scene, the power dynamics between César and Malik undergo an intricate series of changes, a fact which César grasps before Malik does. In the context of broader French society, Corsican is far from a socioculturally dominant or mainstream language. The native tongue of the island of Corsica, a French territorial collectivity located off the coast of Nice, Corsican figures in very few films, and is far from a widespread language of use in metropolitan France. Indeed, despite its status as the birthplace of Napoléon Bonaparte, Corsica has long been administered by France – as well as Italy – and while Corsican retains a strong presence on the island, the French language is used widely in Corsican administration. César’s first switch into Corsican is made to ask a basic question, asking whether Malik understood him on the phone, to test his level of understanding and ability to respond. César’s initial reaction to Malik’s Corsican speech is baffled surprise. He even betrays a hint of mild admiration, through his flicker of a smile when Malik answers his initial question competently. He even momentarily adopts the role of a language teacher, correcting Malik’s pronunciation of the word for ‘lawyer’. However, when Malik explains how he learned the language by listening to César and the other Corsicans, César grows accusatory and defensive. Discouraging Malik’s Corsican speech and cutting off his language practice, he quickly switches back into French and abruptly shifts his tone from surprised to contemptuous: ‘you mean spying?’. Viewing him as a traitor, César interprets Malik’s revelation as a threat. Realising he can no longer dominate and oppress him through Corsican language use, César resorts to his other mode of oppression and domination to keep Malik in his place: violence. The blow across Malik’s face is furious and unexpected, yet César treats Malik’s suffering lightly, joking about his hand with its ‘life of its own’. This violent gesture serves many functions. It is a punishment for operating behind César’s back, for keeping secrets and for listening in on him without his knowledge. It is a reproach for robbing César of his exclusionary use of the Corsican language. It is a warning not to try to use this new-found ability against him, and the promise of retaliation should he attempt to do so. But the blow is also an attempt to keep Malik in his place as César prepares to provide him with increased liberties, responsibilities and privileges in the prison. For if ‘language … is an instrument of power’ (Mingant 2010: 726), for César violence is a more concrete and forceful one. His conferral of increased responsibilities, directly preceded by a blow to the face,

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Urban margins: Un prophète; Dheepan 109 is as if to suggest that while Malik may be gaining privileges as a result of their conversation, it is only at César’s behest. The move suggests that while Malik may be gaining a greater measure of power, he must be assured that he will never possess as much power as César. César’s seemingly incongruous move from striking Malik one moment to handing him the prestigious mobile phone and promising him more money and freedom the next, is in fact a delicate balancing act in which he must acknowledge Malik’s increased value to him, while maintaining his position of comparative superiority. In so doing, he juggles multiple modes of communication, both verbal and physical, to strike a delicate balance between handing Malik power and denying him it. Malik’s revelation of his knowledge of Corsican brings him new privileges, which he in turn uses to grow his sphere of influence in the prison, but at this stage in the film he does not consider himself a viable threat to César (nor does he yet truly aspire to be, although César instantly understands the potential for him to become so). The scene in which he reveals his understanding of Corsican is one of Malik’s initial steps up the ladder in the prison’s hierarchical structure. Unknown to him at the time, it is also an important move in his ascent to prison leader and his eventual overthrow of César. Malik will continue to use multilingualism throughout the film, and increasingly against César in particular. In becoming trilingual, Malik not only has a secret language – Arabic – at his disposal to use against César, but he robs the latter of that very language – Corsican – which César had initially used against him in the same way. In the same twenty-four hours that César loses his Corsican group, he also loses the language which he had used to exclude Malik from that very group. The ultimate narrative arc of Un prophète is a turning of the tables between Malik and César, and the scene in which Malik reveals his knowledge of Corsican is the pivotal moment in which this dynamic is set in motion. While his attitude towards violence differs in most ways from César’s, Dheepan also has recourse to violence as a means of exerting power. Although Dheepan’s history in Sri Lanka is mysterious to the audience, we are aware that he has been a high-ranking fighter in the Tigers insurrectionist group, and has had to flee incognito in order to survive. As the film unfolds, we learn a little more about Dheepan’s violent past, but his true identity remains mostly a mystery. At one point, Dheepan’s military leader, who has also made it to France as a refugee but is deeply traumatised and unable to leave the war behind, attempts to recruit Dheepan to steal weapons and send them to their compatriots in Sri Lanka. However, Dheepan is unwilling to

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110  Decentring France return to his violent past, insisting on maintaining his new identity as caretaker of the HLM with his newly established family. Whereas César embraces his violent capacities throughout Un prophète in order to bolster his security in the prison, Dheepan does the opposite, attempting to escape from his violent past in order to blend into Le Pré. For the vast majority of the film, Dheepan refuses to use violence to establish authority or exert power, knowing that his prior violent behaviour would not be compatible with his new position in France. However, at the film’s climax, when Yalini is threatened at gunpoint and almost killed, violence and language once again come to the fore as a potent pairing. The climax begins with a curious use of language. While Dheepan’s lack of French understanding has caused him confusion and inconvenience in his job, towards the film’s end it becomes an unlikely asset. In the dramatic final act, Brahim and his father are shot by their own men in Monsieur Habib’s home, as Yalini hides in a corner. Monsieur Habib is immediately killed, but Brahim survives and, after begging Yalini to help move him to safety, he grabs her hair and holds a gun to her head, ordering her to summon Dheepan to take him to a hospital. When Dheepan receives Yalini’s terrified phone call, he immediately lapses back into the warrior identity he has spent the entire film attempting to suppress. He fashions a Molotov cocktail from a bleach bottle and stashes a screwdriver and a machete alongside it inside his cleaning bucket. Picking up an unassuming broom to reinforce the image of a caretaker at work, he strides out into the open space between the buildings, an effective war zone that is being patrolled by mobsters on high alert. With bullets flying and the assassins waiting outside, Dheepan cannot simply walk into the building. As he approaches, several of the men call out to him to clear the area, yelling that no one is allowed to enter. It is at this moment that Dheepan exploits his well-known difficulty understanding French. Plodding along with the broom over his shoulder as he does every day, he utters a familiar explanation for passing through the area: ‘gardien’. Avoiding eye contact, he continues towards the building. When the men shout out once more, he utters a simple, second ‘gardien’. They let him pass in exasperation, unaware of the weapons he is concealing among his caretaking supplies. In reality, by this stage in the film, Dheepan’s French is at a sufficient level for him to understand most conversations. He rarely utters more than a few words, meaning that few know how much he has learned, but he has developed a solid comprehension of the language. Even if he does not understand each of the mobsters’

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Urban margins: Un prophète; Dheepan 111 individual words, he certainly understands the gist of the message the men are conveying. However, the mostly racist men have long been aware that Dheepan arrived in France with no knowledge of French. Several times throughout the film, we have seen them attempting to communicate with Dheepan, to no effect. Several times, we have seen Dheepan responding sheepishly, ‘gardien, je suis le gardien’ in response to all French-language speech, before entering their contentious work spaces to clean. Dheepan’s ruse in this scene, therefore, is a credible one. Under the cover of feigned ignorance, Dheepan dodges the men’s words and is able to carry his weapons into the war zone before their very eyes. Once he has passed through, the gardien drops his bucket, takes out his weapons and kills every person who lies between Yalini and himself, reaching her just as Brahim has died and extracting her from the building safely.The crucial moment of linguistic manipulation thus exposes potential (if paradoxical) value not only in language learning, but in its opposite. As a whole, Dheepan does not paint monolingualism as useful or empowering: the moment in which Dheepan exploits his reputation as monolingual is specific and situated. In a general sense, it is far more valuable for the family to learn French than not to learn it. Yet this moment reveals another layer of the complex interplay between language and social power. For power and language relations do not operate on a strictly hierarchical spectrum, in which characters who master French are unequivocally better adapted to control social situations than those who do not. Instead, the scene reveals a deeply complex web of relationalities in which the potential for control is distributed across different linguistic identities and in which power hides in the most unexpected places. This image of language difference and social power resists Eurocentric understandings of French fluency as the ultimate state of linguistic empowerment, in favour of a far murkier picture of language relations. Of course, Dheepan’s proficiency in violence and willingness to exert it is essential to his family’s survival. In the short term, it is extremely useful. But the enactment of violence also means the characters must leave their environment – there can be no safe or sustainable future in the banlieue once Dheepan’s crimes, which extend beyond selfdefence, have been committed. Thus, violence is the final action by which Dheepan and his family survive their time in the urban margins, but also that for which they must leave them. Despite the stark contrast between how César embraces, and Dheepan rejects, violence as a means of control in the French urban margins, the two characters’ violent arcs in the banlieue actually parallel one another. Violence is a powerful mechanism for suppressing and silencing one’s enemies.

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112  Decentring France It can be an extremely effective means of subordination, protection and control. However, violence relies upon a supportive framework in which the violent character’s actions are condoned and bolstered by others. Once César’s fellow Corsican mobsters are transferred from the prison, César’s violent tactics lose their effect. Likewise, once Dheepan has lost his Tiger compatriots and the wartime setting in which he has honed his fighting skills, his violent behaviour becomes problematic and unsustainable. César may be able to torture Malik when the two are alone, but his violent acts can no longer prevent the turning of the tables that ultimately place him in an inferior position to his trilingual adversary. Dheepan may be able to assassinate all who lie between himself and Yalini, but the two cannot possibly remain in the banlieue after their violent transgressions. Power can certainly be enacted through violence in Un prophète and Dheepan, but once the supportive frameworks that allow for this violence fall away, these methods are merely temporary means of control. César must ultimately be dominated by the Arab gang, and Dheepan, Yalini and Illayaal must inevitably flee France for the UK. By contrast, it is those who control via language who can blend into their environments and manipulate situations in deft and even undetected ways from within. Such master linguists demonstrate the most sustainable and workable forms of social power in contemporary French cinema. César and Dheepan may be the most willing to hurt, constrain and kill in Un prophète and Dheepan, and the immediate impact of such actions is obviously extreme. However, it is characters like Malik and the immigration interpreter who instead favour multilingualism as a means of control, who demonstrate a truer – and more sustainable – mastery of social power relations. Un prophète and Dheepan are far from the only films to explore the complex interplay between language and violence. Audiard’s 2005 film, De battre mon cœur s’est arrêté, is also defined by these two faces of power. In De battre mon cœur s’est arrêté, the French protagonist Tom also speaks predominantly with his fists (a poetic fact, considering his other principal means of self-expression is through his fingers, via classical piano). When his father sends him to collect unpaid loans from a Vietnamese restaurant owner, he stresses the danger of not repaying by attacking the man. When a Russian gang member brutally assaults his father, Tom tracks him down and beats him within an inch of his life. Tom is unable to express himself through traditional language use, an inability further heightened by his conflicts with Mandarin, Russian and Vietnamese speakers, and he turns to alternative modes of communication to obtain what he wants. Music presents itself as a means of spiritual self-expression,

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Urban margins: Un prophète; Dheepan 113 yet while he possesses some talent, Tom fails to elevate himself in the world through music. Violence, however, is a language he is fluent in, and a means of expression he masters to punish and manipulate those around him. The potency of the language–violence link is central to both films: it is no coincidence that De battre mon cœur s’est arrêté is the Audiard film which directly precedes Un prophète. Both Malik and Dheepan have recourse to violence and language as alternative power devices. But any analysis of these two films must take into account the moral implication of succeeding through violent means. What the ability to manipulate and control means for Malik and Dheepan as individuals is certainly problematic. Malik’s ascent of the social ladder in the prison results, paradoxically yet inevitably, in his descent into the world of crime, just as Dheepan’s defeat of Brahim and his men results in the salvation of Yalini. As Malik gains autonomy and independence from his oppressors, he becomes more violent, more dangerous and more morally ambiguous. It could even be said that Malik plays into xenophobic mainstream French stereotypes of the disenfranchised, incarcerated Franco-Arab figure. Audiard’s film is not concerned with portraying Malik or Dheepan as straightforward heroes. What these characters’ attainment of power permits and encourages them to do is an important consideration in any moral analysis of Un prophète or Dheepan as sociocultural comments on France and its migrant, second-generation and socioeconomically marginalised populations. The concern of this chapter, however, is not to judge the quality of Malik and Dheepan’s characters as Malik evolves into the crime leader he ultimately becomes, and Dheepan reveals elements of the warrior he had formerly been. Instead, it is to examine how such impossibly ostracised and vulnerable individuals can find the means to harness such power in such improbable contexts, and to highlight the opportunities afforded to such disenfranchised individuals by a seemingly innocuous resource: language. Malik and Dheepan are not clear-cut heroes, nor do I seek to present them as such. Instead, it is the pure acquisition of social power, rather than the moral implications of the ends to which it is used, which make the representation of marginalised languages in Un prophète and Dheepan so significant. The languages other than French spoken by the protagonists in Un prophète and Dheepan are historically disenfranchised, dominated and undervalued. However, if we consider languages in these films according to polycentric multicultural theory, the nature of their interlingual power relations become clear. A polycentric perspective imagines power distributed horizontally among a multitude of poles, rather than vertically, along a ladder. From this perspective, in Un

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114  Decentring France prophète, we encounter three different poles of influence: those of the French, Arabic and Corsican languages, each of roughly equal importance to the film’s narrative and the social fabric of which its characters are a part. In the French corner, we find a language of everyday use, a code available to all of the film’s characters. Knowledge of this language is essential inside and outside the prison, as it would be in a real-life equivalent situation. We can only imagine the disadvantage a prisoner would experience in Un prophète, should he not be able to speak this language, the prison’s only linguistic common ground and the only official language of the country in which the film is set. We can observe the disastrous ramifications of not speaking French when incarcerated in a French prison in the plight of the monolingual Arabic-speaking Omar in the film Omar m’a tuer. French is the only language used in inmates’ discussions with lawyers and is therefore key to any appeals processes.Yet because French is known to all in Un prophète, it cannot function as a secret language. Because it is the base language in the prison, it cannot be used as a weapon. In the Arabic corner, however, we find a language spoken only by a specific cultural group in the prison. In order to be a member of the Arab gang – which includes members of Maghrebin, black African and Egyptian heritage – knowledge of this language is required. For the most part, Arabic functions as a badge of solidarity and belonging for the Arab gang. Yet as the film progresses, this language takes on an added significance. Malik uses the fact that Arabic is only understood by a select group, to transform it into a private code to use in the Corsicans’ presence. Subverting what it means to speak a minority language in France, Malik turns the fact that Arabic is not spoken by any non-Arabic characters into a distinct benefit, rendering the language a resource which enables him to play one group against another. This repackages the minority language as a power language. Finally, in the Corsican corner, we find another minority language, fashioned into a tool for wielding power. Originally, the Corsican language is used by César and his gang members in the same way Arabic is used by the Arab gang; as a reminder of shared origins and a badge of cultural belonging (a badge which, crucially, extends to Ilbanez, the Corsican prison guard in league with César). Next, when Malik is forced into the employ of the gang, his fellow members ensure his submission, isolation and ignorance of critical information through a use of Corsican as a private code and a form of social e­ xclusion. Finally, in his secretive self-teaching of the Corsicans’ native tongue, Malik transforms the language from the means of his oppression to that of his ascension. His knowledge of Corsican allows him not only to eavesdrop and ingratiate himself to César, but to transform himself

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Urban margins: Un prophète; Dheepan 115 into an arch linguist to whom no linguistic exchange in the prison is off limits; a position no other character holds – not even César. Un prophète’s banlieue prison environment is one shaped by rigid hierarchies, in which ‘issues of race also intersect with questions of language, power, and social stratification’ (Shohat and Stam 2006: 129). The film paints a depressing portrait of a prison society comprising largely non-French racial and cultural groups (Corsican, Franco-Maghrebin and Roma or other traveller cultures) a picture of race relations which mirrors the cycle of violence and delinquency depicted in beur and banlieue films. Yet what differentiates Un prophète from such films is the portrayal of the role of languages other than French in this environment. For Malik, languages often considered disenfranchising or irrelevant become tools and language learning becomes an act of ascension. This reflects polycentric multiculturalism’s aim of ‘envision[ing] a restructuring of intercommunal relations within and beyond the nation-state according to the internal imperatives of diverse communities’ (Shohat and Stam 1994: 48). Malik’s harnessing of multilingualism for his own ‘internal imperatives’ reveals the multitude of power centres at play in the prison, and shows how language offers Malik the key to unlock them. By contrast, Dheepan’s languages of operation are French, Tamil and English. In the first place, as in Un prophète, French is the film’s lingua franca, the official language of the country in which the film is set, and a useful skill. As I explored in the introduction, the immigration interpreter’s knowledge of French is essential to his play between languages which ultimately gains Dheepan, Yalini and Illayaal legal access to France. For much of the film, Illayaal is better able to adapt to the French everyday through her quicker acquisition of French, while Dheepan and Yalini remain cut off from their neighbours until they begin to acquire the language, too. In a similar way, English is a crucial skill for Yalini, and eventually the other characters. They not only use English as a mutually foreign language with inhabitants of Le Pré, when they cannot express themselves in French, but their proficiency in English, along with Yalini’s contacts in the UK, present the clearest chance for them to find a place in Europe. In the film’s final scene, the family has settled in the UK, where a surprisingly happy ending finds them employed and comparatively integrated in a country where they have not encountered equivalent language barriers to those they struggled with in France. However, the most interesting language for polycentric multicultural analysis in Dheepan is that of Tamil. A highly oppressed culture in Sri Lanka, a barely known one in France, Tamil is marginalised both domestically and internationally, and is often seen as an

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116  Decentring France identifying badge that endangers and disadvantages its speakers. Up to 100,000 Tamil speakers were killed in Sri Lanka during the civil war of 1983–2009, and those who have sought refuge abroad have barely ever seen their language on-screen. Few, if any, French films have represented this peripheral language in any substantial quantity throughout film history. Yet Dheepan foregrounds the Tamil language in unprecedented ways. Humanising the protagonists, the vast majority of their dialogue is in Tamil. Franco-Arab characters in the HLM, in particular Monsieur Habib and his son Brahim, not only permit Yalini’s Tamil-language use in the workplace, but encourage her to express herself in her native language. There is very little unsubtitled Tamil in the film, preventing the audience from dismissing Tamil language as background noise. And, most importantly, to return to the first pages of this book, the Tamil language is the literal means by which the family is able to gain legal admittance into the European space. Each of these five languages fulfils a different role in the prison and the HLM respectively. Each comes to serve these films’ protagonists in different ways, contributing to their success at securing themselves a position in their dangerous surroundings. The sociocultural stakes which weigh on the use of each of these languages are very different. A Eurocentric perspective on language in Un prophète and Dheepan would favour a stratified view of linguistic relations, a view which would obscure or prevent the analysis undertaken here. A polycentric view, however, reveals the horizontal distribution of power which occurs between and across the languages which circulate in Brécourt and Le Pré.

Conclusion By definition, translation involves a home language and an outside one – its very nature encapsulates the linguistic experience of moving between centre and periphery. The site of the banlieue, with its heightened tensions between geographical and cultural centre–periphery relations, is thus a key site for exploring the politics of translation in contemporary French cinema. Interpreting involves the artful negotiation between dominant linguistic houses (Bourdieu 1979) and marginalised ones, and the strategic or treacherous interpreter understands the potential inherent in this kind of negotiation. The interpreting scenes in Dheepan and Un prophète each show the interpreter’s power to shift between social identities and spaces and to control the outcome of a linguistic exchange, in secure and surreptitious ways. Configurations of the inner–outer, the French and the foreign, are

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Urban margins: Un prophète; Dheepan 117 thus not only important to these films’ settings, but to their thematic focus, as they show code-switching to be a politically and socially loaded practice of manipulation. In countless contemporary films set on the urban margins, language learning and strategic translation practices are key to sidestepping oppression and to benefiting from positions on the French periphery. In these films, language use leads to redrawing peripheral lines, and redefining the concept of the power language. Refusing to box marginal tongues like Arabic, Tamil and Corsican into the role of secondary or disenfranchising languages, these films offers a new vision of what might be understood by the term ‘power language’. In Cristina Johnston’s words, the linguistic ‘hybridity’ of French multilingual cinema can ‘be seen as leading towards a renegotiation of the French Republican model to accept within its discursive (and, by extension, more broadly socio-cultural) limits, a “French other” and the paradox inherent in this term’ (2010b: 97). Un prophète and Dheepan are two of the most striking examples of this form of negotiation, using the urban margins of the banlieue to explore heightened tensions between languages and cultures, and alternative ways for multilingual characters to exist in such spaces. Contemporary multilingual French films do not present a utopic outlook on contemporary cultural relations, nor one which does not take into account the lingering shadow of colonialism, and the socio-economic disadvantage entailed by immigration, in French society. Rather, they represent a tentative step in the direction of a new discourse in French cinema which envisions the possibility of marginalised peoples as capable of negotiating themselves a position of empowerment, with, and indeed through, the use of similarly marginalised languages. French, of course, has its value in Un prophète and Dheepan, as the banlieue’s lingua franca. Yet Malik’s linguistic power lies not in his fluency in French, but in his knowledge of Arabic and Corsican. In much the same way, the interpreter’s ability to save Dheepan’s family lies in their shared knowledge of Tamil, rather than French. In the specific context of the films’ settings, Arabic, Tamil and Corsican each present the potential for power, despite being derived from cultures which have been either officially colonised, or at least historically administrated, by the French or the British. Un prophète and Dheepan are part of an ever-expanding number of contemporary French films which foreground and valorise the complexity and richness of multilingual interaction. Painting a harsh portrait of the underbelly of French society, the films place multilingualism at their core, demonstrating the extent to which competence in multiple languages and translation practices can be harnessed as

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118  Decentring France a power mechanism and a means of manipulation. In the codified and diverse environment of the outer Paris prison, polyglot figures possess a literal advantage over their monolingual peers. Indeed, Un prophète and Dheepan’s characters live in a world in which language and violence go hand in hand, and where fluency only in French is neither sufficient to make it in underworld business, nor indeed to survive. In the prison and HLM alike, it is not necessarily the French, the wealthy or even the free who manage to thrive. Instead, these films compel us to imagine a new definition of the ‘power language’ as a concept which includes, but also extends beyond, the dominance of colonial or typically culturally prestigious languages such as French to encompass the potential power of even the most peripheral of codes.

Notes 1 La double peine policy: ‘the practice of deporting those convicted who do not hold French citizenship after their [prison] sentence has been served’ (Gott 2013: 83). Potentially inflicted even upon French-born individuals lacking official papers due to Pasqua laws (requiring children born in France to non-French parents to apply for citizenship at age 18), as in films like Wesh-wesh, qu’est-ce qui se passe? (Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche 2001). 2 Emphasis in original quote. 3 Emphasis in original quote. 4 Emphasis in original quote.

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6 Coastal borders: Welcome and La Graine et le mulet

W

e travel now to the borders of metropolitan France for two films which place the dynamics of language and power at their heart: Philippe Lioret’s 2009 Welcome and Abdellatif Kechiche’s 2007 La Graine et le mulet. Each of these films is located on a coastal border of the Hexagon, yet despite their French settings, their narratives involve a decentring of the French nation. In its depiction of a Kurdish migrant desperate to reach British shores, Welcome offers an alternative view of the migrant experience, casting its gaze across the English Channel and thus unseating France and French from a monopolistic position of importance. In its foregrounding of Tunisian culture, Arabic language and mixed linguistic and familial communities, La Graine et le mulet renders a Mediterranean French city the site of a cross-cultural, Franco-Tunisian experiment which challenges the ideal of French cultural norms. Central to these coastal films are issues of border-crossing and the boundaries of the French nation, which serve to include and exclude characters, both physically, through movement across borders (or entrapment within them) and symbolically, through language use. Welcome and La Graine et le mulet investigate the inner–outer configuration of local–migrant relationships, and provide new ways to understand Mireille Rosello’s work on the dynamics of hospitality (2001). Both films explore how the international impacts on the local in multilingual, contemporary French society, especially in its contentious border areas. These films oscillate between scenarios of inclusion and e­ xclusion, formulating a complex view of language relations on contemporary French soil that extends beyond Eurocentric hierarchies. The nation as represented in Welcome and La Graine et le mulet is neither isolated nor autonomous, but is imbricated in a patchwork of interrelated geographical spaces and nation states. In Welcome, France is not the soleWestern vantage point of the postcolonial immigrant. It is a country among many others, a member of the EU, a participant in the multifarious flows of globalisation. In La Graine et le mulet, the birth country of the Franco-Maghrebin protagonist is not to be entirely forgotten, maligned or avoided in favour of monocultural French integration.

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120  Decentring France Welcome and La Graine et le mulet’s coastal France is a plural space in which ‘communities, societies, nations, and even entire continents exist not autonomously but in a densely woven web of connectedness, within a complex and multivalent relationality’ (Shohat and Stam 2003: 1). Consequently, the films show us what it means to be multilingual in such a ‘complex and multivalent’ space, in ways that resist placing the French language in the sole position of value.

Multilingualism and globalisation Based in the border city of Calais, perched on the shores of the English Channel, Philippe Lioret’s melancholic film Welcome follows the story of the trilingual, 17-year-old Kurdish immigrant, Bilal, and his unlikely friendship with the ex-Olympian French swimming instructor, Simon. Having walked thousands of miles from his native Kurdistan to join his girlfriend Mina and her family in London, Bilal is trapped on the perimeter of the European continent by the hostile barrier of the English Channel. After failed attempts at stowing away in freight trucks crossing through the undersea tunnel, in desperation Bilal turns to Simon to teach him how to swim the Channel. As the latter’s personal life unravels and his marriage breaks down, Bilal and Simon are drawn into a pseudo father–son relationship that places them at risk of prosecution and, in Bilal’s case, deportation. As Simon speaks French and English and Bilal speaks English, Kurdish and Pashto, the official language of the film’s setting is not actually the language used by the two protagonists. Despite being set almost entirely in France, English is the lingua franca that Simon and Bilal share. Indeed, English plays a central role in the film’s dialogue and narrative not only as the shared code of the two main characters, but also as the livelihood of Simon’s ex-wife Marion, a primary school English teacher. It is also the language Mina and her family must learn in order to integrate into their new life, the language used between Simon and Mina when they finally meet, and the official language of the country Bilal so desperately wishes to reach. Yet despite some London-based scenes, English is spoken in the film mostly within the borders of the French nation rather than beyond them, even becoming more functional and useful to the film’s characters than French. In addition, in Bilal’s initial inquiries of fellow clandestine migrants and dealings with people smugglers, the typically marginal Middle Eastern tongue of Kurdish is of more use to him in negotiating his passage than either English or French. The various social spheres which make up the Calais-based narrative of Welcome, from the public streets of the port where Marion runs

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Coastal borders: Welcome; La Graine et le mulet 121 a soup kitchen to the private environment of the sheltered Simon’s apartment, are thus constructed as culturally diverse and linguistically plural spaces. Multilingualism permeates the film’s French environment, challenging conservative conceptions of the monolingual French nation and positioning the film’s narrative within a contemporary, globalised space. Certain of the film’s xenophobic and protectionist French characters resist the presence of multiculturalism and multilingualism within French borders (not least Simon’s racist neighbour, owner of the ironic ‘Welcome’ mat from which the film takes its title), with French law enforcement shown to be vehemently opposed to Bilal’s cause. Yet as Maud Ceuterick claims, ‘if the film is about Bilal’s impossible journey, it is also about Simon’s refashioning of the domestic; about his attempt to welcome this “other” home’ (2014: 80). In its portrayal of France as an inherently transnational and multilingual environment, Welcome insists upon the value and importance of linguistic flexibility and hybridity in a contemporary world characterised by the flow of peoples and cultures. As Bilal trains for the perilous journey, he and Simon grow close. As this personal connection between Simon and Bilal develops, and as Simon’s marriage disintegrates, the French immigration police close in on each of the protagonists, hunting down Bilal to sanction and deport him, and threatening Simon with legal action for sheltering an illegal immigrant. Simon and Bilal’s relationship, and their respective interest to the Calais immigration police, subsequently becomes the central focus of the narrative, in which language is a dominant part. Through this relationship, Welcome offers, as Alison Smith writes, ‘a challenge to conventional assumptions about linguistic assimilation and, through language, an alternative to the fraught assumptions of migrant relationships as those between host and guest’ (2012: 76). Indeed, Simon’s literal role as host to Bilal in his own home brings this host–guest dynamic, depicted more broadly in the film’s configuration of France as (unwilling) host and the immigrant as (undesired) guest, into focus. The notion of place becomes important not only in the film’s representation of physical border-crossing and the movement between culturally and politically loaded places, but also in the broader conception of territory and identity as depicted in the role of the city and the nation. The multiple transnational forces pulling at the fabric of the once closed-minded Simon’s quintessentially ‘French’ world are embodied in the film’s representation of place and language. Set almost entirely in the French port city of Calais, with some brief London-based scenes, Welcome portrays a hostile social landscape resistant to linguistic and cultural diversity, a dynamic which plays out

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122  Decentring France as much in private spaces as in public ones. Despite this hostility, and to the dismay of the film’s many closed-minded French characters, the film portrays multilingualism as emblematic of a contemporary world defined by immigration and globalisation. In this tense border city, the politics and practical implications of globalisation are at the forefront of social interaction and language use. Indeed, it is not only knowledge of French which is key to intercultural communication and even to survival, but English and even minoritarian languages like Kurdish. In its harsh portrayal of the migrant experience on French soil, Welcome represents the French nation as a site of conflict and crisis, as well as of cultural fluidity and linguistic exchange. The multiple languages which dominate the dialogue are symbolic in undermining expectations of Frenchness, Bilal’s position of political disenfranchisement, the French characters’ experience of France as home nation. In this environment, language offers an opportunity to tease out understandings of the nature of territory and national identity in a globalised France. As a result, Welcome posits even the most private of ‘French’ settings as transnational, political and multilingual spaces. In these spaces, the once-monopolistic place of the French language is called into question. Paul Bandia muses that ‘the multilingual text is located in-between languages … a hybridized text in a perpetual state of translation’ (2008: 168), and in line with this view Welcome undermines the very Frenchness of French film, a cultural label so often articulated through the presence only of the French language. Despite its controversial material and philosophy on language, politics and nation (or perhaps thanks to it), upon its release in 2009 Welcome quickly attained both commercial and critical success. The film was nominated for ten César awards in 2009, including Best Picture, and awarded both the Louis Delluc and Lumière prizes in the same year. With more than 1.2 million viewers in French theatres, Welcome also fared well at the box office. The film was lauded by many French film critics and provoked a public debate around ‘clandestine’ immigration, culminating in a highly publicised clash between the director, Philippe Lioret, and the Minister of Immigration, Eric Besson, who accused Lioret of likening contemporary French police strategy to that of Vichy France. As a result, the film quickly developed a reputation as a culturally sensitive, relevant and politicised project, snowballing its commercial success and critical prominence on the French cultural stage. In its linguistic make-up and its political philosophy, Welcome’s message is a rare and provocative one. In stark contrast to cinéma beur films of the late twentieth century, in which representations of

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Coastal borders: Welcome; La Graine et le mulet 123 immigration paint France as the ultimate destination and French as the ultimate linguistic prize, Welcome’s linguistic, geographical and cultural focus is elsewhere. Additionally, the languages which afford the characters authority, ability or the means to achieve their goals are far from limited to French. As a result, the role of English in Welcome is destabilising for traditional conceptions of what it means to be French. In its multilingual dialogue and transnational plot, Welcome places French in competition with other languages, both Western and otherwise, on French soil and in situations involving both French and foreign characters. English becomes a lingua franca in the film not because of its political or social connotations, but for its role as a linguistic common ground between two nationalities –French and Iraqi Kurdish – which do not share direct historic links. The traditional French immigration film features a combination of French characters, and migrants from previous French colonies (namely the Maghreb). Thus, French is the shared language and the lingua franca used. However, in Welcome, the immigrant in question has not found himself in France because it is the logical destination to take refuge in, due to colonial heritage and thus shared language. Bilal is a non-francophone whose migration patterns are not dictated by linguistic or cultural echoes of French colonialism: from Kurdistan, he is fleeing the Iraq war and is merely passing through France on his way to the UK. Thus, England makes its mark on the characters and the film in absentia: the dominant lingua franca of English becomes the primary language in a location in which French would normally dominate. Welcome is not alone in this representation; the dynamic is mirrored in other contemporary films like Aki Kaurismäki’s 2011 Le Havre. This polished and whimsical film tells the story of a French shoeshiner, Marcel, and an adolescent Gabonese boy, Idrissa, who finds himself unexpectedly in the French port city of Le Havre. When Marcel’s Finnish wife, Arletty, asks Idrissa how he came to be in France, he replies, ‘je suis venu par hasard, par accident’ (‘I came here by chance, by accident’). Like Bilal (and indeed Dheepan, Yalini and Illayaal), Idrissa’s journey is not yet over, and his time in France is far from permanent. Yet even more striking than the migrant characters’ movements in Welcome and Dheepan, Idrissa had never even intended to be in France at all; indeed, he does not even know he is in France until Marcel tells him so. Idrissa and many other Gabonese migrants had stowed away in a shipping container bound for England, which had been rerouted to Le Havre and lost due to a logistical error. This displaces France not only from the desired country of destination, but even from a planned country of passage during the migrants’

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124  Decentring France journey. Instead, Idrissa merely finds himself in France ‘par hasard, par accident’ and cannot leave the site of his unexpected detour quickly enough. The initial exchange in Le Havre between the disoriented Idrissa and the French protagonist Marcel – ‘On est à Londres?’ ‘Oh, c’est ce que tu cherches? Non, c’est de l’autre côté’ (‘Are we in London?’ ‘Oh, that’s what you’re looking for? No, it’s on the other side’) – casts Idrissa’s plight in a more humorous light than Bilal’s. Le Havre is a gentle comedy that Kaurismäki himself has described as a ‘fairytale’ (von Bagh 2011: 40).Yet the parallel stories, released within two years of each other, of the young migrant bound for London, trapped in a western French port city and taken in by a French local, cannot be ignored. In fact, England is relevant to almost all contemporary French multilingual films set in cities on the Channel; even in Cédric Klapisch’s Dunkirk-set 2011 comedy Ma part du gâteau, whose protagonists are all French, the characters must travel to London to solve their problems. By contrast, early films set in port cities, such as Jean Renoir’s 1938 La Bête humaine and Marcel Carné’s Le Quai des brumes of the same year, are monolingual and make no mention of the UK at all. This awareness of cross-Channel communication and relationships is therefore quite new. In Welcome, English consequently becomes a language Chris Wahl describes as ‘a common ground and a strange world’ (2005: 3). English is not spoken as mother tongue by any of the film’s characters, spoken in only one scene on anglophone soil, and associated with cultures and territories foreign to all the characters. None were born on anglophone soil, none spoke English in the home when growing up, and none have anglophone partners or family members. And yet English is the only language understood and shared by both of Welcome’s protagonists, and by almost every single character in the film. English is ‘a strange world’ in its disconnectedness from the characters’ cultural identities and origins, but a powerful ‘common ground’ in its role as a uniquely functional means of communication. Alison Smith proposes the label ‘threshold language’ to describe this use of a mutual second language. In line with her argument, English operates as a lingua franca and an egalitarian code where Kurdish and even French cannot: For Lioret, English is a displaced language, with only the most tentative connections to territory, and it is on this condition that Bilal and Simon can use it to step out of their respective linguistic houses. (2012: 79)

English thus offers Simon and Bilal the opportunity to build a relationship despite the many fundamental barriers which divide

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Coastal borders: Welcome; La Graine et le mulet 125 them. English is a mutually foreign yet comprehensible language for them, a means of communication which allows them to interact on a comparatively even playing field, despite their myriad differences. By communicating through a language foreign to each of them, a language from which they are both culturally distanced, Simon and Bilal are able to connect. French does not offer this possibility; it is Simon’s native language, the language of the authorities which threaten Bilal, and above all a language Bilal does not understand. Likewise, Kurdish remains incomprehensible to Simon throughout the film. Only English offers the possibility for Simon and Bilal to communicate in a complex and meaningful way, or indeed at all. This dynamic is present in similar ways in Joyeux Noël (Christian Carion 2005). In the First World War, on a French battlefield along the Western Front, the German, French and Scottish armies decide to forge a Christmas Eve truce. The French commander arrives on the field a few moments after the German and Scottish commanders have begun talking. The Scottish commander turns to the French man, the only figure standing in his home country, and says cheerily, ‘Good evening. Do you speak English?’ When he responds ‘A little’, the Scot nods and then explains the plans for the truce. While the German commander speaks fluent French, the Scottish one does not, and thus English becomes the only shared language in this French environment. Of course, the Scottish commander’s inability to speak French, unlike his multilingual continental counterparts, limits him to clichés of the monolingual anglophone, yet the value of English in the scene is not diminished by this portrayal. Thus, it is not necessarily French, but English and other languages, which dominate the linguistic economy of films like Joyeux Noël and Welcome. Almost unprecedentedly for a French film, contemporary or otherwise, the most linguistically competent character in Welcome is not the white native-French speaker Simon, but the adolescent Kurdish immigrant, Bilal (and to a lesser extent, Simon’s bilingual wife, Marion). Bilal’s English is more fluent than Simon’s, who speaks competently, but often falters. In conversations with Simon and other immigrant characters, such as his friend Zoran, Bilal acts as interpreter. And, most significantly, Bilal is the only character who acquires new language in the film; while he only manages a rudimentary grasp of the language, eventually Bilal tries to communicate with Simon in French. Bilal’s linguistic openness and flexibility posit him as the film’s most progressive and best-adapted character; not merely its youngest, but its most at home in the globalised, transnational universe that Simon initially tries to ignore, despite the universe having arrived at his very doorstep.

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126  Decentring France The extent of Bilal’s linguistic aptitude is showcased in the first scene in which Simon invites Bilal into his home, along with the monolingual Kurdish-speaking Zoran. Half an hour into the film, Simon sees Bilal and Zoran wandering the streets at night and calls out to them in English: ‘Where are you going? Come.’ Zoran, who is a stranger to Simon and has a very limited understanding of English, hesitates. Bilal, who knows and understands Simon, speaks to his friend in Kurdish, before they approach Simon’s car. Bilal’s Kurdish speech is not subtitled in this scene, so it is unclear to a non-Kurdishspeaking viewer whether his words contain an explanation of Simon’s trustworthiness, but it appears a translation is taking place. Once settled in Simon’s apartment, the three men share a meal of beer and pizza, and converse politely. simon: [English, to Bilal] How long you take to come from Iraq? bilal: [E] Three months. simon: [E] Three months? By … walking? [Bilal nods] And you left because of what? bilal: [E] To send money to our families. simon: [E] How are you sure to find a job in England? zoran: [E] A job? Yes. [mumbles to Bilal in unsubtitled Kurdish, Bilal translates] bilal: [E] His brother works in a supermarket in London. He’ll find a job for him. simon: [E] And you? bilal: [E, smiling] I find. simon: [E] What do you want to do? bilal: [E] Football. simon: [E, grinning] You want to play football in England? bilal: [E] Yes. There are many famous clubs, I will try to join one. [Arabic]: Inch’Allah. Zoran: [E] Him, good player. [Kurdish]: Bazda. bilal: [E/K] In Mosul they call me ‘Bazda’: ‘The Runner’. simon: [E/K] ‘Bazda’. bilal: [E/K] Bazda, yes. The Runner. At my home, I win cups. Ten maybe.

Between Bilal and Zoran, Kurdish is a natural, familiar and mutually comprehensible language. Between Bilal and Simon, English is a functional, if secondary, means of communication. Simon, however, is alone in his understanding of French. As a result, despite the scene’s location in Simon’s private Calais home, and despite the limited cultural capital in broader French society of a marginalised language such as Kurdish, French is the least useful, and indeed the most prohibitive, language at play. And the foreign Bilal, with his fluency in a range of tongues, is the only character capable of navigating the complex situation in which the three characters find themselves.

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Coastal borders: Welcome; La Graine et le mulet 127 In fact, French even has an isolating effect in this environment. Unable to communicate at all in French, and barely in English, Zoran is at a linguistic disadvantage, yet can rely on Bilal’s English skills to translate for him. Simon, however, has no such mediator for his French-language expression. At a number of emotional moments during Bilal and Zoran’s stay, Simon lapses into angry or exasperated French, despite neither guest understanding him. Indeed, the tensest moment is when Simon shouts at Zoran to go away in rapidfire French, with no attempt at translation into English, for Bilal to translate in turn into Kurdish. Zoran snaps back in Kurdish, yet due to the lack of bridging English-language dialogue, Bilal is unable to mediate the men’s altercation. It is one of the only moments in the film in which characters fail to communicate, and the mix of languages presents an insurmountable barrier. In these cases, French is a hostile language choice for Simon, in the presence of his unlikely guests. This surprising and rare depiction of language ability – the non-French character’s greater level of linguistic competency than the French character’s – paints a portrait of shifting power relations. In Welcome’s depiction of a trilingual young Kurdish immigrant (who is open to becoming quadrilingual), and a comparatively closed middle-aged French citizen, it could almost be said that the film’s main ‘Eastern’ character is more ‘Western’, or at least more adapted to the globalised nature of contemporary Europe, than the French one. Maud Ceuterick sees this as a move towards the cosmopolitan: ‘instead of establishing a hierarchical link between migrant and native, the films’ protagonists develop interdependent relationships and thus produce the necessary conditions for visceral cosmopolitanism to emerge’ (2014: 78). At the least, Bilal is a more progressive character than Simon: less rooted, more mobile, more willing to embrace border-crossing, more familiar with different languages, more open to language learning. Previous transnational French cinema, from beur film to co-productions to the postcolonial cinema of filmmakers such as Claire Denis, has engaged on many levels with issues of multiculturalism. These include evocations of cultural isolation, racism, social alienation, integration, exile (to the bled through la double peine, or symbolically to the banlieue or prison), intergenerational conflict, delinquency, violence, unemployment, and limited access to education and other societal staples. At the heart of many transnational films lies a fundamental interest in issues of cultural difference and power. Indeed, for Patricia Caillé, power is at the very heart of transnational films, which ‘enable us to interrogate relationships of power and domination in a digital and post-industrial age’ (2013: 242).

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128  Decentring France However, throughout the twentieth century, these issues were usually explored without the portrayal of other languages. Language was depicted as a differentiating factor, a means of identification and as a system of belonging in films like La Haine, but usually only within the bounds of French. Cultural and social fracture was interrogated not through multilingualism, but through French variations, such as verlan and argot. In fact, although these vernaculars represent an important element of the identity of the young protagonists of such films, their use often serves to polarise them further from mainstream and authority groups. If languages other than French are included in the dialogue of these films, it is often background noise (in what can be viewed as atmospheric multilingualism, rendered devoid of semantic meaning through a lack of subtitles), passing words or phrases in order to give a film a multilingual ‘flavour’, or to evoke the ‘biopolitics of otherness’ (Lampropoulos 2012: 199). But Welcome sits in stark contrast to these earlier films, in which language diversity plays a background role. For, in this film, most of the key scenes in which characters find themselves in states of social and cultural conflict, and many of the film’s plot-advancing moments, take place in and around multilingualism: through interpreting, codeswitching, struggling to communicate across language barriers, and language learning. Indeed, one of the formative moments is when Bilal attempts to speak to Simon in French, and Simon acknowledges Bilal’s Kurdish nickname: although Bilal tries to string sentences together in a way Simon does not, each character reaches out linguistically to the other. For Simon, ‘Bazda’ becomes an important part of Bilal’s identity; he even has the word inscribed on Bilal’s tombstone in honour of his talents and unrealised dreams. Likewise, Bilal attempts some basic French phrases not only for practical reasons, but as a means of showing gratitude. As Simon is opened up to linguistic diversity by Bilal, Simon’s ex-wife Marion embraces multilingualism in other ways throughout the film. Marion uses language difference in most aspects of her life. As a primary school English teacher, she puts the English language into daily practice in Calais. She also speaks the language nightly in her interaction with the immigrants camping near the docks, where she operates a soup kitchen. While she is hesitant to support Simon’s sheltering of Bilal, as she knows Simon could be arrested for doing so, Marion is posited as the most ‘welcoming’ of all Welcome’s characters. She not only feeds Calais’s immigrant population, but stands up for them when they are persecuted, such as when two are refused entry to the supermarket she and Simon are shopping in. When the men are denied entry, she confronts the manager and criticises

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Coastal borders: Welcome; La Graine et le mulet 129 Simon’s passive tendency to turn a blind eye (‘Et toi, tu fais rien?’ (‘You’re just going to do nothing?’)). There is the suggestion that Simon, desperate to win Marion back, even begins helping Bilal to impress her and show her he can share her compassion for the disenfranchised. Marion is a catalyst for the film’s events, and its moral compass. It is thus significant that she is so frequently associated with multilingual speech. The film’s key resolution scene also takes place in Smith’s ‘threshold language’; after Bilal’s death by drowning, his girlfriend Mina and Simon meet on foreign soil (London) and communicate in a mutual second language (English). Despite each being displaced from their home, not speaking in their mother tongue and being complete strangers to one another, through this meeting Mina and Simon can begin to resolve some of the story’s most painful details. Mina is assured of Bilal’s devotion to her, and informed of his plans to swim the Channel to reach her and his ultimate failure to do so. Simon is able to share his grief with the only other person he knows of who feels deeply for Bilal. And the film’s recurrent motif of the wedding ring, constantly lost, rejected, refused, accepted but never worn, finally finds its home in Mina, despite the impossibility of its purpose being realised. Welcome is a dark and emotional film, with few moments of solace. While steeped in grief, this conversation between Simon and Mina is the sole moment of closure for either of the two characters. In this crucial scene, French has no place, and indeed no power to soothe either Mina or Simon. Unalike in almost every sense, Mina and Simon’s common knowledge of English is essential to their ability to achieve this closure at all.

Porous borders, language flows We shift now from Welcome’s Franco-British tragedy on the shores of the English Channel to La Graine et le mulet’s Franco-Tunisian drama on the southernmost French border. This understated film by Abdellatif Kechiche represents a range of multilingual French characters of varied international origin who inhabit multilingual French spaces located far from the French capital and cultural centre. Set in the Mediterranean port city of Sète, La Graine et le mulet follows the Tunisian-born, French-nationalised Slimane who, having been made redundant after forty years of labour, tries to convince local government and his own scattered, multicultural family to assist him in opening a couscous restaurant on a boat. The film’s decentring is both linguistic and spatial, for it is not only set in a border town, but takes place across the borders of multiple languages. In its portrayal

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130  Decentring France of its contrasting settings of land and water, La Graine et le mulet offers a novel framework for thematising the porosity of borders, as well as understanding the southern French space and its proximity to North Africa. Unlike Welcome, whose migrant protagonist does not seek to settle in France, most of the main characters of La Graine et le mulet have either migrated from North Africa to metropolitan France decades earlier, or been born in France to first-generation migrant parents. Also unlike Welcome, the migrant trajectory in La Graine et le mulet matches that of many earlier characters in French film. Yet the ways in which the film’s characters interact with the French border space, rejects a Eurocentric picture of migrant life in France and casts its gaze away from the French centre and across the Mediterranean Sea. In many ways, the film emphasises the Mediterranean Sea over the French land mass. Slimane’s career has always located him on the margins of the nation and linked him to the sea, as he has worked as a fishing boat repairer since the 1960s. His son, Majid, likewise makes his living on the water, as a tour guide of Sète’s fishing and shipping port on a tourist boat. The food Slimane’s ex-wife Souad serves her family and plans to serve Slimane’s customers is not only a traditional African dish, but one composed of fish from the same sea that touches Tunisian shores. And despite needing a French business permit, Slimane does not in fact propose to open his restaurant on French soil. Instead, he plans to locate the site of his couscous restaurant, his new livelihood mirroring his old ship-repairing job, on a boat docked at the very southern edge of the French nation. The film’s entire narrative arc involves a symbolic and literal stepping on to the water. In an extended sequence between Slimane and his children, one of his sons even pressures Slimane to return to the bled, stressing that he no longer has a reason to remain in France: ‘il n’y a rien qui ne te retienne ici’ (‘nothing is keeping you here’). For Slimane’s son, Tunisia would offer his father a more fulfilling and prosperous future than he could enjoy in France, and he thus proposes a form of reverse migration away from the Hexagon. This dynamic evokes what Carrie Tarr describes as the ‘porosity of the Hexagon’, by which physical and symbolic border-crossing render ‘visible the decentred nature of contemporary culture and society’ (2007d: 18). This ‘porous’ picture of national borders does not ignore the difficulty of border-crossing for migrants, nor does it erase the significance of the border in physical and symbolic representation of the nation as patrolled and delineated space. Instead, this porosity provides an alternative means of thematising the French border to the more dominant concept of Fortress Europe, in which borders

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Coastal borders: Welcome; La Graine et le mulet 131 are represented as concrete, permanent or impassable. Conversely to Fortress Europe’s focus on confinement, in the porous Europe of La Graine et le mulet, movement is not only possible but normal, in the flow of culture, goods and people across both physical borders (in the movement of boats across the Mediterranean Sea and the migration of people between North Africa and France) and symbolic ones (in the infusion of Tunisian cuisine and Arabic language into the everyday cultural reality of many Sète inhabitants). The alternative motifs of Fortress Europe and Porous Europe are thrown into even sharper relief in Welcome. The impassibility of the border between France and England is the key narrative element around which the film revolves, as Bilal and his fellow members of la jungle attempt to circumvent the physical barrier of the Channel and the legal barriers of the immigration system, and cross the Channel to reach England. The fortress metaphor comes to mind first in Bilal’s failed attempts to travel through the tunnel, and in his ultimate failure to reach British shores through swimming. Yet in his attempt to swim across the Channel, to cross the invisible line that delineates the border between the two nations, Bilal’s border-crossing act also exposes the ‘porosity of the Hexagon’. It is certainly difficult to traverse the border, yet it is not impossible. Indeed, Bilal may not reach British shores, but he does cross into British territory, and thus does traverse the border. We know this because Bilal is targeted by British border police, rather than French ones, in his final moments before drowning. In a different but complementary depiction of porosity, in docking his restaurant on the very edge of land, Slimane does not leave French borders, but he does leave French shores, locating himself – just as Bilal does – in a contentious body of water that is claimed, shared and patrolled by multiple nation states in an attempt to regulate movement between them. This configuration of porous movement, which acknowledges the border between nations but is not necessary curtailed by it, serves as a powerful metaphor for the ways in which language operates in both films. The protagonists may remain mostly in France, where the French language is essential, useful and frequently spoken. But these protagonists have also travelled from afar, bringing their languages with them, and set their sights abroad through travel and education, incorporating other languages into their experience. As Tarr writes, such narratives are ‘indicative not just of the porosity of the Hexagon to migratory movements towards, in and through France, but of the porosity of recent French cinema, at least on its margins, to transnational issues of cultural and economic difference’ (2007d: 8). Just as the characters of Welcome and La Graine et le mulet move between nations, multicultural spaces

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132  Decentring France and in-between border zones, so too do they move between French, English, Arabic, Kurdish and Pashto, adopting each new language as they occupy each new space. The porosity of the Hexagon evokes mixity, transition and slippage, and the multilingualism of both films reflects this. In these mixed and moving environments, French arises as a valuable language, but not the only linguistic resource of worth. Instead, French is decentred to give way to multiple poles of cultural influence, each with their own flows of social power. This locates the French films in a globalised space and posits their English Channel and Mediterranean Sea border settings as realms characterised by cultural plurality, linguistic diversity, geographical mixity and flows. Of course, La Graine et le mulet’s geographic decentring of France is not as revolutionary as Welcome’s. Yet both films present a powerful image of contemporary European migration as their protagonists cast their gaze across the water to foreign shores. Indeed, in both films the protagonists may not leave France, but each steps into – or onto – the sea in order to pursue their future, personal happiness and economic prosperity. Their ultimate failure to achieve these goals casts a pessimistic light over the migrants’ prospects in contemporary Europe (although the migrant women in both films manage to thrive and find themselves a place in their adoptive countries). Yet Welcome and La Graine et le mulet’s foregrounding of the act of stepping off French shores, rather than travelling to French metropolitan centres, parallels their portrayal of multilingualism in these spaces. In foregrounding English, Kurdish and Arabic alongside French, just as they foreground England and Tunisia alongside France, these coastal border films present a decentred view of language and space in a contemporary France defined by movement and transition, in which the border is formidable, not but impassable.

Hospitality and the Hexagon In La Graine et le mulet, dominant French values are contrasted with those of its multicultural French–Tunisian–Russian extended family. In this contrast, the former emerges as a monolingual, hostile group and the latter as a multilingual, hospitable one. We shall examine this hostility–hospitality dynamic below, through a juxtaposition of a hostile monolingual scene at a French bank, with a hospitable multilingual scene around the family dining table. This dynamic does not conflate French people with hostility – indeed, many of the family members are of French birth, and identify as French. For example, when Slimane is laid off from his job, his son-in-law José does not blame ageism, nor French racism towards Maghrebis, but the latter’s opposite:

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Coastal borders: Welcome; La Graine et le mulet 133 josé: [French] Ils veulent plus de Français. slimane: [F] Ils veulent plus de vieux, oui. josé: [F] Non, ils veulent plus de Français. Ils préfèrent des types de passage.

For José, Slimane’s Frenchness is not contested, and the reasons for his discriminatory treatment lie elsewhere. As a French worker, José insists Slimane cannot offer the cheap, disposable labour of ‘des types de passage’. The film does not draw a line between ‘French’ characters and ‘migrant’ ones. Neither does the film paint ‘French’ people as hostile and ‘non-French’ people as hospitable in black-andwhite ways. The vast majority of characters in La Graine et le mulet have both French nationality (often French birth) and non-French origins. Rather, it is what Claire Kramsch calls a monocultural ‘traffic in meaning’ (2006) that is shown to be hostile, and multicultural openness is shown to be hospitable. The film presents a striking image of cultural relations in which monolingualism is associated with closedness: closedness to non-fluent French-language use, and to a willingness to give (i.e. a lack of hospitality). By comparison, the multicultural family environment is characterised by openness, and by giving. Already composed of a range of multilingual characters, who speak combinations of French, Arabic, Russian, English and Italian, these characters are not merely multilingual; they are ­encouraging of language learning and accepting of broken language use. Sylvie Durmelat has written at length about the significance of the North African dish of couscous in France and its shifting relation to cultural identity and authenticity. For Durmelat, couscous is ‘an

Figure 9  La Graine et le mulet (Abdellatif Kechiche, Pathé)

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134  Decentring France important signifier of ethnic identity, representing a changing relationship to the home and host countries’ (2015: 121). In the central family dining scene of La Graine et le mulet, an elaborate lunch feast becomes the site of mixed cultural enactments, encompassing both French and Tunisian traditions: the Tunisian communal couscous dish and the French Sunday lunch. In this scene, the giving of food and the sharing of language combine to create a multilingual and multicultural space in which different linguistic and cultural identities circulate. During the couscous scene, multilingualism is affiliated with hospitality and a number of gestures of linguistic and physical giving are enacted. The meal is a communal one in which each character is keen to ensure the others have been served sufficient semolina and fish (the graine and mulet of the film’s title). The key figure in this scene is the mother, Souad, who, despite speaking fluent (if accented) French, maintains several traditional Tunisian characteristics, such as lapsing into Arabic and eating with her hands. Tess Do and Kathryn Lay-Chenchabi underline Souad’s association with acts of giving in the scene (2014: 195) and Souad herself even explains, ‘le couscous, je l’ai préparé avec amour’ (‘I prepared the couscous with love’). What renders this giving even more symbolic is the relationship between the giving of food and of language in the scene. Once everyone has been served and the communal eating has begun, the conversation turns to language. Family members quiz Mario, the French-Italian husband of one of the French-Tunisian relatives Lelia, on whether he has learned Arabic from his wife. He responds with a jumbled phrase in an attempt at Arabic-language speech. Lelia responds, laughing: lelia: [French] Yes, but you know other little Arabic words … you learned a few anyway.

Souad interjects to note that even if Mario doesn’t speak it well, at least his and Lelia’s children understand Arabic. lelia: [F] Yes, the boys understand. souad: [F, to Lelia’s sons] When does your mother speak Arabic? son: [F] When she’s angry. [family laughs] souad: [F] Only when she’s annoyed? lelia: [F] Yes, but he understands my mother, etcetera.

Mario then attempts to show off his limited knowledge of Arabic vocabulary by attempting the phrase for ‘I love you, my dear’. Of course, Mario is far from fluent in Arabic, and the family members all laugh at his inaccurate pronunciation. However, the laughter is of an affectionate kind and there is no judgement or social exclusion that occurs in response to his failure to speak the language. Instead, Mario

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Coastal borders: Welcome; La Graine et le mulet 135 and Lelia engage in a good-hearted language tutorial, as she gently corrects his delivery of the words. At no point does Mario dismiss the value of speaking Arabic or denigrate the language. Just as Souad offers up her couscous as a communal gift to her family, Lelia offers up the Arabic language in a gesture of inclusion, encouraging her French husband to share in her family’s cultural heritage. The result is an atmosphere of hospitality that revolves around the giving of food and language, in which multiple cultures have a place and language use at all levels is encouraged. By contrast, the banking interview scene between Slimane, his multilingual stepdaughter Rym and their French banker, differs in almost every way from the family couscous scene. Dressed in their most demure grey suits, Rym and Slimane arrive at the interview with a dossier outlining their plans to open a couscous restaurant on an old boat Slimane has just bought. Currently dilapidated, they require a loan to restore the boat to a state fit for welcoming clients. Though the stepfather and stepdaughter are well prepared, language issues arise from the very beginning as a potential threat to their success. When the banker enquires after Slimane’s intentions, he responds in correct, but basic and strongly accented French: slimane: [French] I have come to ask for a loan.

After a tentative ‘oui …?’ from the banker, signalling that she requires more information, Slimane stares at her in silence, unsure how to strengthen his case. It is clear that while he understands standard French and can communicate in the language, he does not possess the linguistic skills required for a professional financial meeting. It is at this point that Rym steps in with the elegant phrase: rym: [F] My stepfather wishes to open a restaurant on a boat he has just purchased.

From this point on, it will be Rym, with her flawless and polite French, who navigates the unfriendly exchange and dodges the many challenges the banker places in her way. When the banker remarks that the dossier is slim, Rym responds that they are in the process of conducting further market research. When the banker shows concern that the running costs for the restaurant will be too high, Rym lays out the plan to employ family members in the kitchen and as the wait staff. When the banker sceptically notes that there are already several restaurants located along the tourist dining area of the Quai de la République, Rym is quick to explain that there is no such couscous (or indeed North African) restaurant, nor a floating restaurant on a boat, and that their proposal is thus unique. At opportune moments,

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136  Decentring France Rym ends her eloquent sentences with deferrals to Slimane, who nods or contributes a ‘oui’ as consensus. Much like other adolescent characters like Esmeralda in Entre les murs or Fathi and Lydia in L’Esquive, Rym is something of a master linguist in her handling of linguistic issues in La Graine et le mulet. She is not only fluent in French and Arabic, but she is well versed in the various registers and nuances within each language, their respective potential uses and how to move between them. Rym knows when to use formal French, everyday French and conversational Arabic strategically in order to advance her situation, and those of the people she cares about. Indeed, Slimane could present the restaurant project in comprehensible French, yet it is Rym’s ability to converse in professional, formal French that prompts the banker to provide them with detailed further advice, rather than dismissing their proposal outright. The labyrinth of business bureaucracy will still need to be navigated, and the loan is far from approved outright. Nevertheless, Rym’s negotiation tactics, handled in the same polite, Marseilles regionaccented French as the banker’s, which salvages the loan request from certain failure and opens up new opportunities for the future. This scene shows a clear dynamic in which the exercise of social power and influence hinges on language. The French banker is clearly in a position of institutional power, with the ability to confer or deny funds to Slimane. Her role, indeed, places her in a position to give (or not give), returning the dynamics of hospitality and giving explored by Do and Lay-Chenchabi in the film. In the opposite position, Slimane and his inability to express his need for (and worthiness of) of a loan in an accurate, sophisticated or convincing way, possesses none of the social power held by the French banker. However, the most fascinating character is the scene is not the overtly powerful banker or the overtly powerless Slimane, but Rym. The young woman certainly does not hold an institutionalised position of authority like the banker, but she is nonetheless able, through careful deference and delicate language use, to bridge the power divide between the two other characters and negotiate a far more favourable response to their proposal than Slimane could otherwise have elicited. This scene casts Rym as a character who, despite her comparatively low social standing, is able to use language in ways that reflect other master linguists explored in this book. More than any other character in La Graine et le mulet, Rym understands the power of language, and the importance of selecting the appropriate language form for the appropriate situation. In other scenes, this ‘appropriate’ language form will not be the sophisticated French of the banking interview scene, but combinations of casual forms of French, Arabic-inflected French and pure Arabic.

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Coastal borders: Welcome; La Graine et le mulet 137 As Jim Morrissey notes, ‘Rym stands out for her verbal dexterity and inventiveness – skills that are employed to equally impressive effect in formal and informal situations’ (2013: 312). This dexterity is shown not only in the banking interview, but in intimate family scenes, such as when she convinces Slimane that he has every reason to remain in Sète, admonishing Slimane’s son for telling him to return to the bled and leave her mother behind. In such intimate, personal scenes among French-dwelling characters of Maghrebi descent, Rym is aware that the polished French appropriate to her exchange with the French banker will not persuade her parental figures in the way a warm, colloquial French-Arabic register will. To similar effect, when a group of Slimane’s fellow Tunisian migrant friends, a number of ageing male musicians who spend their afternoons drinking tea on the terrace of Rym’s mother’s hotel, quiz Rym on the controversial opening night of the restaurant, she employs a casual French, inflected with Arabic phrases such as ‘Inch’Allah’, to explain the value of the opening night strategy. Dismissing their concerns that the opening is an act of desperation, she casts it as a strategic business move, and recruits them to play traditional Tunisian music during the dinner for no charge. Rym’s linguistic abilities are even explicitly noted in La Graine et le mulet. When her mother refuses to attend the event, not wishing to see her partner’s ex-wife, one of the musicians encourages her to use her language skills to persuade her mother to come, saying ‘I know you. Find the words.’ She will, of course, succeed. It should be noted that Rym’s control of social situations does not involve the deceptive manipulation of the social order exerted by characters like Malik in Un prophète, nor does she persuade others in order to benefit herself. Rym’s is a more benevolent form of linguistic control exerted in order to protect and advance her family, rather than a self-serving control that exerts violence on others. Unlike Malik, Rym is not in physical danger in La Graine et le mulet, nor must she contend with the same violent stakes. The driving force behind her linguistic strategisation is therefore different. Yet in a parallel way to Malik, Nora or Dheepan, in her movement between linguistic variations, Rym is able to sway and convince a number of characters, ranging from French officials to Tunisian-born migrant musicians to her own parents. For Rym, as for the other characters, language is a valuable resource, yet correct French is only one of several linguistic resources available to her. This paints La Graine et le mulet’s Mediterranean French setting of Sète as a diverse multilingual border space in which language has a variety of uses and monolingualism in French is not sufficient for navigating the many situations in which the characters find themselves.

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138  Decentring France Despite Rym’s linguistic aptitude, the banking interview scene sits in stark contrast to the couscous lunch scene in a number of ways. Where broken language use is a cause of affection and amusement in the lunch scene, it is a potentially damaging sign of incompetence in the banking one. Where mispronunciation in the lunch scene presents an opportunity for language teaching, Slimane’s misspellings in the dossier presented during the banking scene courts only condescending judgement. And where food, like language, is freely given in the lunch scene, the banking scene is characterised by withholding rather than giving. The contrast links both hospitality with multilingualism, and lack of hospitality with monolingualism, no matter the language(s). Each of these scenes takes place in France, between combinations of French-born and French-naturalised characters, in variations of the French language. However, when considered from this perspective of giving vs. non-giving, the two scenes are diametrically opposed. Multicultural and multilingual groups appear as more welcoming (to adopt Lioret’s wording), as more hospitable, and thus as better adapted to the globalised, multicultural reality of contemporary France. The family’s cultural and linguistic flexibility presents a more workable picture of cultural relations in France than the monolingual inflexibility shown in the banking scene. For, while Rym’s language skills are of value in the banking scene, it is in her ability to conform to a monolingual, monocultural French identity that gains her legitimacy in the French banker’s eyes. Whereas the English-speaking characters in Welcome have less of a need to learn French due to the temporary nature of their presence in France, the characters of La Graine et le mulet require proficiency in French to advance in everyday situations. La Graine et le mulet is a French film with French characters (albeit of cultural diverse heritage) and the majority of its dialogue is in French. Yet the film’s pairing of multilingualism and hospitality decentres mainstream French culture and language from the sole position of cultural, social and symbolic value in contemporary France. It thus presents a revised, polycentric vision of the contemporary French linguistic reality: as Ginette Vincendeau writes, it ‘engages squarely with what it means to be French today in a way that is realistic, provocative and conciliatory’ (2008: 46). For La Graine et le mulet, multilingualism is a natural and sustainable solution to globalisation in France. The film thus evokes a plural cultural and linguistic environment in which standard, grammatically correct, unaccented French is important, but is decentred from a monopolistic position to make way for a multitude of communicative forms. Such linguistic forms are not only or purely ‘foreign’, but

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Coastal borders: Welcome; La Graine et le mulet 139 alternative ‘French’ identities, formed along the multicultural rim of the Mediterranean border space. Signposted by its arresting title – a single, English-language word – the politics of hospitality are also crucial to Welcome, and the complex relationship between visitor and guest is also explored through space. Welcome’s mise en scène is dominated by a number of loaded and symbolic settings: the swimming pool, the beach, the docks, the streets and the shanties known hauntingly as la jungle. The makeshift soup kitchen located on the docks, at which Marion volunteers in order to feed la jungle’s inhabitants, is perhaps the most obvious and transgressive site of hospitality, at odds with Calais’s otherwise inhospitable make-up. Illustrative of Marion’s character more broadly, the soup kitchen is one of the few motifs in the film that is designed to render the streets of the border city a hospitable and inhabitable space. However, the site of the most meaningful hospitable acts in Welcome is the private space of Simon’s apartment, where he lives alone following his separation from Marion. As discussed above, the apartment is the site of many of the film’s key scenes of conflict, confrontation and change, drawing the film’s cosmopolitan, public storylines into an intimate, domestic French space. These scenes range from Simon’s initial bonding with Bilal to violent confrontation when Zoran steals Simon’s Olympic medal, from arguments with Simon’s xenophobic neighbour to heated altercations with the police during their unannounced search for Bilal. As the film progresses, the conflicts and character evolutions that take place within the confines of Simon’s apartment draw him further away from an insular private life, and open him up to encountering a multitude of individuals, subjectivities, cultures and languages. With each plot shift, the Welcome mat takes on a more poignant, at times crueller, meaning. Mimicking the film’s trajectory more broadly, the local site of the Calais home becomes defined by the global, by the foreign and by the unknown. Thus, in providing hospitality to an outsider, Simon is eventually drawn ‘outside’ himself, to confront the reality of a globalised world in which unconditional hospitality is scarce. And it is far from insignificant that the most jovial moment of bonding in the film, the scene in which Simon makes his only foray into Bilal’s language by learning his Kurdish nickname of ‘Bazda’, takes place in Simon’s home, into which he has invited the migrants to share a meal. In a turnaround from Simon’s complacency during the supermarket scene, this act of hospitality not only involves inviting the non-French other into the private French domestic space, but also involves the giving of food, the sharing of a lingua franca, and even a basic acquisition of the other’s culture and tongue. Thus, the

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140  Decentring France

Figure 10  Welcome (Philippe Lioret, Nord-Ouest Productions)

giving and sharing of this act involves not only food and space, but language. During the conversation, each character offers up some of his native language; Bilal and Zoran explaining their backgrounds and nicknames in Kurdish and Simon lapsing into French chatter. They also each step into neutral, shared linguistic territory in the act of conversing in English. Finally, they even make a tentative foray into the other’s native tongue, with Simon repeating the Bilal’s Kurdish nickname for ‘The Runner’, ‘Bazda’ and Bilal and Zoran thanking Simon for his hospitality with simple ‘mercis’. The act of hospitality is thus one of opening: of opening one’s door to another in need, and of opening one’s mindset to a series of plural identities, languages and world-views. The result is a process of cultural and linguistic exchange which problematises the closed borders of the French nation. Though the hospitality–multilingualism dyad is clearest in La Graine et le mulet, the dynamic also arises in a contrast between two similar scenes in Welcome. Early in the film, when we first meet Marion, Simon is checking out groceries from a local supermarket when a security guard stops two migrants from entering the store. Most of the customers turn a blind eye to the situation, but Marion steps in and asks why the men are not allowed to enter and purchase groceries like everyone else. The men have money to pay for their food and soap, and do not have theft convictions against them. However, they are also unable to defend themselves or explain this, as they do not speak French. Despite Marion’s protestations on their behalf, the xenophobic supermarket manager and security staff refuse to allow the men entry. The opposite of La Graine et le mulet’s couscous lunch, after which Souad is seen taking dishes of couscous to nearby homeless men, Welcome’s supermarket scene depicts a literal act of non-giving of food, and of exclusion of non-French others from dominant French spaces. Much like the banking scene in La Graine et le mulet, but with

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Coastal borders: Welcome; La Graine et le mulet 141 far more hostile results, there is no place for languages other than French in this place. The expulsion of the men from the supermarket is not only a literal act of barring access to food, but a symbolic act of denying acceptance into the French nation and society. This dynamics of hospitality, in which space and language are intrinsically linked, recalls Mireille Rosello’s work on the relationship between host and guest in her 2001 book Postcolonial Hospitality: The Immigrant as Guest. The act of stepping out of one’s own language and into that of another, unlike the politics of using a mutually known and neutral lingua franca, opens each participant up to the possibility of change: for Rosello, ‘the very precondition of hospitality may require that, in some ways, both the host and the guest accepts in different ways, the uncomfortable and sometimes painful possibility of being changed by the other’ (176). We see this not only in Simon’s character shift from a figure who will observe the exclusion of migrants from a supermarket without intervening to one who will welcome irregular immigrants into his home. But we also see this in the more genial learning and changing that occurs around the couscous table in La Graine et le mulet. To share space, food and language with those of different cultural and linguistic identities, is not only to witness cultural and linguistic diversity, but to engage in it. In her analysis of hospitality enacted between individuals, usually between a native host and a foreign guest, Rosello acknowledges how ‘the individual house can always be used as a metaphor for the community at large, for what happens in the city, for what happens at the level of the state’ (150). Both Simon’s and Souad’s apartments are private domestic spaces, yet the openness to the language and culture of the other enacted within them open these spaces up to the world beyond to a far greater extent than the public spaces of the bank or the supermarket. Thus, it is not the physical accessibility of spaces, but the gestures of welcoming enacted within them, that render Welcome and La Graine et le mulet responsive to the ­complexities of the contemporary globalised universe, both within and beyond France. Such linguistically varied spaces of hospitality, in which the literal sharing of food and the symbolic sharing of language are essential, are posited in both La Graine et le mulet and Welcome as decentred French environments more in line with the reality of today’s France than their more closed, monolingual and monocultural counterparts. The French language is central to both Welcome and La Graine et le mulet, and ignorance of French is disadvantaging. Various characters are shown to suffer due to their inability to use French, from the migrants who cannot defend themselves at the supermarket

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142  Decentring France in Welcome, to Slimane’s inability to convincingly make his case in French at the bank in La Graine et le mulet. Yet despite the continuing value of mainstream French language, customs and culture, the films still show the closedness to language, customs and culture of others as being at odds with the multicultural populations of Calais and Sète. The ideology of French monoculturalism and monolingualism becomes a dangerous one, and Rosello warns of the unilateral traffic in meaning inherent in such monoculturalism, such ‘hospitality without risk’ (173). Instead, it is the characters most open to the linguistic plurality of these diverse coastal border spaces, who are best equipped to harness social power to protect others and advance themselves. On these coastal borders, the definition of what it means to be ‘French’ is contested by characters like Rym, and what it means to be linguistically adept is challenged by characters like Bilal. In such spaces, it is fluency in multiple languages, rather than monolingualism in French, which equips characters with the skills needed to communicate, connect, progress and survive in the contemporary world. Welcome is fundamentally a tale of welcoming, as La Graine et le mulet is fundamentally a tale of giving. Yet the ‘Welcome’ mat is a symbol of French closedness and an ironic example of the selective hospitality that characterises contemporary immigration policy. Laid out in front of Simon’s racist neighbour’s door, the mat symbolises the conditional nature of hospitality: only certain figures are welcomed across the threshold of this French home, just as only certain figures are welcomed across the threshold of French borders. Simon’s hospitality towards Bilal and Zoran is a transgressive act that redefines the mapping of the contemporary nation state in an age of ‘illegal’ migration. In Simon ‘welcoming’ the ‘unwelcome’ other in, the porosity of the nation’s borders is thrown into relief. And, in ushering this other on to their ultimate destination across the Channel, the centrality of the French nation in the grander scheme of the globalised universe is devalued, no longer a sole vantage point for migration. Hospitality and inhospitality, mobility and immobility: the pictures of cultural relations presented in La Graine et le mulet and Welcome serve to radically update the traditional trajectory of the immigrant as imagined by dominant Western cultural production.

Remapping the migrant trajectory Both Welcome and La Graine et le mulet are set in port cities and on coastal borders where even the most domestic spaces are impacted by a culture of movement, migration and transition. Situated on the

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Coastal borders: Welcome; La Graine et le mulet 143 shores of the English Channel, equipped with ports, ferries and an entry point to the subterranean tunnel, Welcome’s Calais is in essence a place of passage, migration and flow, particularly the flow of people. In her analysis of Welcome, Alison Smith links this motif of passage with language: ‘these linguistic landscapes are negotiated … to play on deeply anchored cross-Channel rivalries, as well as observations on migrant flows and hospitality’ (2012: 87). La Graine et le mulet’s Sète is located east of Marseilles and in a traditional port area of the Mediterranean, where vessels, goods and people both arrive and depart in large numbers. Logically, both films revolve around characters in states of flux, change or transition. Bilal and his fellow migrants are in a state of literal movement between countries, experiencing various forms of homelessness, travel, migration and uprootedness. On a more symbolic level, Simon and Marion also find themselves in an interstitial state of relationship breakdown, as they separate, move house, divide belongings and finally divorce. Even Simon’s job as a swimming instructor, which leads Bilal to approach him in the first place, is characterised by movement. In a similar way, Slimane has come to a crossroads in his life, having lost his employment in Sète, where he repaired boats. As a result, he is adrift, his son even suggesting a return migration home to Tunisia in search of a more meaningful life. Yet much like the symbolism of swimming laps in a pool, Welcome is characterised by movement, but also by the inability to move. Like the paperless protagonist of the banlieue film Wesh-wesh, qu’est-ce qui se passe?, in Welcome, the French nation, with its rigid immigration policy, serves to trap Bilal within its borders. This is one of the key aspects which differentiate Welcome from so many other films, contemporary or otherwise, which depict immigration; France is not the desired final destination and has not been chosen as target for its shared language or historical ties with the migrant’s homeland. In fact, Bilal does not want to be in France at all. It is merely one of the many countries he passes through on his way to England; all that differentiates it from these other countries is that, due to the geographical restrictions of the Channel, he is stranded there. In countless ways, the crossing of borders, or the impossibility of doing so, is central to the essence of the film. In many previous films about the migrant experience, France operates as a kind of Mecca (though on the migrants’ arrival, the ideal of France is often deconstructed). In Welcome, the opposite is the case: France serves only to delay and jeopardise Bilal’s successful migration. Indeed, Welcome (geographically and symbolically) remaps the typical migration patterns represented in French films, decentring France, and resituating it within the context of a broader, transnational setting.

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144  Decentring France When considering this geographical and symbolic mapping, we must also consider the city in which Welcome is set. Calais is a geographical and symbolic halfway point between the French and UK capitals. Yet while London leaves its mark on the film in a number of ways, Paris is absent. Instead, the film is literally situated at an exit point from the country. Indeed, Calais is representative of the role of France itself in the film: a pit stop, a transcultural space, a place of passage rather than a destination. Calais is shown to be what philosopher Marc Augé (1992) calls a non-lieu, or ‘non-place’, an in-between space devoid of stability. Augé sees the non-place, and relationships built within the non-place, as formed and reformed by language, a supposition which proves true time and time again in Welcome. The very nature of Calais as a place of transit and impermanence mirrors the trajectory of the immigrants trapped there, and of the role of the French language and nation in Bilal’s journey. However, in order to understand how progressive and different Welcome’s portrayal of the migrant journey truly is, it is necessary to look back through the shifting representations of the migrant trajectory across French cinema. In the vast majority of French films which explore the theme of immigration, France is oriented as centre, reinforced in the mapping of Paris in relation to its outer suburbs, and the ontological centre of the civilised world. Even when characters undertake pilgrimages or cultural voyages, such as in Tony Gatlif’s 2004 Exils, they frequently begin their journey from Paris, and usually return to it. No matter how negatively France may be depicted in any of these films, and no matter how disillusioned the migrant characters may become about their host country, it is significant that France and especially Paris are still mapped as centre. This mapping reinforces Alec Hargreaves and Leslie Kealhofer’s claim that such traditional films about immigration underline how the ‘protagonists are rooted in the dominant language and cultural norms of France’ (2010: 75–6), no matter their struggles with French daily life and integration. By contrast, Welcome’s mapping of the migrant journey and the place of France in it provides a less Eurocentric view of France’s place in the contemporary, postcolonial, globalised world. Perhaps the clearest example of traditional representations of French immigration can be observed in the beur and banlieue cinema of the 1980s and 1990s. In films like Malik Chibane’s Hexagone (1994) and Douce France (1995), Abdelkrim Bahloul’s Le Thé à la menthe (1984) and Jean-François Richet’s Ma 6-T va crack-er (1997), France is painted as centre. These films’ narrative arcs invariably follow migrants seeking to settle into metropolitan French, usually Parisian, life. This centring of the French capital serves to marginalise

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Coastal borders: Welcome; La Graine et le mulet 145 the films’ characters, who inevitably find themselves confined to the urban periphery. As Helen Kelly-Holmes and Sari Pietikainen argue, ‘the centre is typically defined in terms of its advancement, metropolitanism, and political, economic, and trade power, while the periphery is characterized as marginal, the opposite of the centre, the boundary or outer part of it’ (2013: 3). Upon arrival, the migrants in these films, and their second-generation children, almost always face this harsh and disillusioning reality. Yet the first-generation characters have still fought to move to France because of the promise it holds for them; they do not settle there by chance, by force or as a last resort. France is the object of their efforts and their struggles to establish a new life. A prominent example of a North African protagonist’s desire for or even idolisation of France is Abdellatif Kechiche’s 2001 La Faute à Voltaire, which revolves around the protagonist Jallel’s desire to settle himself in Paris. Jallel’s devotion to France can be observed throughout the film. In the opening scene, he lies about his origin (he is Tunisian but says he is Algerian) in order to play on French guilt and increase his chances of being accepted across the border. He pushes a half-French female friend into marrying him for citizenship, and is thrown into a deep depression when the arrangement falls through. Throughout the film, despite his Tunisian origins and his lowly social status in France, Jallel surrounds himself with what he considers to be hallmarks of French culture like literature, music and art, even attempting to make a livelihood reciting Ronsard poems in the metro as he sells roses. He cultivates a relationship with a French woman. And the film’s ultimate tragedy is Jallel’s capture by French immigration police, which symbolically takes place on the steps of the ‘Nation’ metro station, signalling his inevitable expulsion from the French nation. In La Faute à Voltaire, Jallel acts out a veritable, if unrequited, love affair with France. Perhaps more subtly, films like Yamina Benguigui’s Inch’Allah dimanche, Michael Haneke’s Code inconnu: récit incomplet de divers voyages and Wesh-wesh, qu’est-ce qui se passe? (all of 2001) are likewise filled with characters in transit, originating from North African or Eastern European countries and having endured all manner of physical, social and cultural upheavals in order to build a life in what is invariably presented to them as a land of opportunity. In CostaGavras’s 2008 Eden à l’ouest, the protagonist Elias risks his life on multiple occasions to reach France which, as the title suggests, he sees as a kind of heaven on earth. In all these films, the ideal of France is unravelled upon the characters’ arrival on French soil. Nonetheless, France is almost always presented as these characters’ focus and the ultimate destination in which they wish to settle and prosper.

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146  Decentring France Subsequently, the French language’s place in this mapping of the migrant trajectory is an important one. In these films, knowledge of French is essential and the migrant’s French-language learning is a rite of passage, a process of initiation on the path to successful cultural integration. Such films also show the other side of this coin: the inevitable isolation and disadvantage of not learning French. This is a common fate for what Maryse Fauvel calls ‘an entire generation without a voice’ (2004: 151); first-generation women immigrants, who are so often confined to the domestic sphere and cut off from outside French civilisation. Many films concerned with immigration figure their first-generation, especially female, characters within disadvantaging hierarchies of power. The differences between first-generation parents, marginalised and disempowered in French society, and their comparatively integrated children, are often crystallised in the latter’s superior knowledge of French, and related conflicts are brought to a head through these children’s rejection of their parents’ native language in favour of that of their birth country. As Carrie Tarr explains, in films such as Le Thé au harem d’Archimède, ‘language is a source of conflict and misunderstanding which disadvantages the beurs’ (2005: 56), placing French in the position of a superior language. This picture of language relations is supported by the way in which banlieue films constantly locate themselves in a metaphoric and geopolitical exterior. The narrative and cinematographic make-up of many such films configures the relationship between the banlieue periphery and the metropolitan nucleus as an evocation of inner and outer, belonging and not belonging, French and other. KellyHolmes and Pietikainen write that the ‘centre–periphery is a common spatial metaphor used to describe and explain the unequal distribution of power in the economy, society, and polity’ (2013: 3),1 and this metaphor frequently arises in the mise en scènes of banlieue films. The dividing line of the périphérique, once a wall and now a highway, is symbolic as a physical and cultural barrier between the city and the banlieue, positioning the inhabitants of the urban fringes as unintegrated, not belonging; literally and figuratively excluded. Early examples of banlieue cinema construct this binary not only through focusing on the banlieue as an exilic space in contrast to nuclear Paris, but in representing its characters’ awareness of this space. Traditional banlieue films do not locate themselves solely on the city outskirts, but they show their banlieue-inhabiting protagonists travelling into the city centre, where their outsider status is literally, and often violently, confirmed. Perhaps the most prominent example of this othering is in La Haine. The film’s protagonists represent different archetypes of banlieue-dwelling multicultural young men;

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Coastal borders: Welcome; La Graine et le mulet 147 though all born in France, Hubert is of sub-Saharan African descent, Saïd of Maghrebin parents and Vinz of Jewish background. This multicultural trio incarnates the black blanc beur motif (Higbee 2001: 200), a term for multicultural France which plays with the French flag’s colours of bleu blanc rouge. In increasingly frequent circulation, the term reappears in a similar form in the 2006 film title Beur blanc rouge (Mahmoud Zemmouri). In La Haine, Hubert, Saïd and Vinz travel by RER commuter train into the city, where they find themselves alienated by their bourgeois surrounds. These include a seventh-arrondissement apartment in which they seek out their white drug dealer, Astérix, and a pretentious gallery event from which they are ultimately expelled. While the protagonists can access the city freely, they are treated as though they do not belong. The men can walk the city streets, but cannot safely enter its interior spaces. This confirms their othering to an even greater extent than their exile in the far reaches of the cités. Then, in missing the last RER back to the banlieue, they are effectively trapped in the city overnight. In a reversal of the inner–outer binary, they can enter the city, but cannot leave (and cannot rest, confined to the hostile Paris streets). In this film and many others, the metro is frequently used as a symbol for heightening the geographic and sociocultural division between the outside realm of the banlieue and the inside realm of the urban nucleus. Yet despite the hostility of the city centre, Paris remains an impossible ideal, epitomised in the image of the three men looking out over the cityscape at the silhouette of the Eiffel Tower, as well as the billboard posted along the train line leading into the city promising ‘le monde est à vous’ (‘the world is yours’), vandalised to read ‘le monde est à nous’ (‘the world is ours’), in yet another differentiating motif. This mapping is equally visible in Le Thé au harem d’Archimède, where the exclusionary symbolism of the metro is also reinforced. In this film, the two protagonists also travel by train from the cité into central Paris, where they engage in delinquent behaviour. One of the film’s most revealing moments is when the white character, Pat, steals a passenger’s wallet from his back pocket, and the passenger and fellow train-goers target the beur character, Madjid, as the evident thief, in a display of overt racial prejudice. The boys anticipate this reaction and turn it to their advantage by having Pat, rather than Madjid, carry the stolen object. Yet despite this manipulation, Le Thé au harem d’Archimède, like La Haine and Code inconnu: récit incomplet de divers voyages, which also features a disturbing conflict on a train, show the extent to which the hostile environment of the Paris metro serves to crystallise and exacerbate racial tensions.

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148  Decentring France Moving into the twenty-first century, this inclusion–exclusion mapping began to be challenged, with films such as Karin Albou’s 2005 La Petite Jérusalem and Ismaël Ferroukhi’s 2004 Le GrandVoyage. While La Petite Jérusalem’s protagonist Fanny dreams of moving into a studio apartment in central Paris, studying French philosophy and thus embracing mainstream French culture, her family dreams of the opposite. As she plans to relocate to the French capital centre, her Tunisian-born, Jewish family plans to move to Israel. For this migrant family, who have spent decades living on the French urban periphery, the ultimate relocation is not into the French cultural centre, but beyond French – and even European – borders entirely. Instead, the family gravitates towards a different centre; that of the Jewish faith. Such a configuration reveals the immense diversity of forces that weight and pull upon banlieue inhabitants. Those who live in the HLMs of outer Paris do not only cast their gaze to the urban nucleus, but are drawn to a multitude of different poles, driven by a multitude of different cultural, religious, economic and personal motivations. The trajectories of La Petite Jérusalem’s Jewish, Muslim, Christian and agnostic characters are not uniform, but shifting, conflicting and multivalent. Similarly, in Le Grand Voyage, the narrative focus is the act of moving away from France, as the secondgeneration Tunisian protagonist, Reda, drives his father from their French home on a pilgrimage to Mecca. The young Reda will inevitably return to France, but it is his journey away from his country of birth with which Le Grand Voyage is concerned. Paris also does not play any role in the film; the French metropolis shown is Lyons. The film also chooses not to show the French banlieue as problematic; indeed, while Reda’s family are working class, they live in a comfortable suburban home. In Le Grand Voyage, the characters travel a great distance, desperate to arrive at a destination instilled with promise. But this destination is not France, and certainly not Paris. France is still home, a familiar place to return to, but the film casts its gaze to the Middle East. Like Welcome’s Bilal, Le Grand Voyage’s protagonist Reda’s father risks (and ultimately loses) his life in a quest to reach a particular place. France is an important part of these characters’ journeys, but not their desired destination. This is a distinct update of French cinema’s representation of the migrant journey. However, no discussion of the evolution of the migrant trajectory in French film, and its link with language and power, would be complete without acknowledging the progress achieved by Kechiche’s earlier film L’Esquive, which directly precedes La Graine et le mulet in his oeuvre. Like Le Thé au harem d’Archimède and Ma 6-T va crack-

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Coastal borders: Welcome; La Graine et le mulet 149 er, L’Esquive is a film which has found itself categorised as a banlieue film, and for obvious reasons: it is situated in the notorious northern cité of Seine-Saint-Denis, where its adolescent protagonists all live with their families in subsidised housing. The film deals with several issues characteristic of banlieue narratives, such as police aggression, sexism and confrontation with authority figures, and the dialogue is marked by youth slang, mostly the use of the reversed-French code verlan, or the Arabic-infused strain of colloquial French known as tchatche. However, L’Esquive differentiates itself from more traditional con­­­ structions of the banlieue–city centre binary in fundamental ways. For one, the characters never actually leave the confines of the cité, and, while the space is indeed a small one, many of the scenes are shot in spacious surrounds, often in open environments like amphitheatres rather than oppressive settings like underpasses. This avoids evoking the typical atmosphere of claustrophobia which so characterises the mise en scène of archetypal banlieue films. Likewise, there is no talk of the Paris city centre, or indeed of any geographical reality beyond the banlieue; despite being only a few kilometres from Paris, the banlieue, not the city, becomes centre. This sets the mise en scène of L’Esquive up for a radical update, whereby the stark division between centre and periphery, traced by films like La Haine, begins to fade into the background. There is still some travelling done in L’Esquive. But it is the playwright Marivaux, not the young characters, who travels between the banlieue and the city. A traditional and culturally validated motif of Frenchness and a symbol of French cultural hegemony, the eighteenth-century writer Pierre de Marivaux is a sign of the mainstream French symbolic past, of a time before the banlieue and the cultural melting pot of contemporary France, in a language far removed from the arena of verlan, of tchatche and even of standard French. Marivaux’s 1730 play Le jeu de l’amour et du hasard permeates the film, as the characters prepare a performance of the play at their school. Not only do the characters embrace this symbol of Frenchness, they do so on their own turf. Therefore, while Marivaux is a key element of the film (and the play a mise en abyme of the film’s narrative) Paris is not. The way in which L’Esquive thus understands and presents urban and suburban space reflects Alison Murray Levine’s claim that French cinema is seeing a shift ‘toward the portrayal of borders as permeable boundaries and of formerly excluded spaces such as the banlieues as sites of dynamic cultural exchange’ (2008: 43). While there is not strictly any multilingual dialogue in L’Esquive, it could be argued that several ‘languages’ coexist within it: the elevated

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150  Decentring France and antiquated French of the Marivaux play, the standard French of classroom discussion and the street French, laced with verlan and Arabic-infused tchatche and sometimes unintelligible to the film’s audience, spoken among the teen protagonists. Verlan and similar slang registers are present in many films, such as La Haine and Entre les murs, yet while such films acknowledge the widespread use and significance of these codes, they also focus on their inferiority in the mainstream sphere. For example, in Entre les murs, the teacher Monsieur Marin forbids the use of verlan in the classroom, saying he will only communicate with people speaking ‘French’, denying verlan’s place in any part of the French language at all. Yet street language is not imbued with the same connotations of linguistic hierarchy in L’Esquive; there is no moment when a mainstream French character criticises, forbids or belittles such language use. James Williams sees the film as ‘revaloriz[ing] the popular language of the banlieue, offering it up as a bearer of universal meanings rather than as the impenetrable language of a marginalized minority’ (2011: 408). Indeed, each register of language used in L’Esquive is treated, by the film and its characters, as equally relevant and valid in its own cultural sphere. Vinay Swamy suggests that L’Esquive ‘sets itself apart in the way it reframes the relationship between high and popular culture through its explicit and very conscious use of language’ (2007: 58), a relationship absent from films like La Haine, in which slang only serves to disconnect the banlieue-dwelling characters from mainstream society. In fact, while language and power are crucial themes in L’Esquive, linguistic power lies not only in the mastery of a ‘superior’ language like Marivaux’s French, or even ‘correct’ standard French, but in the ability to manoeuvre between the film’s numerous cultural environments and their respective languages. For example, the main character Abdelkrim, or ‘Krimo’, is incompetent at acquiring any new forms of expression or at moving between the numerous language versions involved in the film (Esposito 2011: 226). Though he bribes his way into the play in order to be close to the lead actress, Lydia, he fails at his mission due to his inability to infuse Marivaux’s archaic language with life. While he recites his lines accurately, he does not understand their emotional nuance and cannot deliver the words with any passion or authenticity. Likewise, when his teacher loses control in the face of his inability to act, asking him whether or not he believes his performance is acceptable, he cannot harness sufficient standard French to defend himself. He only appears comfortable in the familiar, informal language he uses with his friends. On the other hand, Lydia herself is something of an arch linguist in her ability to master the different registers involved, moving effort-

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Coastal borders: Welcome; La Graine et le mulet 151 lessly between each and employing them in the appropriate circumstances. Strand captures the importance of this linguistic mastery to L’Esquive’s narrative heart when she writes: [Lydia embodies] the fluid passage among linguistic registers so effectively carried out by at least some of the young people in L’Esquive … the cast of unlikely characters glides smoothly from the rarefied linguistic expression of eighteenth-century high culture to their graphically gritty slang, thus calling into question the historically sacrosanct place accorded to the French language in the construction of national identity. (2009: 264–5)

Not only does Lydia find the language of Marivaux natural to slip into and perform, but she is also capable of switching into casual language to communicate with those around her, as well as standard French to win over her teacher. Lydia drops her use of sophisticated or classroom French in favour of colloquial language when defending Krimo, putting her rival Magalie in her place, arguing her point with her friend Frida, maintaining her position as Queen Bee among her girlfriends and even convincing the cité’s local tailor, a Chinese man who speaks only basic French, to give her an unwarranted discount on her costume. In a similar way, Krimo’s friend Fathi also displays a mastery of language in his ability to shift between polite standard French and street slang. While he is the film’s most threatening and indeed criminal character, when he wishes to impress adults (such as in his scenes with Krimo’s mother), he slides into a polite and grammatically accurate version of standard French. Lydia is in fact a white French girl, so it is significant that she employs Arabic-infused phrases such as ‘Inch’Allah’, even more frequently than her friends of Muslim ethnic origin do, to confirm her belonging to the diverse banlieue community. Through her linguistic juggling, Lydia has her parents, friends, suitors, teachers and fellow actors under her sway, while Krimo fails in all the ways she succeeds. This is made even clearer in one of the last images of the film, in which we see Lydia performing onstage, her voice the centre of attention, while Krimo is exiled, on the other side of the theatre window, silently (and deafly) watching the performance play out in the distance. In Lydia and Krimo’s relationship we can clearly see an inner–outer binary, and it cannot be ignored that Lydia is a French character performing in Marivaux French and Krimo a second-generation North African immigrant unable to express himself in the required language. Yet it is also significant that all this plays out in the surrounds of the banlieue. Paris indeed makes its mark on the film in the play that forms its narrative focal point, yet Paris has travelled to the banlieue in order to

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152  Decentring France be included; at no point do its inhabitants travel to Paris in order to be excluded. L’Esquive thus takes an important step in the direction of ­reorienting the immigrant experience and the significance of France, and especially Paris, as centre. The power dynamic of language and space, and the revision of what it means to be and speak French, is therefore crucial to L’Esquive, as it is to Welcome and La Graine et le mulet. However, in an even more radical figuring of spatial metaphors, Welcome and La Graine et le mulet supplant this dynamic from a relatively centralised French location to a highly peripheral one, placing the role of France and its language under even further scrutiny, in the context of globalised contemporary Europe. To be sure, there are immense power imbalances which exist between Welcome and La Graine et le mulet’s characters. On first observation, these imbalances appear to be drawn along cultural lines; the films’ French characters occupy superior socio-economic positions compared to their migrant characters. The banking scene between Slimane and his white French banker is a key example of this. Yet as the narratives unfold, we come to see that such asymmetries are more precisely delineated according to freedom or restriction of movement, and access to resources. For example, although economic means are still largely distributed among white characters, Welcome’s true division is ultimately between those who can cross borders freely and those for whom such passage is restricted. On the one hand, there are Mina and her family, who have been awarded immigration visas to the UK, and Simon, who immediately flies to London to inform Mina when Bilal drowns. On the other hand, there are Bilal and his fellow illegal immigrants, whose inability to obtain legal passage across the Channel leads to physical, emotional and financial suffering, and causes several of them, not least Bilal, to lose their lives. And, in La Graine et le mulet, ability to welcome others and thrive in society is restricted to those who can harness the resources (usually financial) to place themselves in a position to give. The act of assuming this position, as Rym shows us, is not necessarily determined by cultural background, but by cultural competence. Like many other characters, for Rym this is often incarnated in strategic multiple language use. Just as the division between cultural and socio-economic groups is murkier than it first appears in Welcome, so too is the interaction between languages, as power is dispersed across the competing forces of the French, English and Kurdish languages in the film. Of course, the French language holds a dominant place in the film. French is the official language of the film’s setting and the language in which all legal and criminal proceedings are conducted (including Bilal’s court

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Coastal borders: Welcome; La Graine et le mulet 153 hearing following his failed stowaway attempt and Simon’s interrogation by the police). French is spoken between two of the film’s main characters, Simon and Marion, and by Simon with his colleagues and neighbours. On frequent occasions, Simon pushes Bilal to speak in French and voices his frustration when the latter is unable to yet do so. It could therefore be said that French functions as the base language in Welcome, the most common and widely used tongue in the film’s Calais setting. In similar ways, there are various situations in which characters are disadvantaged and dominated by their inability to access French language in La Graine et le mulet. Having failed to attain a sophisticated level of French during his many decades in France, Slimane is unable to harness the language necessary to argue his case convincingly at the bank. Troubling intercultural dynamics, reminiscent of colonial imbalances, also come to the fore at the end of the film. When the couscous is lost at the opening night, the adolescent Rym prevents the impatient French guests from leaving by performing an extended, sexualised belly-dance sequence. Some scholars, like Jim Morrissey, have analysed Rym’s performance as an act of agency (2013: 313). Most, however, see Rym’s explicit belly dance for white customers as an exoticisation of North African culture and a disturbing gender imbalance: for Vincendeau, the scene ‘degenerates into crude worship of female fecundity’ (2008: 47) and for Higbee, the dance ‘undercuts’ (2010: 227) the arc of an otherwise autonomous and empowered female Franco-Maghrebin character. However, I interpret Rym’s ability to harness cultural practise to control the difficult situation as an extension of her earlier success at harnessing language for the same means. Rym’s dance is certainly sexualised, and her young age – combined with the fact that she is surrounded by older men and being watched by a mostly white French audience – has rightly courted judgement. For Rym, however, knowledge is power, and she draws upon her knowledge of belly dance in the final act in much the same way as she draws upon her knowledge of polite French in the banking scene, in order to salvage an otherwise dire situation. Much like language, dance becomes a resource that can be used. Thus, despite its importance, French is not the only important language in Welcome or La Graine et le mulet, nor is it helpful to consider the role of French language or culture in solely Eurocentric terms. The social, cultural, ethnic and political stakes impacting the use of languages in Welcome and La Graine et le mulet vary widely. Each language is essential in certain situations, and irrelevant in others. Western languages are not invariably empowering, and Middle Eastern or North African languages are not invariably

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154  Decentring France disenfranchising – though they can be. Instead, these coastal border films, which are both located in France but set their sights beyond Hexagonal borders, comprise a multitude of different and competing fields of social power, embodied in language use. The films depict a complex web of multicultural relationships and situations, in which each language has its respective power, role and worth – and its limits.

Conclusion In their portrayal of peripheral, transnational and multilingual space, Welcome and La Graine et le mulet simultaneously label themselves ‘French’ films, while decentring France throughout their narratives. Leaving the stereotypical location of Paris and its surrounds behind, these films perch their stories on an exit point from France; the Calais tunnel to the UK and the Sète port city, serving North Africa, Italy, Greece and other areas in the Mediterranean. In these settings, in which globalisation operates on a cultural and economic level and multiple languages circulate constantly, Welcome and La Graine et le mulet decentre the nuclear space of France/Paris from their focus. La Graine et le mulet’s protagonist pursues economic prosperity in a French environment, but not on French shores: his restaurant is located on the water, his food comes from the sea and the dish he serves originates from North Africa. In an even more radical remapping, Welcome revises the entire migrant trajectory, positing London, not Paris, as the migrant’s desired destination. Welcome in particular places questions of identity negotiation and the imbalanced stakes of border-crossing at its core. France is no longer ground zero in the migrant’s journey, but a pit stop and a hindrance along the way. Welcome belongs to a collection of films which consistently depict, to borrow Tarr’s words, ‘bodily bordercrossings [which in turn] expose the asymmetrical power relations between hosts and migrants, Western Europe and its others’. Yet France’s place in this relationship ‘between host and migrants, Western Europe and its others’ is far from the monopolistic one of twentieth-century immigration films (2007d: 7). In parallel ways, La Graine et le mulet’s characters may live in France (indeed, many were born in France and most identify in some way as ‘French’) yet their everyday experience is a fundamentally multicultural one, in which French, Tunisian Arabic, Russian, Italian and other languages and cultures hold an important place. In Welcome and La Graine et le mulet, France is but one nation among many participating in the complex, polycentric flow of peoples taking place in the contemporary world, across Europe and from Tunisia, Iraq and beyond.

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Coastal borders: Welcome; La Graine et le mulet 155 In Welcome and La Graine et le mulet the idea of France as contained, autonomous nation is eroded. As Will Higbee points out, in its border-crossing narrative, ‘Welcome exposes the illusion of Fortress Europe’s impenetrable borders’ (2014: 34). The concept of home as both private space and as public nation is central to the film, as is that of the relationship between local and outsider, neighbour and stranger. In much the same way, La Graine et le mulet’s configuration of hospitality–hostility as running parallel to multilingualism– monolingualism also problematises the place of language in public and private French spaces. In these films’ shifting and disintegrating environments, the multiple languages which dominate the dialogue are symbolic in questioning the neatly defined Frenchness of their coastal border locations, positing them in a transnational, political and multilingual space. Consequently, in the postcolonial, globalised, contemporary world, the status of the French language, both as language of the host country and prerequisite of the immigrant, is decentred and undermined. In these films, in contrast to earlier filmic depictions of French immigration, flows of people and ideas do not pass through the Parisian centre, metropolitan France does not function as the sole nucleus for culture and immigration, and the French language is not the only lingua franca of worth on French soil. Welcome and La Graine et le mulet take place on the margins of French territory. This decentring of France in Bilal’s migrant trajectory and Slimane and Rym’s cultural and economic journey also serves to decentre the French language. French is certainly an important language in Welcome and La Graine et le mulet. However, English, rather than French, is the key language at play in many of the important scenes between citizen and migrant in Welcome, and Arabic, Russian and other languages are also of central concern in many of La Graine et le mulet’s characters’ lives. The scope of the films thus extends beyond the centrality of France and resituates them in a cosmopolitan and transnational world in which the influence of foreign nations defines the Calais and Sète populations, contributes to local economies and geographically surrounds the cities themselves. Indeed, the world within and beyond France permeates the very fabric of the films: multicultural characters, multilingual dialogue, talk of returning to Tunisia, engagement with global events like the Olympics and a plethora of physical movements (of boats, cars, mopeds, trains and, most importantly, bodies, be they walking or swimming). While Welcome condemns French and British immigration laws, the film does not seek to criticise the concept of European sovereignty or of individual nationhood. While La Graine et le mulet acknowledges the history of colonial relations, it does not

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156  Decentring France draw a distinct line between French and non-French people. Rather, the films situate themselves within a fundamentally multicultural world in which ‘communities, societies, nations, and even entire continents exist not autonomously but rather in a densely woven web of relationality’ (Stam 1997: 195). In this web, the possibilities for exerting social control through language use are many.

Note 1 Emphasis in original quote.

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7 International spaces: London River and Des hommes et des dieux The link between a nation-state and one national language suggests that each country creates borders around a language that resemble territorial borders. When fiction represents European conversations, it troubles this implicit definition of languages. (Rosello 2012a: 223)

In the cinemas of France and other countries alike, the knot that ties language and nation together is being loosened. In this final analysis chapter, we cross two bodies of water that touch French shores: the English Channel for Rachid Bouchareb’s London River, and the Mediterranean Sea for Xavier Beauvois’s Des hommes et des dieux. London River is set almost completely in London, yet the role of French in the film is crucial and complex. Meanwhile, Des hommes et des dieux weaves French and Arabic together in a rural Algerian village. Each of these films teases out the links and disconnects between language and nation in innovative ways. In London River, the French language is important, but is used neither as a mother tongue, nor as representative of the French culture and nation. Instead, French is a globalised and mutually secondary lingua franca. In considering London River’s portrayal of language as disconnected from nation(ality), I coin the expression ‘unanchored language’. The unanchored language is one which functions separately from its country of origin, and is thus removed from, or runs parallel to, the purview of traditional language politics. It reflects Sudesh Mishra’s concept of ‘situational laterality’ (2006: 100), described by Maty Ba Saer and Will Higbee as: An attempt to move away from an exclusive focus on the host–home binary in order to better understand the more complex and uneven rhizomorphic structure within which individual and collective diasporic identities, histories and cultures are formed and continue to evolve. (2010: 4)

The unanchored language is polycentric; it can serve a range of purposes in a multitude of geocultural spheres and is freed from historically hierarchical power dynamics. London River reveals

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158  Decentring France the capacity for the French language to serve as a diplomatic and polycentric language for the film’s protagonists, which Alison Smith calls a ‘threshold language’ (2012: 75). Thus, the unanchored langu­­ age is not only mutually convenient, it is diplomatic. Like Allison Phipps’s concept of linguistic ‘unmooring’, the unanchored language is characterised by detachment, removal, movement (2013). Yet the unanchored language is one that is removed from nationalised settings and connotations. Though it is also set entirely beyond French borders in a neighbouring country, Des hommes et des dieux’s international location differs from London River’s in fundamental ways. Where Bouchareb’s film is set in central, multicultural London, Beauvois’s film is set in a remote, rural Algerian monastery. Where the majority of London River’s characters speak French as a non-native second language, both the French monks and Algerian characters who inhabit the village near the monastery in Des hommes et des dieux speak French as a first language (the multilingual latter having learned combinations of Arabic and Berber languages alongside French from a young age). However, despite these ostensible differences, London River and Des hommes et des dieux share many fundamental similarities. They are both set beyond France. Their characters neither travel to France, nor seek to go there (though they may be of French origin (the monks in Des hommes et des dieux) or have lived there for years (Ousmane in London River)). Both films are set in recent history (Des hommes et des dieux in 1996 and London River in 2005) and relate events surrounding terrorist attacks between Western European and Middle Eastern or North African countries. Both films are situated in tense language contact zones, yet they use multilingualism in French, Arabic and English not as a tool for dividing groups, but for transcending such divisions. Both films tell tragic stories of innocent people killed in acts of terrorism, yet the focus of each film is far less on the attacks or the terrorists’ ideologies, and far more on the crosscultural relationships built between victims and broader members of the multicultural communities in question as the attacks’ repercussions create waves through local communities. Both Des hommes et des dieux and London River feature different linguistic and ethnic groups which initially appear unable to unite, yet the characters of both films ultimately forge a cross-cultural and multilingual union cemented by friendly and diplomatic multiple language use. French is an important language in both films, and indeed the language of the majority of the dialogue. However, it is frequently spoken by characters of non-French background, it is never used by any French characters to exclude or ‘other’ non-French characters, it is almost always spoken

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International spaces: London River; Des hommes et des dieux 159 as one of multiple known languages and it is constantly used as a common ground, a lingua franca and even an olive branch, in order to unite figures of disparate backgrounds. Even when used between characters of French origin, such as by the monks in Des hommes et des dieux, the French language is not used to evoke nationality, and the French nation is only referenced either as a non-native place to visit, or a place which no longer feels like home. Multilingualism is valuable in both London River and Des hommes et des dieux, and knowledge of French is an essential skill that allows a range of characters to advance their positions, forge powerful ties across groups and exert agency and influence. However, in differing ways, in both films French functions in a new way rarely seen before in cinema, and becomes an unanchored language in Des hommes et des dieux and London River’s British and Algerian settings alike. It is frequently used by characters in ways that distance the language from the politics of French nation(ality), a distancing which only serves to render its potential social power more far-reaching in each inter­national scenario. The result is a picture of language relations in which French takes on a new, globalised significance that extends beyond the national. Through this unanchored language, both French and non-French characters can access and use the French language as a valuable resource, as a means of defusing or transcending tense scenarios of international violence and cross-cultural conflict, rather than exacerbating them. Drawing on discourses of globalisation, this chapter shows how the French language can operate in such films as a lingua franca, used in international spaces ranging from a world city to a rural monastery, by native speakers of such disparate languages as Arabic, English and Mandinka. Used in such an international space by French or non-French characters who identify more closely with other nations than with France, London River and Des hommes et des dieux represent the French language as a useful linguistic code, but one mostly detached from the complexities of nation(ality). In these films, French does not carry the kind of loaded cultural, political or identitary connotations it has historically carried in French cinema. In London River, it is presented as a mutually familiar yet foreign system of communication, which permits the film’s two radically unalike protagonists to meet on a balanced linguistic terrain. In Des hommes et des dieux, it is employed alongside Arabic in a former French colony by individuals who have chosen Algeria over France as their home. Consequently, in the internationally set films London River and Des hommes et des dieux, in different yet complementary ways, French evolves from the status of a nationalised, colonial or exclusionary

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160  Decentring France language to a comparatively defused, unanchored one, which coexists with many other languages of the globalised world.

French film beyond French soil Released in between his higher-profile multilingual films Indigènes (2006) and Hors la loi (2010), London River (2009) is the fifth feature film from Franco-Algerian director Rachid Bouchareb. Composed of dialogue in Arabic, English, French and Mandinka, the protagonist’s native Malian tongue, London River depicts its London setting as a transnational space fundamentally characterised by globalisation and multilingualism. Filmed in outdoor and non-studio settings in a naturalistic style, the film tells the bittersweet story of two disparate characters. Elisabeth, a widowed farmer who leads a closed existence on her native island of Guernsey, is anglophone, Christian, middleclass and white. Ousmane, who is of Malian origin but has lived in France as a forester for more than fifteen years, is Muslim, working class and black African. This unlikely pair continually crosses paths in the multicultural London suburb of Finsbury Park, during the search for their respective children, missing in the wake of the 2005 London terrorist attacks. At the outset, Elisabeth treats Ousmane with distrust, despite the growing evidence that their children had been in a romantic relationship. However, as the film progresses, Elisabeth is forced to confront her own prejudices, as she unites with Ousmane in a shared search. As a result, the two experience a moving cultural exchange, which leads Elisabeth to note laughingly in French, ‘nos vies ne sont pas trop différentes’ (‘our lives are not so different’). London River is set almost entirely in London (excepting a few picturesque opening sequences in Guernsey and France to establish the day-to-day lives of the protagonists, before the film’s events tear them from their everyday routines) and thus includes a considerable amount of English dialogue. English is the film’s base language and the official language of its majority setting. And, yet, as Ousmane does not speak English and Elisabeth knows no Mandinka, the film’s dialogue is also, in almost equal measure, dominated by the main characters’ only mutual language: French. As a result, French plays a significant role in London River, and is spoken in almost one-third of the film; barely less than English. It is the only language shared by Elisabeth and Ousmane.Yet the country of France is barely mentioned in the film at all. In an innovative and unprecedented move in French cinema, the French language is thus used by almost all the film’s characters, but is not only mutually familiar, but mutually foreign, to them all. French as a language is central in London River, yet France as a (desti)nation

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International spaces: London River; Des hommes et des dieux 161 is not. As a result, French does not function as a national or historical power language, but as a lingua franca which allows two fundamentally different non-French characters to meet on common ground. In order to understand the novel nature of London River’s language dynamics, it is important to understand the prominence of the French language as a marker of French identity and nationality in many, if not most, preceding films. For, if multilingualism is central to multilingual cinema, so is the French language itself. In most cases of multilingual cinema, French remains the most frequently spoken language, usually as the mother tongue of at least one character, and is usually spoken on French soil. Often, while a multilingual film may include a diverse range of characters and settings, with multiple dynamic portrayals of foreign-language use, it will still retain a number of native-French characters and a predominantly French setting. In these and other ways, French continues to evoke the omnipresence of France as an important nation on the local and international stage, being spoken either on French soil and/or by French citizens who position the language as an integral part of their cultural identity. Even in multilingual films, the language–nation link is often evoked. For example, Cédric Klapisch’s 2002 L’Auberge Espagnole (and its sequels Les Poupées russes (2005) and Casse-tête chinois (2013)) implies a correlation between French language and French national identity. In L’Auberge Espagnole, the Paris-born, French-speaking protagonist Xavier takes up a room in a hectic, multicultural apartment during his Erasmus study year abroad in Barcelona. Within and beyond the confines of the apartment, Xavier and his Belgian, Danish, English, German, Italian and Spanish housemates are constantly posited, by the film and each other, not just as individuals, but as emblems of their nationalities. Critiquing this rudimentary system of identification, Mana Derakhshani and Jennifer Zachman view the melting pot of the apartment in L’Auberge Espagnole as ‘a metaphor that explores the divided and diverse identities of Europe, a Europe in the process of transforming itself into a more complicated entity that presupposes an examination of cultural and self-identity’ (2005: 126) and the housemates themselves as representative of the patchwork of identities which make up the EU. L’Auberge Espagnole’s language–nationality dichotomy is exemplified in the handwritten legend beside the apartment phone. In this chart, each member of the household is identified not only by their name, but by their national flag, paired with the words ‘[housemate’s name] isn’t here at the moment, s/he will be back this evening’ in their native language. According to this innocuous practical means for negotiating phone calls from other housemates’ families in unknown

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162  Decentring France languages, individual = nationality = language, and thus Xavier = the French flag = the French language, a powerful, if simplistic, equation. The way L’Auberge Espagnole and its similarly multilingual sequels conflate self with nationality, and nationality with language, is exaggerated for humour.Yet, such a conflation forges a strong link between the concepts of language and nation(ality). In stark contrast, London River is a rare film which eschews this conflation. In this film, the French language is important, but is used neither as a mother tongue, nor as representative of the French culture and nation. Instead, French is a globalised and mutually secondary lingua franca. London River’s portrayal of French separates it from concerns of nation(ality), reconfiguring it in terms of geocultural disconnectedness. I call this an ‘unanchored language’. The unanchored language is one which functions separately from its country of origin, and thus removed from, or parallel to, the purview of traditional language politics. The unanchored language is polycentric; it can serve a range of purposes in a multitude of geocultural spheres; it is freed from historically hierarchical power dynamics. Shohat and Stam write that ‘languages can serve to oppress and alienate but also to liberate’ (2006: 134), and London River reveals the capacity for the French language to serve as a diplomatic and polycentric language for the film’s protagonists. Thus, the unanchored language is not only mutually convenient, it is democratic. For a French film to be set outside France, and for French to never be spoken as a first language in the film, is a rare case, even in films with a strong emphasis on multilingualism at a narrative and dialogic level. Incontestably, languages other than French can wield considerable importance and authority and present a certain counterpoint to the hegemony of standard French. Yet, in almost all multilingual films, French is still spoken by some characters identifying at least in part as French. The result is a new role for a former colonial language to play in cross-cultural interactions between a Guernsian and a Malian, a role which leads to a meaningful multicultural relationship. Such a role recalls Stam once more, who writes of language and multiculturalism: Multiculturalism is actually an assault not on Europe (in the broad sense of Europe and its affiliates spread around the world) but on Eurocentrism – on the procrustean forcing of cultural heterogeneity into a single paradigmatic perspective in which Europe is seen as the unique source of meaning, as the world’s center of gravity, as ontological reality to the rest of the world’s shadow. (1999: 269)

Thus, the unanchored language may be used in a Western setting (London in London River) or even a former French colony (Algeria in

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International spaces: London River; Des hommes et des dieux 163 Des hommes et des dieux). Yet its use is almost always non-Eurocentric, and helps to facilitate new connections across cultures which defy the xenophobic and separatist tendencies that so often characterise social climates in the context of terrorist attacks.

International violence, multilingual encounters Elena Caoduro writes that ‘London River proposes a humble reflection on the consequences of terrorism, but through the shared suffering of its protagonists it gives hope for the future of multicultural communities’ (2011: 8). While the film is ostensibly about the widespread impact of the London bombings and the horror of terrorism, London River’s principal focus is in fact on the complexities of intercultural relationships, the dangers of personal prejudice and the boundary-breaking power of language. Upon first glance, the intersectional differences between Elisabeth and Ousmane in London River seem overwhelming: nationality, race, religion, socio-economic background, gender and mother tongue. Nonetheless, they also share a number of characteristics: profession (as farmer and forester, they each work the earth, appreciate nature and spend most of their days in solitude), aversion to city life, small traits such as a penchant for tea and, most importantly, their desperation to recover their missing children. Yet the most important common trait, the one which allows the protagonists to share their experience, is their mutual understanding of the French language, without which their relationship would be impossible. London River’s ostensible focus is the bombings of the London public transport system by jihadist terrorists that killed fifty-six people and injured almost ninety on 7 July 2005. However, even more so than the bombings or even the ill-fated story of Jane and Ali, the film’s central narrative focuses on the evolution of Ousmane and Elisabeth’s relationship. Consequently, more than depicting the direct effects of the bombings, London River is concerned with their indirect impact on the many grieving relatives of victims scattered across the world. French is the language of the film’s most emotive and plot-advancing scenes. French is also the only shared language between Ousmane and the North African imam of Ali’s mosque, whose assistance is essential to the investigation and thus the development of the plot. It is even spoken by a number of British officials and police officers who help Elisabeth and Ousmane in their search. The language is understood by Ousmane both as a result of his immigration to France and the history of French colonisation in Mali, and by Elisabeth due to the interlaced history, and geographical proximity, of Guernsey

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164  Decentring France and France.1 French is also spoken by a number of other secondary characters in the film, including the Finsbury Park butcher who is revealed to be Jane’s landlord, and the imam, played by the wellknown Franco-Maghrebin actors Roschdy Zem and Sami Bouajila respectively. In fact, there barely appears to be a single character in the film who does not speak French. However, despite the widespread presence of the French language in the film, none of London River’s characters are actually of French origin. None of the sequences of French dialogue take place between native speakers. Even the part-French actors Zem and Bouajila shed their French identities and incarnate the roles of North African migrants to the UK. None of the dialogue scenes are set in France. In fact, France is barely mentioned at all in the film, despite Ousmane living there, with the main exception being when Elisabeth and Ousmane discover that their children had planned a holiday there, a holiday that tragically never takes place. Indeed, the film reflects Mireille Rosello’s observation that ‘French is far more than the language of one of the European states: like English, it is present on a transnational stage that invites us to decouple the language from the (European) nation’ (2012a: 221). In London River, French functions as a mutually familiar but foreign code for the film’s characters, with only tentative links to France as a country. In quite a unique way, the French language is indispensable in London River, but France is not. This picture of a former colonial language functioning as a unifying code in contemporary society evokes scholarship on the role of language and sociolinguistics in a post-globalisation universe. In The Sociolinguistics of Globalization, Jan Blommaert sees ‘language as something intrinsically connected to the processes of globalization’ (2010: 2) and understands the evolution of linguistic practices in the context of the contemporary, globalised world to be bound up in power relations. Studying multilingual interaction in situations of heightened circulation of cultures and ideas, Blommaert contends that globalisation processes ‘convert linguistic and semiotic differences into social inequalities’ (5–6). Yet as London River and Des hommes et des dieux show, language and globalisation do not only deepen rifts between different groups, but can also, if paradoxically, offer new frameworks for transcending them. In the context of intensified interactions among cultures and across cultural lines, language difference can be both a wall and a bridge. In a remote area of the northern Algerian countryside, a small com­­­­­­munity of Trappist monks inhabit a secluded monastery, coexisting in harmony with the inhabitants of the modest village that has grown around the monastery. Many of the monks are of French

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International spaces: London River; Des hommes et des dieux 165 origin, though several are pieds-noirs (Algerian-born men of French ancestry), while the villagers are of Algerian birth and mostly Muslim faith. However, in contrast to the vast majority of films from both preand post-decolonisation periods which depict relationships between French and Algerian characters, the linguistic, ethnic and religious differences between the characters of Des hommes et des dieux are far from insurmountable. Mixtures of French and Arabic are spoken across the village and shared between the different groups. The monks read the Bible and engage in Christian prayer, yet they also read the Qur’an and attend Muslim ceremonies. The villages share Muslim and Arab cultural ceremonies with their neighbours, yet do not malign or question their Christian identities. The monks do not promote the French nation, engage in local or international politics or attempt to convert any villagers to Christianity. As a result, they avoid adopting dominating attitudes among the villagers that perpetuate colonial dynamics. In the film, language operates as a marker of cultural difference, but also a bridge between different groups and a means of establishing common ground. However, as the civil war of the 1990s bears down upon the region, the monks are forced to decide whether they should flee to France, a country that no longer feels like home (or indeed, never was), or remain in Algeria and risk assassination. A slow-paced, contemplative film, Des hommes et des dieux may be set during the Algerian civil war of the 1990s, yet the majority of the film follows the monks in peaceful prayer, gardening and caring for the needs of the locals, and could thus be set in any time, evoking an almost fairy-tale-like atmosphere. Winner of the Grand Prix and the Prix Œcuménique at Cannes in 2010, Des hommes et des dieux enjoyed a wide release across France, and is considered a key, gentle intervention into contemporary discourse on religion, culture, politics and language in the contemporary world. Upon first glance, London River and Des hommes et des dieux’s settings could not be more different. While London River’s surroundings are peppered with place names, tube signs, maps and other signs of identification that situate the film’s events in a specific and recognisable location, Des hommes et des dieux’s village and monastery setting are unnamed, unidentified, never described in relation to any nearby Algerian city or landmark. Where London River’s setting is dense, populated and situated in a well-known contemporary universe, Des hommes et des dieux’s setting is remote, removed from society, almost allegorical in its anonymity. Where London River is set in a country posited alternately as an ally and a rival superpower to France, Des hommes et des dieux is located in Algeria, a former

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166  Decentring France French colony and the site of a successful, but extremely bloody, war of decolonisation. Despite being set only nine years apart, London River’s London feels extremely recent, while Des hommes et des dieux’s Algerian countryside feels lost in time. Yet despite these fundamental differences in setting, these two films are not only similar in their multilingualism, but in their historical setting against a backdrop of real-life terrorism attacks. Against such a backdrop, language, culture and power operate in surprisingly similar ways, despite their disparate locations. Unsurprisingly, terrorism renders both London River and Des hommes et des dieux tragic and violent films. When encountering real or suspected enemies in both films, tensions between groups are brought to the fore, and various characters in each film display mistrust and fear of the ethnic and religious other. Yet despite these heightened tensions and fears, the ultimate focus in London River and Des hommes et des dieux is not on the differences between different groups, nor on xenophobia or hatred. Instead, the protagonists of both films use multilingualism as a means to establish common ground, bridge cultural and linguistic rifts and collaborate against violence in innovative ways. The violent backdrops of these films elevate them from local – or even national – tales to globalised ones. Though each film takes place in only one primary location, the impact of contemporary international politics and far-reaching transnational forces is evident throughout and has only become more poignant with time. This casts these settings as ‘glocal’ spaces (Ince 2005); locations defined by the conflicting pull of the local and the global. Yosefa Loshitzky writes that twenty-first-century European cinema often adopts a ‘post 9/11 discourse that criminalizes migration and links it to terrorism’ (2014: 193), casting multilingualism as a threatening element of films about terrorism. And, indeed, xenophobic representation of multilingualism in films about terrorism has appeared in some recent Hollywood and other blockbuster films, like Stephen Spielberg’s Munich (2005) and Katherine Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty (2011). Yet despite being set in contexts of contemporary terrorism, neither London River nor Des hommes et des dieux links language, migration and terrorism. In the films’ globalised settings, multilingualism enters as a marker of cultural difference, but also as a resolution for navigating such difference. Terrorist acts are neither connected to multilingual dialogue, nor committed by the films’ multilingual protagonists. London River and Des hommes et des dieux’s European and African characters could easily be represented as pure enemies and their differing languages used to crystallise this dynamic and intensify a Western audience’s fear of the language of the other.

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International spaces: London River; Des hommes et des dieux 167 Yet, instead, each film proposes a polycentric multilingual perspective on globalisation and cultural difference. This does not erase the tragedy of the films, which each see important characters (Jane and Ali in London River and all but two of the monks in Des hommes et des dieux) killed by terrorists. What is remarkable about the films, however, is their portrayal of the possibilities for solidarity, cooperation and meaningful connection with cultural others that multiple language use can offer in this escalated environment of violence. The following passages reveal how these films combat the divisionary dynamic of terrorism through the resource of language.

The unanchored language It would be simplistic in any filmic situation to consider a language as neutral, as a communicative system entirely severed from cultural, historical or sociopolitical connotations. However, French is second (or third) language to all the characters of London River, including those who are only ever seen in photographs but who are spoken of constantly; Elisabeth’s daughter Jane and Ousmane’s son, Ali. Considering this fact, the function of French in this film matches Alison Smith’s concept of the ‘threshold language’: ‘a space “on the doorstep” in which a tentative cultural meeting can be initiated on equal terms and without commitment to the dangerous crossing into that place where the other is at home’ (2012: 75–6). As a threshold language, French is not a code instilled with political and social stakes (as it is in Un prophète, Entre les murs or Polisse), but a code detached from historical hierarchies of power, permitting the protagonists to communicate on common linguistic ground. According to Smith, the choice or obligation to use French creates ‘an intermediate linguistic space that neither “owns” – a mutual second language’ (76), which provides Elisabeth and Ousmane with the possibility to unite in a shared cause. This casts the unanchored language as one whose use is characterised by movement and interstitiality, and thus by a detachment from its original geopolitical location and context. French as unanchored language in London River offers a stark a counterpoint to its anchoredness in films like Welcome, where it is a point of contention in Simon and Bilal’s relationship of hospitality. The use of the host’s language over the guest’s creates a dynamic inscribed in a system of power, of linguistic inequality, in which the foreign guest is placed in a position of disadvantage. This recalls the dominating influence of the French language over vulnerable, Frenchspeaking characters in films like Roschdy Zem’s Omar m’a tuer

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168  Decentring France (2011). Zem’s film tells the story of a monolingual Arabic-speaking immigrant, Omar, who works in southern France as a gardener for a wealthy French woman. Omar is framed for his employer’s murder and prosecuted despite no proof of guilt. Omar m’a tuer is a grim examination of racial prejudice and institutionalised injustice, in which French operates as a means to oppress and control Omar and to position him as foreign, othered and powerless. The film’s true story origin in particular rendered it a damning document. As Omar m’a tuer shows, the use of French as ‘host language’ on French soil in multilingual film can be both problematic and dangerous. In London River, however, the use of French does not play out along these lines at all. In her work on the concept of the ‘possession’ of a language, Smith sees languages as linguistic possessions belonging to those for whom the language is mother tongue (2012: 82). This Derridean concept aligns with the notion of the strong connection between language and nation(ality) that we see in Le Monolinguisme de l’autre (Derrida 1996). If we adopt this point of view, we see that in London River, even if French is spoken often and by almost all the characters, it belongs to no one. According to this line of thought, London River’s language dynamics, in which the language–nation(ality) dichotomy plays no part, in which the French language belongs to nobody and therefore operates as a lingua franca, French is indeed an unanchored language, detached from its country and culture of origin. London River thus presents a linguistic situation which uproots and releases the French language from its traditional role. In so doing, the film offers the possibility for French to fulfil a more fluid and egalitarian role in such complex multicultural relationships as that between Elisabeth and Ousmane.

Language use as social exclusion In Elisabeth’s early interactions with Ousmane, before the two characters establish a certain linguistic equality through the use of French as unanchored language, Elisabeth deploys her native language in a very different way. The use of various languages throughout London River varies from hospitable to hostile. But perhaps the most negative portrayal of multiple language use is Elisabeth’s use of English as a means of excluding and undermining Ousmane. Throughout the first third of the film, when Elisabeth believes Ousmane’s son to have been involved in Jane’s disappearance or even the bombings, Elisabeth uses English as a segregating mechanism. In Ousmane’s presence, she speaks in English with officials and other Londoners, despite all characters’ ability to speak French, so he cannot follow her to the

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International spaces: London River; Des hommes et des dieux 169 same places, learn information about her daughter or relay information to his son or others. Occasionally, Elisabeth even uses English to criticise Ousmane to police officers and other officials in his presence, without him being able to understand or defend himself. This English language use operates as a means of rejection and disenfranchisement. Elisabeth’s English use sits in stark contrast to Ousmane’s many attempts to make contact with her in French. It is true that Elisabeth’s use of English could be viewed as a direct consequence of her fear that Ali is responsible for Jane’s disappearance. Yet it is also undoubtedly the result of a deep-rooted, if unacknowledged, xenophobia. With its prohibitive and hostile nature, I call this manipulation of English language use as social exclusion. In this exclusionary scenario, the choice of one language over another belittles and disempowers a non-speaker of the language (in this case, Ousmane, who understands very little English). This restrictive speech not only gives a voice to the excluder, but denies the excluded their own voice. This reminds us of Un prophète, in which the prison’s dominant Corsican gang excludes Malik from the group by speaking Corsican, rather than French, in his presence. Similarly, in Rie Rasmussen’s Human Zoo (2009), the Serbo-Croatian antagonist Adria’s ex-boyfriend Srđjan allows Adria’s new American boyfriend Shawn to believe he is in mortal danger, teasing her on the phone in Serbo-Croatian, while pointing a gun at the uncomprehending anglophone. Srđjan has no intention of harming the monolingual Shawn, and his dialogue with Adria is only flirtatious chatter, but he deliberately exploits Shawn’s mono­­­lingualism as a weapon for menacing and excluding him, undermining Adria’s new relationship and asserting physical dominance over his rival. Of course, the use of an unshared language can be an innocuous or unavoidable practice. Occasionally one character must speak in one language, despite the other character’s inability to understand. This often occurs when no other practical solution is available to characters that share no mutual tongue and have no access to an interpreter or other means of mediation. But language use as social exclusion is different: it constitutes the marked decision by the excluder not to speak in the excluded’s known language(s), despite the ability to do so, in order to isolate them. Far from innocuous, this form of codeswitching exploits what Noah McLaughlin identifies as the ‘exclusionary possibilities’ of language (2008: 123–4); it is a strategic and calculated move by one figure to keep another in a place of ignorance and vulnerability. One particular scene in London River illustrates this move and its potential for harm.

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170  Decentring France In this scene, Elisabeth has contacted the police after Ousmane attempts to make contact with her. The scene begins with a police officer questioning Ousmane about his family background. In a tense moment, he asks Ousmane whether he is Muslim, and when Ousmane slowly responds in the affirmative, the officer unexpectedly admits that he is, too. It becomes clear that the officer does not suspect Ousmane of any foul play, but he understands that Elisabeth does. The officer then calls Elisabeth into the room. officer: [English] Come in, please. [Elisabeth enters nervously] officer: [E] Now, this gentleman doesn’t speak English so I’ll be translating. elisabeth: [French] You can speak in French, I understand. officer: [E] Good … [F] … good. Is this the man who contacted you? elisabeth: [F] Yes, that’s him. officer: [F] This man is the father of the boy in the photo with your daughter. Does your daughter live alone? elisabeth: [F] … yes, she lives alone. Why? [it occurs to Elisabeth that the officer may be suggesting that her daughter lives with Ousmane’s son. Offended and frightened, she switches to English] elisabeth: [E] What’s he been saying? officer: [F] No, that’s not it, Madame. elisabeth: [E, yelling] Where’s my daughter!?

The code-switching in this brief scene is revealing of Elisabeth’s attitude towards Ousmane. At the beginning of the scene, when the officer suggests he will need to translate for Ousmane as he does not speak English, Elisabeth insists that the conversation can take place in French. The reasons for Elisabeth’s choice to conduct the meeting in French are numerous: the lack of translation will make the process quicker and simpler, her French is strong enough for her to be sure she will not miss crucial information and there may even be a measure of pride motivating her insistence on not needing to be interpreted for. Certainly, at this hostile stage of their relationship, Elisabeth’s willingness to speak in French should not be viewed as a hospitable or welcoming gesture to Ousmane, as it later becomes in the film. Indeed, Elisabeth does not even enter the room enough to actually make eye contact with the seated Ousmane. Instead, she lingers as close to the doorway as possible, never addressing Ousmane directly, and only facing his back. Nonetheless, it is important for this analysis that Elisabeth confirms her openness to the French language, and her ability to speak it, at the outset.

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International spaces: London River; Des hommes et des dieux 171 Moments into the questioning, Elisabeth is affronted by the o ­ fficer’s implicit suggestion that her daughter may not have been living alone, but with Ousmane’s son. Elisabeth is a conservative Protestant who is affronted by the suggestion her daughter would be living out of wedlock. She therefore interprets this suggestion as implausible, and even threatening. She switches into English (knowing Ousmane cannot understand her) and pointing to his back (knowing he also cannot see her) demands ‘What’s he been saying?’ Her use of English in this case is not due to an inability to ask the question in French. Instead, she poses it in English so that Ousmane cannot defend himself. Of course, objectively, there is nothing remarkable about two anglophone characters speaking English in London. However, Elisabeth’s use of her native tongue in this case is restrictive and conspiratorial. Her acts recall Mireille Rosello’s condemnation of ‘inappropriate use of language as exclusionary violence’ (2012a: 230–1). Depending on the specific context, any language has the potential to be a language of social exclusion. English is not Elisabeth’s language of exclusion in London River for historical or sociopolitical reasons, but practical ones. It is both the official language of the country in which the film is set, and the only language Elisabeth and the officer speak which Ousmane does not. Ousmane could potentially use Mandinka against Elisabeth in the same way, if he so wished. The use of a language as social exclusion is therefore dependent on the languages spoken and understood by the characters concerned, in any given scene, and not on the prior sociopolitical power the language may be imbued with. For example, while in London River the language of social exclusion is the dominant Western language of English, in Un prophète there are two languages of social exclusion, Arabic and Corsican, neither of which could be reasonably viewed as socially dominant in mainstream French society. (In addition, in the passage of Human Zoo, already referred to, it is the similarly peripheral language of Serbo-Croatian which is used to exclude a Western, English-speaking character). The function of languages as exclusive in such a way is thus highly situational, yet the practice of social exclusion through multiple language use is nonetheless a widespread and forceful means of exerting power over others. The role of language in Elisabeth’s journey from fearing to friend­­ ing Ousmane can be understood through a comparison be­­­ between two key scenes from the film, both of which revolve around multiple language use. The first takes place in a language school, where it transpires that Jane and Ali had been learning Arabic. The scene features English, French and brief excerpts of Arabic dialogue. The scene is an important moment for the plot progression, in which

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172  Decentring France Elisabeth again encounters Ousmane, accompanied by the imam from the mosque as his French to English interpreter. The second scene appears later in the film, in Jane’s apartment, where Elisabeth and Ousmane are staying after they decide to trust one another and cooperate on the search. The interaction between Elisabeth and Ousmane takes place in both scenes across languages, but the differences between these disparate scenes are immense. The Arabic-language school scene begins with the imam and Ousmane questioning the Arabic teacher about Ali’s attendance in the class, as Elisabeth interrupts to ask the same of Jane. As the conversation unfolds in English, the imam interprets the teacher’s responses into French for Ousmane. imam: [E] When was the last time you see them? teacher: [E] Ah, it was the week just before the bombings. imam: [F, to Ousmane] During the week before the bombings … that’s the last time she saw them. [Ousmane nods] elisabeth: [E, abruptly] What did you say to him, just then?

This is a telling moment. It is true that as the imam is interpreting, he speaks softly, turning to Ousmane alone, and it would be difficult for the other characters in the scene to hear. And yet Elisabeth’s panicked question ‘What did you say to him, just then?’ reveals much about her defensive, closed-minded attitude towards the other figures in the scene. For in the preceding line, the imam has just translated the teacher’s English-language words into French. Both the teacher’s words and the imam’s translation would therefore be intelligible to the bilingual Elisabeth. And, yet, derailed by her presence in an unexpectedly foreign environment and her interaction with multiple Arabic-language speakers, Elisabeth wrongly thinks the imam has spoken to Ousmane in Arabic. In addition, from her paranoid tone, we can also deduce that she has assumed the imam is speaking about her or Jane. The imam is understandably bewildered at her reaction. This scene is one of the last in the film in which Elisabeth obstinately refuses to acknowledge the relationship that had existed between Jane and Ali, insisting on viewing Ousmane and those assisting him as a potential threat to herself and her daughter. By this stage in the film, Elisabeth has encountered Ousmane on numerous occasions, as the two have been looking in the same places for the same reasons. She has even spoken with the imam once before. Yet in this scene, Elisabeth’s behaviour betrays her deep-seated suspicion of the other. While the audience can clearly see that Elisabeth could learn more about Jane’s disappearance by uniting with Ousmane, she remains wary of those around her.

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International spaces: London River; Des hommes et des dieux 173 In fact, in this moment it becomes clear that Elisabeth doesn’t seem able to consider the possibility that despite being African, Ousmane is not an Arabic speaker. In reality, his native language is Mandinka, while his everyday operational tongue is French. Ousmane does not actually speak Arabic at all. While the imam is a native Arabic speaker, he and Ousmane only use French with each other, just as Elisabeth and Ousmane do. But this linguistic complexity is lost on Elisabeth: she views not only Ousmane but the imam and even the teacher in terms of their foreignness, and is threatened by any real or perceived linguistic evidence of this otherness. Elisabeth’s tendency to conflate foreignness, Africanness, Islam and the Arabic language manifests itself throughout the film, such as when she tells her brother nervously on the phone that Jane’s neighbourhood is ‘crawling with Muslims’, as she peers at the many Arabic-language street signs around her. Likewise, she later shows concern that Jane’s relationship with an African man and enrolment in an Arabic-language class might lead to her converting to Islam, despite never finding any religious material in the apartment, or observing any Islamic religious practice in the language school. The language school scene, among others, shows how ignorant Elisabeth is of the complexities of cultural difference, a fact which only serves to hinder her search for her daughter and her development as a global citizen. While Ousmane and the teacher do not appear to react strongly to Elisabeth’s accusatory tone, the implications of her question are not lost on the imam. He turns to Elisabeth and, in slightly broken English, reminds her of Jane’s relationship with Ali, suggesting that Elisabeth and Ousmane have more in common with each other than the former wishes to believe. imam: [E] Well, they know each others [sic], I mean … your daughter … his son, Ali. teacher: [E] They take the class together.

Figure 11  London River (Rachid Bouchareb, 3B Productions)

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174  Decentring France elisabeth: [E] I know, I know that. I just want to know where she is. imam: [E, tersely to Elisabeth] We’re just looking for his son. OK. [English, then French, then Arabic, to the teacher] Thank you. Merci. Shukran. [Arabic for thank you:‫]شكرا‬

The imam’s trilingual farewell stands in stark contrast to Elisabeth’s words. He even includes a ‘merci’ either in confusion, having just been interpreting, or as an inclusive gesture to Ousmane, as well as the Arabic word for ‘thank you’, ‘shukran’, in solidarity with the teacher. The imam and Ousmane leave, and Elisabeth turns to the teacher, a professional young woman of apparently Middle Eastern or North African descent, to question her about Jane’s attendance in the class. The exchange takes place in English, but nonetheless hinges on language politics and Elisabeth’s wariness of the Arabic language, which she conflates with Islam and, in turn, the attacks. teacher: We started a few weeks ago, and they’ve been here very regularly. elisabeth: [points to Arabic alphabet on board] But, that’s just a language, right? teacher: Yes, that’s just a language. We started with the alphabet … elisabeth: [interrupting] I don’t understand why she needed to learn Arabic …? teacher: Um, well she’s probably just up picked the interest from Ali, who’s a friend of hers. elisabeth: Yes, but, I mean, who speaks Arabic? teacher: [smiling hesitantly] … We all do. elisabeth: I don’t.

Considering that her primary objective in this scene is to locate her daughter, it is clear to the viewer that Elisabeth is asking all the wrong questions. And yet while she should logically be questioning the teacher about Jane’s behaviour and whereabouts, to see whether the teacher may have any information to help to locate her, she cannot move past Jane’s decision to learn Arabic, which she fails to comprehend. In Elisabeth’s eyes, Arabic is not only an unpleasant language (one which does not even use the Roman alphabet!) but a useless one. In Elisabeth’s world, while the ‘Western’ lingua francas of English and French are useful, the Eastern lingua franca of Arabic has no worth. In addition, her fear of the correlation between the Arabic language and the Islamic religion, so different from her own devout Protestantism, is clear in her absurd question ‘But that’s just a language, right?’ when pointing to the Arabic alphabet. It seems Elisabeth’s greatest struggle in this scene is not so much to uncover where her daughter might have been at the time of the bombings, but to come to terms with how unalike she and her daughter’s lives and interests truly are.

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International spaces: London River; Des hommes et des dieux 175 The second multilingual scene, in Jane’s apartment, is a key moment that shows how Elisabeth has learned to accept Ousmane and his cultural and linguistic difference. The contrast between this scene and the Arabic-language classroom scene is extreme. In the latter, language serves to divide the characters and fuel Elisabeth’s distrust of Ousmane. Conversely, in the apartment scene, language difference, despite the absence of any form of translation, allows the two protagonists to bridge a gap between one another and their respective worlds. The scene takes place after Elisabeth and Ousmane have discovered that their children had been riding on one of the targeted buses together on the morning of the bombings, and had been killed in the explosion. It follows a traumatic scene in which Elisabeth breaks down upon learning this news. Back in the apartment, as Elisabeth sorts through Jane’s possessions, Ousmane packs his suitcase to return to France. When he is ready to leave, he turns to her. In French, he says solemnly: ousmane: [F] I believe that my son loved your daughter. Maybe your daughter loved him, too. The truest happiness is to love life. That’s what we say in my home country.

Ousmane then breaks into song. It is a powerful and melodic tune, sung with a beautiful but cracked, pained voice. Despite having never attempted to teach Elisabeth any of his native language (indeed, the only other time he speaks Mandinka in the film is to phone his estranged wife in Mali and inform her of Ali’s death) he sings to her in his native language. Ousmane’s use of Mandinka is not a practical choice in this scene, and the meaning of the individual lyrics, presumably related to Ousmane’s preceding words ‘that’s what we say in my home country’, is not important – they are not even subtitled for the audience. Ousmane’s use of Mandinka is symbolic, presented musically not only to soothe Elisabeth’s grief, but to share a rare glimpse of his true home and self with her. In so doing, Ousmane uses music as form of boundary-breaking. Indeed, Smith views the song as an offering across language barriers: ‘his unknown language is framed as a gift to her, despite or even because of its unfamiliarity’ (2012: 85). However, the decision not to subtitle the lyrics does not trivialise or sideline the Mandinka language in this case, as the decision not to subtitle other African languages in many twentieth-century films does. Instead, it allows us to experience the musical gift of the song, in all its symbolism, in the same way Elisabeth does – as a form of deeply emotional communication that transcends semantic meaning. In fact, the song was not even scripted into the scene. Bouchareb explains in

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176  Decentring France the press notes for the film: ‘I couldn’t have scripted the song Sotigui’s character consoles Brenda’s with; that came entirely from him. He felt the need to sing then, so he did. For me, this working method produced some of the most moving moments of the film’ (Cinema Libre Studios 2011). This fact renders Ousmane’s – or rather, the actor Sotigui’s – song, whose semantic meaning remains a mystery even to the filmmaker, an even more poignant and emotional moment. When the song is complete, Ousmane turns to leave. As he crosses the threshold, Elisabeth calls his name, follows him down the stairs and, touching him for the first time, hugs him, crying. They thank each other in French several times over. This farewell is the most intimate moment in the entire film, more comforting even than Elisabeth’s interaction with her own brother. Despite all they have shared together, and having already begun a mutual mourning process, this moment is the first in the entire film when the protagonists use the familiar form of the French second-person address: ‘merci à toi’ (‘thank you’). This tutoiement, introduced only at the very end of their relationship and paired with the simple yet powerful repetition of the word merci, is further linguistic proof of the boundary-breaking that has just occurred between them. In London River, language offers the opportunity for the characters to step out of their respective worlds, to experience difference and to progress to a more complex understanding of the multicultural self. It is because of the foreignness of the Mandinka language, not because of its familiarity, that this progression is made possible. More so than the historical event of the 2005 London bombings, or even the fate of Jane and Ali, Elisabeth’s education about the other and the other’s language is at the heart of London River. During the film, Elisabeth evolves from treating Ousmane, the Arab population of Jane’s neighbourhood and any unknown language with paranoia, not only failing to understand the value of speaking other languages, but outright fearing their speakers. Her body language towards the Arab butcher and landlord, as she shrinks away from him when he tries to give her information on Jane’s rental situation, reveals her aversion to the culturally unfamiliar. Yet, as the story progresses, Elisabeth slowly opens up to those around her, learning to appreciate and even admire such obscure African languages as Mandinka and their related cultural practices. Throughout the early stages of the film, Elisabeth becomes suspicious if she does not understand the content of foreign-language speech around her. In the apartment scene, however, she does not need to understand the meaning of Ousmane’s Mandinka words to cherish, and draw solace from, his multilingual gesture.

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International spaces: London River; Des hommes et des dieux 177 Of course, Elisabeth does not understand the lyrics of Ousmane’s Mandinka-language song. She is far from speaking any African languages. It would still be difficult to picture her living in Finsbury Park or taking Arabic classes, like Jane. But her attitude of tolerance and respect towards Ousmane as he shares his language with her is significant in itself. Indeed, her growing linguistic openness reflects the evolving nature of multilingual cinema itself: a progression towards an increased acknowledgement, valuing and foregrounding of the place of languages other than French in contemporary French contexts. French takes on a uniquely useful and deterritorialised role in London River, as a lingua franca unanchored from French national concerns. This allows it to fulfil a boundary-levelling function for the film’s disparate protagonists. However, while French and English are the most widely used languages in London River, they are far from the only languages which comprise the film’s linguistic fabric. Likewise essential to the film’s events is the Arabic language, which occupies a central yet precarious position in the narrative. Many of the film’s characters are native Arabic speakers. Similarly, many characters are Muslim, including a police officer and Ali, the latter of whom had been attending a local mosque. The mosque’s trilingual imam, who helps Ousmane conduct his search, interprets for him between English and French and requests information from others in Arabic. The terrorist attacks that trigger London River’s story quite clearly hang over the status of the Arabic language and its speakers in the film. This is embodied in Elisabeth’s paranoid suspicion of the imam’s Arabic-language speech, and of the Arabic alphabet she sees on the blackboard at Jane’s language school. The film is far from oblivious to the hostile sociopolitical climate which weighs upon the Arabic language and its native speakers in the aftermath of these now all-toofamiliar events. Yet the role of Arabic is not only defined by the political events which precede the film’s storyline. For just like French and English, Arabic is valorised as a language worth knowing, and worth learning as a second or third language. While the film’s older characters learn French or English as second or third languages, its younger generation attend Arabic classes. Indeed, never do we see Elisabeth as being less in touch with the world around her, less aware of the multicultural reality she inhabits, than when she undermines the relevance of learning Arabic, exclaiming ‘Who speaks Arabic?’, to which the teacher responds politely, yet strikingly: ‘We all do’. Far less present in the narrative, but nonetheless extremely significant, is Ousmane’s mother tongue; the West African language of

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178  Decentring France Mandinka. A Eurocentric perspective would situate Ousmane’s native language in a position of sociocultural inferiority. And indeed it is true that Ousmane is directly disadvantaged by his linguistic (in)abilities in London River. Yet this is not brought about due to his knowledge of Mandinka, but his ignorance of English. Mandinka appears in only two scenes, yet is instrumental to Ousmane’s interaction with those around him. In the first case, the language serves a straightforward – if emotional – communicative function, as Ousmane phones his wife. In the second case, Mandinka takes on a powerful symbolic role, as the means through which Ousmane can comfort Elisabeth, share in her grief and say farewell. In the end, Mandinka, by all accounts an extremely minoritarian language in both France and the UK, becomes the most symbolically powerful, unifying and poetic language in the film.

Transcending the national Much like the unanchored language in London River, language use in Des hommes et des dieux is surprisingly detached from nation(ality), despite the wartime context surrounding the narrative. In the everyday exchanges between monks and villagers, which oscillate between French and Arabic depending on the context, the nations of France and Algeria are barely mentioned. The lingering effects of colonialism are evident in the very existence of the Christian monastery in this African region, yet the relationship between the monks and villagers is a far more polycentric and balanced one than the domineering – and usually monolingual – dynamic that characterised French–Algerian relationships prior to decolonisation. In a graceful symbolisation of Bourdieu’s ‘linguistic marketplace’ (1977), the monks even sell their homemade honey at a nearby market alongside their local companions, where French and Arabic circulate with equal linguistic capital in the same terrain – a literal marketplace. Nation is discussed very rarely in the film and the French language is used as a relatively neutral lingua franca, alongside Arabic, rather than an oppressive colonial tongue used by colonisers to replace Arabic and other native languages entirely. The non-national, cross-cultural, multilingual environment of the village and monastery, however, is thrown into question in one key scene of Des hommes et des dieux. On Christmas night, a group of insurrectionist fighters arrive at the monastery, asking for the monks’ leader, Christian. One of their fighters has sustained major injuries, and their leader, Fayattia, insists Frère Luc, the village doctor, travel with them to heal him. The tension of the scene amplifies as Chris-

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International spaces: London River; Des hommes et des dieux 179 tian refuses, insisting Luc is too frail to leave the monastery. When Fayattia orders him to give them their medical supplies instead, Christian again refuses, explaining that the villagers rely upon the supplies to survive. Incensed, Fayattia insists, ‘You have no choice.’ To this Christian responds, ‘Yes I do, I have a choice.’ The monks appear to be in grave danger as Christian continues to refuse Fayattia’s demands. Yet rather than conceding to the orders, or declaring himself Fayattia’s outright enemy, Christian calls upon an unexpected resource, to open up an alternative dialogue and connect with him. In the exchange, language difference enters not as a further divide between the two men (who are already differentiated by their races, religions and backgrounds) but as an unusual, paradoxical and yet powerful means of bridging these divides. christian: [French] Do you know the Qur’an? [quotes:] ‘You will find those brothers closest to us are those who say “We are Christians” and among them are priests and monks –’ fayattia: [Arabic] ‘... priests and monks. And they wax not proud’. christian: [F] Now you see why we are so close to our neighbours.

It is true that each character in this scene speaks his own native language, rather than stepping into the other’s (or a mutually foreign) tongue. Christian recites the first part of the Qur’an quote in French, while Fayattia completes the rest in Arabic. Yet the act of sharing the text across languages is in fact a gesture of solidarity. For the recitation reveals the different languages, and their respective religions, not as fundamental differences, but as superficial ones. The text may be recited in different languages, yet it is comprehensible in each language to each character, and each version tells the same story. Language difference in this instance does not increase rifts between different cultural and religious groups, but reveals how fundamentally similar they are. Jérôme Delgado writes of Christian that ‘par ses connaissances d’arabe et du Coran, il symbolise le rapprochement entre les peuples et l’ouverture à l’autre’ (‘through his knowledge of Arabic and the Qur’an, he symbolises closeness among the people and openness towards the other’ (2011: 270)). This closeness and openness are at the heart of the French–Arabic recitation scene. The cadence and structures of the languages may differ, yet the meaning of what is being said is the same. This reflects the message of the passage itself. The names and details of the religions may differ, yet the fundamental meanings of each are germane. Often in French film, when a French character speaks French and an Algerian character speaks Arabic, very little cultural exchange or constructive interaction occurs. In films like Omar m’a tuer, for

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180  Decentring France example, the decision to speak French in the Arabic speaker’s presence is an exclusionary, hostile act which can directly disadvantage the Arab character and even place them in physical danger. In cinéma beur, second-generation children will refuse to deviate from French, as their parents speak to them in Arabic, driving a further rift between the generations. Frequently, scenes in which neither character steps out of their native language lead to divisions and often imbalanced conflicts between French and non-French groups. In Des hommes et des dieux, however, this French and Arabic exchange, this sharing of a single religious text across two languages, has a very different effect. Part of this dynamic is due to the cultural history that surrounds each language in this particular context. More than evoking Algeria, the Arabic language in this exchange is more representative of religion than nation. And more than referencing France, Christian’s French-language recitation evokes his Christian identity and simultaneously likens this identity to his interlocutor’s Muslim one. Of course, there is no ignoring that this conversation is taking place in Algeria, during the civil war of the 1990s. Despite the fact that this civil war is different from the 1960s war of independence from France, there is no denying that Christian and the other monks would not be there in the first place, were it not for the history of French colonisation of Algeria. Perhaps more than any other film analysed in this book, Des hommes et des dieux’s setting is a politicised one, its conflicts revolving around postcolonial histories of nationalism. Indeed, as Maria Flood explains, ‘the terrorists viewed the presence of the French monks on Algerian soil as a blatant mark of the continuing control and infiltration of a Western ex-colonial power’ (2016: 66). Yet despite this overarching setting, the Qur’an recitation scene is a striking moment of comparatively unanchored language use. The French and Arabic languages are attached to religious identities, yet they are not used to discuss nation or nationality. Indeed, in the recitation of the Qur’an rather than the discussion of contemporary politics, it removes the conversation from the context of warfare to a more abstract context of religion that evokes a humanistic ideology than a fundamentalist one. The men find themselves in the same region due to lingering consequences of colonialism, yet in an important linguistic dynamic, Christian does not push the French language on Fayattia. Instead, rather than the latter moving into the colonial language, it is Fayattia’s use of his own language that forges the link between the two characters. In a similar way, though other French Christians in Algeria have historically sought to convert Muslims and other religious groups to Christianity, Christian (a Trappist monk

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International spaces: London River; Des hommes et des dieux 181 rather than a missionary) does not quote the Bible to Fayattia, but the Qur’an. Christian has not been converted to Islam – his Christian faith is only strengthened by the film’s events – but he harbours deep respect for Islam, viewing it as a religion whose core aspects parallel and complement his own. In the same way, he uses mostly French, but understands and values Arabic. For Christian, and ultimately for Fayattia, the two languages and religions can coexist, even if the French and Algerian nations cannot. After the shared recitation, Christian informs Fayattia that it is in fact Christmas, the celebration of ‘la naissance du Prince de la paix’ (‘the birth of the Prince of Peace’). Turning back to Christian, Fayattia repeats in confusion: fayattia: [French] ‘The Prince of Peace’? christian: [Arabic, translating] Sidna Aïssa. fayattia: [F] Jesus? [Christian nods] fayattia: [F] Excuse me, then. I did not know.

After the unusual act of solidarity forged by the men reciting the Qur’an in their respective mother tongues, each character steps into the other’s language to discuss the Christmas holiday. Christian describes Jesus as ‘Sidna Aïssa’ in Arabic, while Fayattia identifies him in French as ‘Jésus’. After uttering a sincere apology, Fayattia then extends a hand to Christian in a gesture of religious fraternity. The two men shake hands, and the soldiers leave. The scene thus ends with no physical violence enacted against the monks, and without the fighters insisting in taking the medical supplies the monks need to care for the villagers. Yet this is not the only positive effect of the translanguaging that occurs in the exchange; Christian and Fayattia’s cross-lingual and cross-religious gesture of solidarity has more far-reaching ramifications for the film’s protagonists. Throughout the following months, the monks and villagers are undisturbed by the insurgents, despite the fact that they kill many other foreign targets in the same region. When Christian is called by government forces to identify Fayattia’s body, he learns that Fayattia had been protecting the monastery and village since their conversation on Christmas. It is only after Fayattia’s death, and thus the evaporation of the pact of solidarity forged between him and Christian, that the terrorists return for, and ultimately, assassinate, the monks. The connection between Fayattia and Christian is forged through language; a bilingual recitation of the Qur’an that drives home the shared ideological heritage of the two men. Although the protective effects of this translingual connection cannot last beyond Fayattia’s death, the connection is nonetheless remarkable for its power to

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182  Decentring France protect the monks and villagers for several months during wartime. The result is quite literally a matter of life and death for the protagonists. Des hommes et des dieux offers up a portrait of French and Arabic language use that transcends – and even temporarily erases – national differences rather than intensifying them. Transcending the nationalised wartime setting, in which conflict would be almost inevitable, strategic language use shifts the exchange into a context of cultural and religious history, in which solidarity is possible. In Des hommes et des dieux, a civil war rages throughout the surrounding region. Yet the monastery and village, cut off in many ways from the outside world, are the site of surprisingly harmonious cultural and linguistic power relations. Indeed, Christian and the other monks frequently insert Arabic-language terms, and references to Islam, in their conversations and prayers. When Christian learns from some of the villagers that a neighbour’s niece has been murdered by terrorists for wearing the ‘wrong veil’, he crosses himself, a Christian act, while saying ‘Nous allons prier pour elle … Inch’Allah’ (‘We will pray for her … May Allah will it’), a mixing of French and Arabic language, and Christian and Islamic faith, that casts the process of prayer as a cross-cultural and universal act. When a number of the monks attend a Muslim mass, they listen attentively to the sermon, delivered through rhythmic Arabic-language song, and frequently nod in agreement. The monks thus connect with many of the religious points communicated in Arabic by the imam, points which include the telling phrase ‘We make no distinction between any one of His followers.’ Although Arabic is spoken fluently throughout the village, French is as well, and the monks’ use of the French language in doctor’s appointments, meetings and casual conversations is inclusive and comprehensible to all of the film’s characters. While the monks assist the villagers in reading and writing letters in French, they also understand Arabic speech. While shots of Christian’s desk show that he reads the writings of Saint Francis of Assisi, they also reveal that he reads the Qur’an (albeit in French). Though the French language and the monks themselves are clearly in the region due to the lingering impact of colonisation, the French language does not play an imperialist role in the village, and the Arabic language is equally known, used and valued. Eurocentric language hierarchies, in which French is promoted and local languages are suppressed by militant colonial forces, do not apply here. Another way in which the monks’ French-language use is distanced from their nationalities is through the ways in which they evoke the concept of ‘home’. The majority of the film centres around the monks’

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International spaces: London River; Des hommes et des dieux 183 deliberation on whether they should stay in the monastery, despite the danger, or return to France. The entirety of the film, however, is set in the monastery and village, or in the countryside surrounding them. No shots are located in France, and no French-born characters return there. Despite the seriousness with which the men consider fleeing Algeria, each character’s final understanding of home, of where he belongs, is the monastery and not France. This is depicted in two revealing passages between the monks. As the monks deliberate over whether or not they should leave, several engage in deep conversations with one another, in which they reveal their feelings about belonging and home. Though clearly afraid of being killed and hesitant to become a martyr, one monk explains that he will remain in Algeria because his true ‘family’ is there. He can see no other purpose to his life should he leave his home, which happens to be in Algeria, rather than his country of birth. Of France, he says simply: ‘personne ne m’attend nulle part, je reste’ (‘nobody is waiting for me there … I’m staying’). In a longer scene, another hesitant monk, Célestin, confides a personal story to Christian. Several years before, he had returned to France to celebrate his mother’s eightieth birthday. His family members had been welcoming enough, yet he had felt a hollowness, a sense of non-belonging, when seated at the dinner table with his blood kin. As the family celebrated around him, his thoughts had returned to the monastery, and he came to an important realisation: célestin: [French] I was happy, but at the same time, I was completely elsewhere. I told myself, ‘My life is over there’ … that is, here. With you.

Thus, several (though not all) of the monks may have been born in France, yet the French nation – and French nationality – is no longer an important part of their lives, nor an important part of their personal identities. For almost all, it is no longer home. This dynamic is also reflected in the advice the monks receive from Algerian characters. The government official who blames the war on French colonisation tells the monks there is no reason for them to remain in Algeria, stating that they will be dying for nothing.Yet the villagers, who actually know the monks on a personal level, have a vastly different conception of their place. When some of the monks reveal to their friends in the village that they are considering departing, one monk, Célestin, explains ‘nous sommes comme des oiseaux sur une branche’ (‘we are like birds on a branch’). But one woman responds, ‘les oiseaux c’est nous, la branche c’est vous’ (‘we are the birds, you are the branch’). Scholars such as Maria Flood (2016) are right to note that such a

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184  Decentring France representation carries paternalistic, colonialist undertones that ring false in decolonised 1990s Algeria. Nonetheless, the villager’s words underline how the monks have a role to play in the village, and not in France. It likewise shows that the villagers see the monks as essential to their conception of their own home. As Jonathan Romney writes, ‘However out of place they seem in modern Algeria, the monks aspire to replace and correct colonialism with a benign post-colonialism, in which the outsider remains as guest, helper, kin’ (2011: 53). This sympathetic portrayal of a benevolent neo-colonial character is not unique to Des hommes et des dieux. The dynamic also appears in films like David Oelhoffen’s 2014 Loin des hommes. An adaptation of Albert Camus’s 1957 short story ‘L’Hôte’, Loin des hommes follows an Algerian-born, ethnically French primary schoolteacher, as he grapples with the choice of protecting an Algerian criminal he has been entrusted with, or turning him over to the authorities in the remote Algerian region they inhabit. Set (like Des hommes et des dieux forty years later) against the backdrop of Algerian civil war, though in a clearer decolonisation context than Beauvois’s film, Loin des hommes asks whether its Algerian-born protagonist of French origin can morally occupy a position of authority in Algeria, or whether doing so will inevitably perpetuate social power imbalances between white and Arabic ethnic groups in the Maghreb. Both the captor–captive relationship of Loin des hommes and the protector–protected relationships of Des hommes et des dieux are navigated with sensitivity and compassion by the films’ pied-noir or French-born characters. However, both films also problematise the unequal power dynamics inherent in such relationships in a colonial context. The French language teacher of Loin des hommes and the Christian monks of Des hommes et des dieux seem to have had their day in the remote Algerian countryside. Yet even in these outmoded neo-colonial rapports, multilingualism offers new possibilities for interactions between French and Algerian groups, as well as possibilities for hybrid cultural identities that combine them. For the monks understand the Arabic spoken by their neighbours, and the teacher Daru has known the language fluently since childhood and ultimately uses it to free his so-called captor, Mohamed, and to develop an increasingly balanced friendship with him. In both these Algerianset films, French-speaking characters may occupy positions that exist due to the social order of colonialism, but they learn Arabic and use it in ways that resist traditional colonial configurations.

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International spaces: London River; Des hommes et des dieux 185

Conclusion London River and Des hommes et des dieux comprise a collection of disparate characters, cultural groups and languages, which find themselves at first in conflict, and then in cooperation, with one another. In these films’ multicultural environments, multilingualism is an asset, and those who can speak multiple languages have increased access to control, information and support. From Arabic to English to French to Mandinka, each language has its respective worth, and access to social power is not necessarily afforded only by knowledge of Western languages, but by knowledge of multiple languages. In these films, it matters not so much which languages the characters speak, but how many they speak, and thus how culturally and socially adaptable they are. In London River, Elisabeth’s choices between English and French have significant implications. English is the language Elisabeth uses when at her most closed towards Ousmane and the other non-European characters of the film, while French is the language she operates in when at her most accepting and open-minded. Yet, to a further extent than any of the preceding case studies, this surprisingly optimistic film not only gives agency to marginalised languages such as Arabic and Mandinka, but also provides a way for the French language to complement and enable, rather than to hinder, this revision of language politics. In Des hommes et des dieux, both French and Arabic are spoken between the characters of varied French and Algerian origin.The film’s Christian characters do not lead monolingual French-speaking lives, but also understand Arabic, just as they not only follow the Bible, but also read the Qur’an. In similar ways, the villagers may have learned French in the first place as a result of historical colonialism, yet their use of French is linked far more with polycentric multiculturalism than with hierarchical colonial ­oppression. The place of French in both Des hommes et des dieux and London River is a progressive one on numerous levels. In most contemporary French films, despite the increasing importance of multilingualism, French continues to affirm itself as a central and dominant element, in turn affirming the centrality and dominance of France itself. However, these films mark a change in this pattern, as the French language takes on an alternative role. The once-tangible relation between the use of French and the influence of France is called into question in London River, a film in which French is primordial, yet France is not. Likewise, the speakers of French in Des hommes et des dieux include several French-born characters, yet these characters do not use the language to evoke their birth country, nor do they speak the language

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186  Decentring France on French soil, or even consider France their home. These films thus decouple the French language from French nation(ality). Instead, the French language becomes a lingua franca, with unifying power, used in globalised contexts. For Elena Caoduro, in London River ‘for different reasons Elisabeth and Ousmane feel like aliens in a foreign land and their deterritorialisation as displaced persons grounds London River in the transnational, both thematically and in terms of global awareness’ (2011: 7). Consequently, in the context of the personal exchanges between Elisabeth and Ousmane, French does not carry the kind of loaded cultural, political or identitary connotations it has historically carried in French cinema. It is presented as a mutually familiar yet foreign system of communication, which permits the film’s two radically unalike protagonists to meet on a just and balanced linguistic terrain. Consequently, in London River French evolves from the status of a nationalised and politicised language, to a democratic and unanchored one, which coexists with many other languages of the globalised world. In London River and Des hommes et des dieux, language is a tool to be used with, for or against others. Knowledge of multiple languages is an asset for the films’ characters, and ignorance of certain languages is disadvantaging. Multilingualism permeates the films’ soundtracks. Yet despite both films being ‘French’ products, the French language is detached in various ways from political associations with France. French is an important linguistic common ground in London River and Des hommes et des dieux, yet neither film is set in France. This renders French a diplomatic and boundary-levelling code which allows different characters to connect with one another on neutral terrain. In Des hommes et des dieux, both French and Arabic are used as languages which evoke different characters’ identities, yet these identities are far more closely associated with culture and religion than with politics or nationality. In scenes such as the Qur’an recitation, multilingualism reveals the differences between characters to be more superficial than their fundamental similarities. Ultimately, it is cross-cultural comradeship, rather than violence, conflict or difference, which characterise these films. Set in international spaces that range from central London to rural Algeria, in London River and Des hommes et des dieux French and other languages operate within polycentric flows of social power that resist the Eurocentric depiction of language seen in so many films set on French soil.

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International spaces: London River; Des hommes et des dieux 187

Note 1 The island of Guernsey is a Crown dependency of the UK, located near the Normandy coast in the English Channel, where both English and French are official languages. The regional language of the small island, Dgèrnésiais, still spoken by a minority of the local population, also shares many characteristics with French; it is even referred to unofficially as Guernsey French. The cultural link between Guernsey and France is also strong, as the tiny region was occupied by France up until the Middle Ages.

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8 Conclusion Multilingualism is not only a historical phenomenon and a series of practices, it is also becoming one of the important topoi in cultural works such as films and literary productions that both confirm its existence and contribute to defining its specificity. In cinema and literature, viewers and readers are confronted with stories that take for granted that monolingual spaces are no longer to be envisaged as the all-powerful norm. (Rosello 2012a: 219)

The French cinema of the contemporary age, like so much of the broader French population, does not speak only one language. In this era of transnational media, technological advances, transcontinental immigration and other widespread practices of globalisation, multilingualism is beginning to be prized rather than sidelined or rejected in film. The result is a deeply complex and multilateral linguistic landscape in which multilingualism can be both ideologically and practically empowering. In its depiction of strategic code-switching in multicultural scenarios, contemporary French multilingual cinema highlights the much-neglected significance of multilingualism and the potential for power inherent not only in French or other dominant Western tongues, but in the many migrant and minority languages which comprise the social fabric of an increasingly diverse, fragmented and multilingual France. This book has aimed to introduce the reader to an important yet little-acknowledged trend in French cinema, in which multilingualism, and the relationship between French and other languages, is fundamental. Of course, multilingual films take into account the historical background and disparities in social power which impact the interaction between different cultural groups in contemporary French society. Yet in opposition to most twentieth-century film, this cinema does not adopt an overarching Eurocentric approach to considering language difference and social power, but rather ‘advocate[s] for a non-Eurocentric cosmopolitanism’ (Ceuterick 2014: 79). In such films, as Elena Caoduro writes: Multiculturalism appears therefore through a new prism; it contemplates the acquisition of a new civic and collaborative identity, or, using

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Conclusion 189 Tariq Modood’s words; it ‘means a new way of being French, a new way of being German, a new way of being British – and perhaps also a new way of being European’. (2011: 8)

These films eschew rigid, hierarchical conceptions of language and power, exploring the potential of any and all languages to present cultural capital and social power to their speakers. Other Western tongues do not necessarily coexist harmoniously with French in the European space, and tensions exist between French and Western and Eastern languages alike.1 Likewise, historically ­ marginalised languages such as Arabic are not portrayed in the negative or simplistic manner of preceding decades. Instead, they are represented as complex sociocultural elements which, contrary to historical representations, do not necessarily disadvantage or marginalise their speakers, but afford them a means of advancing their social position or exerting authority over others. Foucault writes that ‘power is not an institution, and not a structure; neither is it a certain strength we are endowed with; it is the name that one attributes to a complex strategical situation in a particular society’ (1998: 93, ‘le pouvoir, ce n’est pas une institution, et ce n’est pas une structure, ce n’est pas une certaine puissance dont certains seraient dotés: c’est le nom qu’on prête à une situation stratégique complexe dans une société donnée’ (1976: 123)). In multilingual film, power lies in social action; in the use of language as a strategic act. These films test the limits of the label of ‘French cinema’, drawing multicultural and international elements into the French cultural sphere, resituating themselves outside the borders of the French nation entirely. Such films exhibit the ‘cosmopolitanism [of] the transnational [that] at once transcends the national and presupposes it’ (Ezra and Rowden 2006: 4), and launch a meaningful dialogue between French culture and language and those of neighbouring, (post)colonial and far-flung nations alike. In its analysis of strategic language use, this book exposes the myth of a monolithic, autonomous and monocultural French cinema. In turn, it reveals the growing presence of a cinema that, while still undeniably ‘French’, comprises a multitude of cultural perspectives, identities and languages in action. In this group of films, the French language is beginning to share its once-unrivalled position as power language. In multilingual cinema, French is an indispensable resource, but the knowledge of other languages is, too. For decades, minus a select few exceptions, French films have painted the French language as emblematic of French cultural and national identity, whether through long-term linguistic whitewashing

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190  Decentring France of what would logically be multicultural scenarios, relegating multilingual dialogue to unsubtitled background talk or actively punishing or ridiculing foreign-language use. By contrast, contemporary French multilingual cinema offers a polycentric view of language relations, situated in contemporary scenarios, which represents a move towards dismantling this hegemonic portrayal of language relations. In Guy Austin’s words, these films envision ‘the opening-up of national identity to plural, multilingual possibilities’ (2012: 181). Of course, this book in no way seeks to criticise the fact that French is, logically, the most common language in French film. Neither does it suggest that the position of the French language as the most prominent language of use in contemporary French cinema is under threat. Rather, it demonstrates how the representation of French as the only prominent or useful language in cinema is being progressively dismantled. Films like Polisse, Entre les murs, Un prophète, Dheepan, La Graine et le mulet, Welcome, London River and Des hommes et des dieux do not ignore or deride France’s place on the global stage as a powerful political player, an important cultural hub and host country to hundreds of thousands of first- and second-generation migrants. Instead, these films reject the notion propagated in earlier French films of the flow of peoples, ideas and languages as being solely unilateral: as only flowing from North Africa, South-East Asia, sub-Saharan West Africa, etc. towards France. Eurocentrism has no place in these films, for according to Shohat and Stam, Eurocentrism ‘envisions the world from a single privileged point’ (1994: 2) whereas multilingual cinema acknowledges and incorporates a multitude of sociocultural and linguistic perspectives. For these and many other films, the circulation of people, cultural values and languages is not binary, but polyvalent: ‘rather than emanating outward from a hierarchical center, power is everywhere; not because it dominates everything but because it emerges from everywhere’ (Shohat and Stam 2003: 13). The result is a multilateral linguistic landscape, in which multilingualism can advance, equip and empower. It is not my intention to draw sweeping parallels between the place of languages in film and the place of languages in society, but to shed light on the progressive and evolved representation of languages within contemporary French cinema. I have avoided making broad claims about the nature of French society at large, drawing instead on the purview of film. Yet contemporary French cinema is often concerned with reflecting and commenting on French social, political and cultural issues, and is the product of an official, government-regulated production system directly linked to public cultural policy. As the teaching of languages other than French increases in

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Conclusion 191 France (MINERVA Europe 2005), the average cinematic spectator is becoming increasingly proficient in, or open to, non-Frenchlanguage consumption. More than ever, it is worthwhile and valuable to acknowledge, learn and use multiple languages in France, and, as Laura Rascaroli describes it, to consider how multilingual film ‘comments on today’s Europe’ (2013: 338). With their foregrounding and re-envisioning of language politics, contemporary French multilingual films show us the power of language, the value of speaking multiple tongues, and what it means to be multilingual in twentyfirst-century France. It is undeniable that the number of French films which contain multilingual dialogue is steadily increasing. This quantitative evolution, however, is far from the only remarkable element of contemporary French multilingual cinema. With this increase in quantity comes an increased sensitivity towards the potential of all languages to confer power on their speakers, and an enhanced respect for the value of learning and speaking multiple languages, from English to Arabic to Russian to Italian to Kurdish. This view of diverse language use in contemporary French contexts – for indeed, each of this book’s eight key films depicts multicultural scenarios which could occur in French society today – has important implications for the future of multilingualism in film. Gone are the days when languages other than French were either erased from situations in which the language would logically be spoken, relegated to ambient background noise or portrayed as a marker of alienation or shame. Of course, multilingual cinema is not ignorant of the linguistic, social and political tensions and struggles that migrant and multicultural peoples face in postcolonial French society. It is important to remember that, as Alec Hargreaves explains: The French language was implanted on the southern and eastern shores of the Mediterranean largely under the aegis of French colonial domination there. The more recent emergence within France of Arabic- and Tamazight-speaking minorities originating across the Mediterranean is in turn grounded in migratory flows largely consequent upon economic disparities and migratory opportunities regulated by the colonial system and its aftermath. (2009: 280)

Hargreaves’s evocation of the spectre of historical and political inequities between French and (post)colonial cultures is important to take into account. In many films, such as Dheepan, Un prophète and Welcome, the non-French or part-French characters are victims of discrimination, racism and even violence. Nonetheless, within this postcolonial world, multilingual films frequently overcome the spectre of the past,

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192  Decentring France in order to repackage languages other than French in contemporary French contexts. As Claire Kramsch writes, ‘the power hierarchy of different forms of symbolic capital has not disappeared, but it is now much more diverse and much more up for grabs’ (2012: 123). The French language is far from surrendering its place as the most important language in French film, nor should it be expected to do so. French remains an indispensable element to all eight films examined in this book, whether it is used as the official language on French soil (La Graine et le mulet), a language of fading influence (Welcome), an unanchored lingua franca (London River), a native language (Des hommes et des dieux) or an acquired one (Dheepan). Yet for the first time in French cinema history, the French language is finding itself side by side with a plethora of other languages of the First and Third worlds alike. This polycentric picture of language relations is responsive to the complex, multicultural and globalised nature of the contemporary French cultural landscape, and the many spheres of influence which comprise it. As France and countless other countries across the world struggle with the effects of (de)colonisation, large-scale technological advancements, international terrorism, responsive nationalist sentiment, EU crises and the largest refugee crisis since the Second World War, the depth and complexity of multilingual cinema continues to evolve at a rapid pace. In its depiction of strategic code-switching in transcultural scenarios, contemporary French multilingual cinema values multilingualism, showing the potential for symbolic power inherent not only in French or other dominant Western tongues, but in the many migrant and minority languages which comprise the social fabric of an increasingly diverse, fragmented and multilingual France.

Note 1 See Appendix C.

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Appendices Appendix A: French multilingual films released in 2005 Film

Director

13 Tzameti 20 centimètres Angel-A Anthony Zimmer Bab el web Caché Chok-Dee De battre mon cœur s’est arrêté Delwende Foon

Géla Babluani Ramón Salazar Luc Besson Jérôme Salle Merzak Allouache Michael Haneke Xavier Durringer Jacques Audiard

Languages (alphabetical)

French, Georgian, German English, French, Spanish French, Spanish English, French, Russian Arabic, French Arabic, French English, French, Thai English, French, Mandarin, Russian, Vietnamese S. Pierre Yameogo French, Moré Benoît Pétré, Deborah Saïag, English, French Mika Tard, Isabelle Vitari Frankie Fabienne Berthaud English, French, German, Russian Free Zone Amos Gitaï Arabic, English, French, Hebrew, Spanish Garçon stupide Lionel Baier French, Portuguese Il était une fois dans l’oued Djamel Bensalah Arabic, French J’ai vu tuer Ben Barka Serge Le Péron, Saïd Smihi Arabic, French Je préfère qu’on reste amis Olivier Nakache, Eric English, French, Mandarin, Toledano Spanish Je vous trouve très beau Isabelle Mergault French, Romanian Joyeux Noël Christian Carion English, French, German, Latin Kilomètre zéro Hiner Saleem Arabic, French, Kurdish La Fiancée syrienne Eran Riklis Arabic, English, French, Hebrew, Russian La Moustache Emmanuel Carrère Cantonese, English, French La Petite Jérusalem Karin Albou Arabic, French, Hebrew La Trahison Philippe Faucon Arabic, French George A. Romero English, French, Italian, Land of the Dead* Polish, Spanish Le Couperet Costa-Gavras Dutch, French Le Domaine perdu Raoul Ruiz English, French, Spanish

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194 Appendices Film Le Temps qui reste Le Transporteur II Les Artistes du théâtre brûlé Les Chevaliers du ciel Les Mots bleus

Director François Ozon Louis Leterrier Rithy Panh

Languages (alphabetical) English, French, German English, French, Italian French, Khmer

Gérard Pirès Alain Corneau

Les Poupées russes

Cédric Klapisch

Marock Mary Mon petit doigt m’a dit Munich*

Laïla Marrakchi Abel Ferrara Pascal Thomas Steven Spielberg

Orlando Vargas Prendre femme Terre promise

Juan Pittaluga Ronit Elkabetz, Shlomi Elkabetz Amos Gitaï

Arabic, English, French Catalan, French, French Sign Language English, French, Italian, Russian, Spanish Arabic, French English, French, Hebrew English, French Arabic, English, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Italian, Russian French, Spanish Arabic, French, Hebrew

The Interpreter*

Sydney Pollack

Tout pour plaire Va, vis et deviens Vers le sud Zaïna, cavalière de l’Atlas

Cécile Telerman Radu Mihaileanu Laurent Cantet Bourlem Guerdjou

*

Arabic, English, French, German, Hebrew, Russian Arabic, English, French, Portuguese English, French Arabic, French, Hebrew English, French Arabic, French

France as significant co-production partner

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Appendices 195

Appendix B: Policy timeline Policy, promotion and funding changes to the French film system which have either directly or indirectly impacted multilingual film production and distribution. Year

Event

Description

1946

Establishment, Cannes Film Festival

The principal film festival in the world National, government-run association for the funding and preservation of French film

Establishment, CNC

1948 1949

American co-production agreement Foundation, uniFrance

1956

Introduction, Best Foreign Language Film Category, Academy Awards Swedish co-production agreement Romanian co-production agreement USSR co-production agreement Czechoslovakian co-production agreement Brazilian co-production agreement Hungarian co-production agreement Bulgarian and Polish co-production agreements Greek co-production agreement Danish co-production agreement Foundation, César awards Annual French film industry awards Portuguese co-production agreement Canadian, Egyptian and Finnish co-production agreements French film body responsible for Establishment, Agence pour le ­développement régional du cinéma promoting production and distribution in regional areas Establishment, CNC Aide à la More comprehensive arrangement co-production franco-canadienne than a standard co-production agreefund ment Foundation, Fonds sud initiative French funding for ‘Southern’ (mostly francophone African, South Pacific and South-East Asian) countries, to promote film diversity Argentinian, Colombian and Indian co-production agreements Australian co-production agreement New Zealand co-production agreement

1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1973 1975 1976 1981 1983

1984

1985 1986 1987

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CNC-run organisation for the promotion and distribution of French cinema abroad

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196 Appendices Year

Event

Description

1988

Foundation, Eurimages fund

Fund to support pan-European filmmaking, encouraging co-production and circulation of personnel and cinematic cultural exchange among two or more EU member states

1989 1990 1991 1992

1993

1994

1995 2000

2001

2002 2003 2004

Spanish co-production agreement Dutch co-production agreement Chilean, Icelandic and Moroccan co-production agreements Burkina Fasoan co-production agreement Mexican co-production agreement Launch, Arte Franco-German television channel aimed at fostering collaboration between French and German screen cultures Cameroonian, Georgian, Guinean, Senegalese and Turkish co-production agreements Tunisian co-production agreement Establishment, CNC Aide à la co-production franco-britannique fund Austrian and Ivory Coast co-production agreements Italian and Lebanese co-production agreements Foundation, EuropaCorp Luc Besson’s film production company, responsible for many multilingual films (plus some in English or Arabic only) German co-production agreement Establishment, CNC Aide à la co-production franco-allemande fund Israeli co-production agreement Luxembourgeois co-production agreement Contestation, Un long dimanche de Director Jean-Pierre Jeunet ordered fiançailles funding and classification to repay CNC funding and the film is withdrawn from César consideration, following the discovery of its funding from a French subsidiary of Warner Bros. Belgian co-production agreement

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Appendices 197 Year

Event

2005

Revision, state film subsidy guidelines Culture Ministry rules films partly financed by international companies may qualify for French state subsidies if filmed in the French language and produced in France (response to Un long dimanche de fiançailles controversy) Korean co-production agreement Algerian co-production agreement Launch, Script Market Site for sale of French scripts to international directors, curated by the Union-Guilde des scénaristes and the Ile-de-France Film Commission CNC name revision The CNC (originally the Centre national de la cinématographie (National centre of cinematography)) revises its name to the Centre national du cinéma et de l’image animée (National centre of cinema and the moving image), encompassing more diverse screen media forms, including television and video installation art Foundation, Aide aux cinémas du CNC fund for non-French direcmonde tors to make culturally diverse films produced by France, with multilingual dialogue and/or non-French cast, crew or shooting locations Revision, CNC Aide aux films en Aide aux films en langue étrangère langue étrangère and Fonds Sud scheme subsumed under the broader Aide aux cinémas du monde funding initiative

2006 2007 2008

2009

2010

2012

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Description

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198 Appendices

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*

Tamil

Tamazight

Russian

Romany

Romanian

Pashto

Mandinka

Kurdish

Italian

*

* *

* * * * *

French

English

*

Spanish

Des hommes et des dieux Dheepan Entre les murs La Graine et le mulet London River Polisse Un prophète Welcome

Corsican

Arabic

Appendix C: Languages of primary corpus

* *

*

* * * *

* * * *

* * *

* *

*

*

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Filmography : French multilingual films, 2005 onwards

*

13 Tzameti, Géla Babluani, 2005* 35 rhums, Claire Denis, 2008* 100% Arabica, Mahmoud Zemmouri, 1997 A bout de souffle, Jean-Luc Godard, 1960 Alien: Resurrection, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 1997 Allô, Berlin? Ici Paris! Julien Duvivier, 1932 Amen, Costa-Gavras, 2002 Amour, Michael Haneke, 2012* Bab el web, Merzak Allouache, 2005* Babel, Alejandro Iñárritu González, 2006 Bande à part, Jean-Luc Godard, 1964 Bande de filles, Céline Sciamma, 2014 Beau travail, Claire Denis, 1999 Beur blanc rouge, Mahmoud Zemmouri, 2006* Bienvenue chez les Ch’tis, Dany Boon, 2008* Boy Meets Girl, Léos Carax, 1984 Caché, Michael Haneke, 2005 Casse-tête chinois, Cédric Klapisch, 2013* Ceddo, Ousmane Sembene, 1977 Chacun son cinéma, portmanteau film, 2007* Chocolat, Claire Denis, 1988 Code inconnu: récit incomplet de divers voyages, Michael Haneke, 2001 Das weiße Band – Eine deutsche Kindergeschichte, Michael Haneke, 2009 De battre mon cœur s’est arrêté, Jacques Audiard, 2005* Delicatessen, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 1991 Des hommes et des dieux, Xavier Beauvois, 2010* Désengagement, Amos Gitaï, 2007* Dheepan, Jacques Audiard, 2015* Diva, Jean-Jacques Beineix, 1981 Douce France, Malik Chibane, 1995 Du rififi chez les hommes, Jules Dassin, 1955 Eden à l’ouest, Costa-Gavras, 2008* Elle s’appelait Sarah, Gilles Paquet-Brenner, 2010* Emitaï, Ousmane Sembene, 1971 Entre les murs, Laurent Cantet, 2008* Exils, Tony Gatlif, 2004 Film socialisme, Jean-Luc Godard, 2010*

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200 Filmography Foxfire, Laurent Cantet, 2012 Free Zone, Amos Gitaï, 2005* Funny Games, Michael Haneke, 1997 Funny Games, Michael Haneke, 2007 Gadjo Dilo, Tony Gatlif, 1997 Hexagone, Malik Chibane, 1994 Holy Motors, Léos Carax, 2012* Hors la loi, Rachid Bouchareb, 2010* Human Zoo, Rie Rasmussen, 2009* Il était une fois dans l’oued, Djamel Bensalah, 2005* Inch’Allah dimanche, Yamina Benguigui, 2001 Indigènes, Rachid Bouchareb, 2006* Indochine, Régis Wargnier, 1992 Inglourious Basterds, Quentin Tarantino, 2009 Intouchables, Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano, 2011* Irma Vep, Olivier Assayas, 1996 Itto, Jean Benoît-Lévy and Marie Epstein, 1934 Joyeux Noël, Christian Carion, 2005* Jules et Jim, François Truffaut, 1962 Kill Bill Vol. 1, Quentin Tarantino, 2004 L’Affaire Farewell, Christian Carion, 2009* L’Atlantide, Georg Wilhelm Pabst, 1932 L’Auberge Espagnole, Cédric Klapisch, 2002 L’Ennemi public numéro 1, Henri Verneuil, 1953 L’Esquive, Abdellatif Kechiche, 2004 L’Intrus, Claire Denis, 2004 La Bataille d’Algers, Gillo Pontecorvo, 1966 La Bête humaine, Jean Renoir, 1938 La Collectionneuse, Eric Rohmer, 1967 La Double Vie de Véronique, Krzysztof Kieslowski, 1991 La Faute à Voltaire, Abdellatif Kechiche, 2001 La Femme Nikita, Luc Besson, 1990 La Fiancée syrienne, Eran Riklis, 2005* La Graine et le mulet, Abdellatif Kechiche, 2007* La Grande Illusion, Jean Renoir, 1937 La Grande Vadrouille, Gérard Oury, 1966 La Guerre est finie, Alain Resnais, 1966 La Haine, Mathieu Kassovitz, 1995 La Petite Jérusalem, Karin Albou, 2005* La Pianiste, Michael Haneke, 2001 La Rafle, Rose Bosch, 2010* La Tragédie de la mine, Georg Wilhelm Pabst, 1931 La Vie d’Adèle: Chapitres 1 et 2, Abdellatif Kechiche, 2013 Le Dernier Tango à Paris, Bernardo Bertolucci, 1972 Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 2001 Le Grand Bleu, Luc Besson, 1988 Le Grand Voyage, Ismaël Ferroukhi, 2004

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Filmography 201 Le Havre, Aki Kaurismäki, 2011* Le Mépris, Jean-Luc Godard, 1963 Le Quai des brumes, Marcel Carné, 1938 Le Salaire de la peur, Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1953 Le Temps du loup, Michael Haneke, 2003 Le Thé à la menthe¸ Abdelkrim Bahloul, 1984 Le Thé au harem d’Archimède, Mehdi Charef, 1985 Les 400 coups, François Truffaut, 1959 Les ‘Bicots-nègres’ vos voisins, Med Hondo, 1974 Les Poupées russes, Cédric Klapisch, 2005* Les Salauds, Claire Denis, 2013* Les Tontons flingueurs, Georges Lautner, 1963 Little Senegal, Rachid Bouchareb, 2001 Loin des hommes, David Oelhoffen, 2014 London River, Rachid Bouchareb, 2009* Lost in Translation, Sofia Coppola, 2004 Lucy, Luc Besson, 2014* Ma 6-T va crack-er (aka Ma cité va craquer), Jean-François Richet, 1997 Ma Mère, Christophe Honoré, 2004 Ma part du gâteau, Cédric Klapisch, 2011* Mandabi, Ousmane Sembene, 1968 Marius et Jeannette, Robert Guédiguian, 1997 Massacre en dentelles, André Hunebelle, 1952 Mortel transfert, Jean-Jacques Beineix, 2001 Munich, Steven Spielberg, 2005 No Man’s Land, Victor Trivas, 1931 Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens, F. W. Murnau, 1922 Notre musique, Jean-Luc Godard, 2004 Omar m’a tuer, Roschdy Zem, 2011* Paris, je t’aime, portmanteau film, 2006* Pépé le Moko, Julien Duvivier, 1937 Pierre et Djamila, Gérard Blain, 1987 Polisse, Maïwenn, 2011* Ponts de Sarajevo, Jean-Luc Godard, 2014* Poussières de vie, Rachid Bouchareb, 1995 Qu’est-ce qu’on a fait au bon dieu? Philippe de Chauveron, 2014 Raï, Thomas Gilou, 1995 Saint Laurent, Bertrand Bonello, 2014* Samba, Eric Toledano and Olivier Nakache, 2014 Samia, Philippe Faucon, 2000 Sarraounia, Med Hondo, 1986 Soleil O, Med Hondo, 1970 Sotto Falso Nome, Robert Ando, 2004 Supercondriaque, Dany Boon, 2014* Taken, Pierre Morel, 2008* Tête de turc, Pascal Elbé, 2010* The Fifth Element, Luc Besson, 1997

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202 Filmography The Interpreter, Sydney Pollack, 2005 The Pianist, Roman Polanski, 2002 The Tourist, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, 2010 Triage, Danis Tanovic, 2009 Trois couleurs trilogy, Krzysztof Kieslowski 1993, 1994, 1994 Trouble Every Day, Claire Denis, 2002 Un long dimanche de fiançailles, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 2004 Un prophète, Jacques Audiard, 2009* Un vampire au paradis, Abdelkrim Bahloul, 1992 Va, vis et deviens, Radu Mihaileanu, 2005* Visions d’Europe, portmanteau film, 2004 Welcome, Philippe Lioret, 2009* Wesh-wesh, qu’est-ce qui se passe? Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche, 2001 Xala, Ousmane Sembene, 1975 Z, Costa-Gavras, 1969 Zazie dans le métro, Louis Malle, 1960 Zero Dark Thirty, Katherine Bigelow, 2011

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204 References and Rowden, T. (eds), Transnational Cinema: The Film Reader (New York: Routledge), 131–42. Bourdieu, P. (1977). ‘The economics of linguistic exchanges’, Social Science Information, 16:6, 645–68. — (1979). La distinction: critique sociale du jugement (Paris: Les Editions de Minuit). — (1991). Language and Symbolic Power, trans. Raymond, G. (Cambridge: Polity Press). Braudy, L. (1989). Jean Renoir: The World of His Films (New York: Columbia University Press). Burgin, A. (2012). ‘African images, transnational audiences: resituating “Africanness” in contemporary francophone West African cinema’ (PhD dissertation, University of Melbourne). Burgin, A., McGregor, A. and Nettelbeck, C. (2014). ‘Not dead yet: three takes on auteurism in contemporary French and francophone cinema’, French Cultural Studies, 25:3/4, 396–407. Caillé, P. (2013). ‘“Cinemas of the Maghreb”: reflections on the transnational and polycentric dimensions of regional cinema’, Studies in French Cinema, 13:3, 241–56. Caoduro, E. (2011). ‘Face to face with the Muslim “other”: European cinematic responses to Al-Qaeda’, Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media, 1:1, 1–12. Celestin, R. (2013). ‘Lost in a globalized space? A certain French cinema abroad’, Yale French Studies, 115, 31–46. Ceuterick, M. (2014). ‘Welcome, Le Havre and Un cuento chino: visceral cosmopolitanism and the domestic sphere’, Transnational Cinemas, 5:1, 78–85. Chaudhuri, S. (2005). Contemporary World Cinema: Europe, The Middle East, East Asia and South Asia (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press). — (2009). ‘Review: Cinema Babel, Translating Global Cinema’, Screen, 50:2, 251–4. Chion, M. (2003). Un art sonore, le cinéma (Paris: Cahiers du cinéma). — (2005). L’Audio-Vision: son et image au cinéma (Paris: Armand Colin). — (2008). Le Complexe de Cyrano: la langue parlée dans les films français (Paris: Cahiers du cinéma). Christie, I. (2013). ‘Where is national cinema today (and do we still need it)?’ Film History, 25:1/2, 19–30. Cinema Libre Studios. (2011). ‘London River: English Language Press Notes’ (Canoga Park: Cinema Libre Studios). Cooke, P. and Vassallo, H. (eds). (2009). Alienation and Alterity: Otherness in Modern and Contemporary Francophone Contexts (Oxford: Peter Lang). Cronin, M. (2013). ‘Review: Translating Popular Film’, Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 34:7, 743–4. Danan, M. (1996). ‘From a “prenational” to a “postnational” French cinema’, Film Comment, 8:1, 72–84. Debril, L. (2008). ‘Pour Xavier Darcos, Entre les murs est “l’histoire d’un échec pédagogique”’, L’Express, 26 September.

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References 205 Deckert, S. And Vickers, C. (eds). (2011). An Introduction to Sociolinguistics: Society and Identity (London: Continuum). Delabastita, D. and Grutman, R. (2005). ‘Fictional representations of multilingualism and translation’, Linguistica Antverpiensia, 4, 11–34. Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. (1980a). Capitalisme et schizophrénie: mille plateaux (Paris: Editions du Minuit). — (1980b). A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Massumi, B. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press). Delgado, J. (2011). ‘Des hommes et des dieux: la voix du silence’, Séquences: La Revue du Cinéma, 270, 45–7. Derakhshani, M. and Zachman, J. (2005). ‘“Une Histoire de décollage”: the art of intercultural identity and sensitivity in L’Auberge Espagnole’, Transitions: Journal of Franco-Iberian Studies, 1, 126–39. Derrida, J. (1996). Le Monolinguisme de l’autre, ou la prothèse d’origine (Paris: Galilée). Do, T. and Lay-Chenchabi, K. (2014). ‘Hors de prix: dons et contre-dons dans La Graine et le mulet (2007) d’Abdellatif Kechiche’, French Cultural Studies, 25:2, 190–201. Doran, M. (2007). ‘Alternative French, alternative identities: situating language in la banlieue’, Contemporary French and Francophone Studies, 11:4, 497–508. Durmelat, S. (2015). ‘Tasting displacement: couscous and culinary citizenship in Maghrebi-French diasporic cinema’, Food and Foodways: Explorations in the History and Culture of Human Nourishment, 23:1/2, 104–26. Ďurovičová, N. and Newman, K. (eds). (2009). World Cinemas, Transnational Perspectives (New York: Routledge). Dwyer, T. (2005). ‘Universally speaking: Lost in Translation and polyglot cinema’, Linguistica Antverpiensia, 4, 295–310. Eades, C. (2006). Le Cinéma post-colonial français (Paris: Cerf-Corlet). Ellis, E. (2006). ‘Monolingualism: the unmarked case’, Estudios de Sociolinguistica, 7:2, 173–96. Esposito, C. (2011). ‘Ronsard in the metro: Abdellatif Kechiche and the poetics of space’, Studies in French Cinema, 11:3, 223–34. Ezra, E. and Rowden, T. (eds). (2006). Transnational Cinema: The Film Reader (New York: Routledge). Ezra, E. and Sánchez, A. (2005). ‘L’Auberge espagnole (2002): transnational departure or domestic crash landing?’ Studies in European Cinema, 2:2, 137–48. Fauvel, M. (2004). ‘Yamina Benguigui’s Inch’Allah dimanche: unveiling hybrid identities’, Studies in French Cinema, 4:2, 147–58. Flood, M. (2016). ‘Terrorism and visibility in Algeria’s “Black Decade”: Des hommes et des dieux (2010)’, French Cultural Studies, 27:1, 62–72. Forsdick, C. (2014). ‘Mobilising French studies’, Australian Journal of French Studies, 51:2/3, 250–68. Foucault, M. (1976). Histoire de la sexualité: I: La Volonté de savoir (Paris: Gallimard). — (1982). ‘The subject and power’, trans. Durand-Bogaert, F., Critical

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206 References Inquiry, 8:4, 777–95. — (1998). The History of Sexuality: The Will to Knowledge, trans. Hurley, R. (London: Penguin). — (2001). ‘Le sujet et le pouvoir’ in Dits et écrits: Tome IV (Paris: Gallimard). García, O. and Wei, L. (2014). Translanguaging: Language, Bilingualism and Education (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan). Gott, M. (2013). ‘Traveling beyond the national: mobile citizenship, flexible identities, and layered Republicanism in the French return road movie’, Contemporary French Civilization, 38:1, 73–95. Gramling, D. (2010). ‘On the other side of monolingualism: Fatih Akin’s linguistic turn(s)’, German Quarterly, 83:3, 353–73. Hardwick, J. (2008). ‘(Rétro)projections: French cinema in the twenty-first century. The bodily and the political’, Australian Journal of French Studies, 45:3, 185–96. Hargreaves, A. (2009). ‘The politics of naming in Franco-Arab/ic cultures’, Contemporary French and Francophone Studies, 13:3, 279–89. Hargreaves, A. and Kealhofer, L. (2010). ‘Back to the future? Language use in films by second-generation North Africans in France’ in Berger, V. and Komori, M. (eds), Polyglot Cinema: Migration and Transcultural Narration in France, Italy, Portugal and Spain (Wien: LIT Verlag), 75–88. Hayward, S. (2000). ‘Framing national cinemas’ in Hjort, M. and Mackenzie, S. (eds), Cinema and Nation (New York: Routledge), 88–96. — (2010). ‘National cinemas and the body politic’ in Higbee, W. and Leahy, S. (eds), Studies in French Cinema: UK Perspectives 1985–2010 (Bristol: Intellect), 43–56. Herrera Vivar, M. T., Lutz, H. and Supik, L. (2011). Framing Intersectionality: Debates on a Multi-Faceted Concept in Gender Studies (Farnham: Ashgate). Higbee, W. (2001). ‘Screening the “other” Paris: cinematic representations of the French urban periphery in La Haine and Ma 6-T Va Crack-er’, Modern and Contemporary France, 9:2, 197–208. — (2007a). ‘Locating the postcolonial in transnational cinema: the place of Algerian émigré directors in contemporary French film’, Modern and Contemporary France, 15:1, 51–64. — (2007b). ‘Beyond the (trans)national: towards a cinema of transvergence in postcolonial and diasporic francophone cinema(s)’, Studies in French Cinema, 7:2, 79–91. — (2007c). ‘Re-presenting the urban periphery: Maghrebi-French film­­ making and the banlieue film’, Cineaste, 33:1, 38–43. — (2010). ‘Of spaces and difference in La Graine et le mulet (2007): a dialogue with Carrie Tarr’ in Higbee, W. and Leahy, S. (eds), Studies in French Cinema: UK Perspectives 1985–2010 (Bristol: Intellect), 215–29. — (2014). ‘Hope and indignation in Fortress Europe: immigration and neoliberal globalization in contemporary French cinema’, SubStance, 43:1, 26–43. Higbee, W. and Leahy, S. (eds). (2010). Studies in French Cinema: UK Perspectives 1985–2010 (Bristol: Intellect). Higbee, W. and Lim, S. H. (2010). ‘Concepts of transnational cinema:

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References 207 towards a critical transnationalism in film studies’, Transnational Cinemas, 1:1, 7–21. Higson, A. (1989). ‘The concept of national cinema’, Screen, 30:4, 36–47. — (2006). ‘The limiting imagination of national cinema’ in Ezra, E. and Rowden, T. (eds), Transnational Cinema: The Film Reader (New York: Routledge), 15–26. Hoad, P. (2010). ‘A Prophet shows us a multilingual future for cinema’, The Guardian (28 January). Holquist, M. (2014). ‘What would Bakhtin do?’ Critical Multilingualism Studies, 2:1, 6–19. Hudson, D. (2006). ‘“Just play yourself, ‘Maggie Cheung’”: Irma Vep, rethinking transnational stardom and unthinking national cinemas’, Screen, 47:2, 213–32. Ince, K. (2005). ‘Glocal gloom: existential space in Haneke’s Frenchlanguage films’ in McCann, B. and Sorfa, D. (eds), The Cinema of Michael Haneke: Europe Utopia (New York: Wallflower Press), 85–93. Jäckel, A. (2007). ‘The inter/nationalism of French film policy’, Modern and Contemporary France, 15:1, 21–36. James, N. (2001). ‘Code uncracked’, Sight & Sound, 11:6, 8. Japrisot, S. (1991). Un long dimanche de fiançailles (Paris: Gallimard). Johnston, C. (2010a). French Minority Cinema (Amsterdam: Rodopi). — (2010b). ‘Intergenerational verbal conflicts, plurilingualism and banlieue cinema’ in Berger, V. and Komori, M. (eds), Polyglot Cinema: Migration and Transcultural Narration in France, Italy, Portugal and Spain (Vienna: LIT Verlag), 89–98. Jouan-Westlund, A. (2014). ‘Ca commence aujourd’hui, Etre et avoir, et Entre les murs: une vision diffractée de l’école républicaine française’, French Politics, Culture & Society, 32:1, 111–26. Kealhofer-Kemp, L. (2013). ‘Mothers, daughters, and the transmission of memory in documentaries directed by women of Maghrebi origin in France’, Studies in French Cinema, 13:3, 227–40. Kelly-Holmes, H. and Pietikainen, S. (eds). (2013). Multilingualism and the Periphery (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Koos, L. (2012). ‘Je t’aime … Moi non plus: Franco-British cinematic relations’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 32:2, 317–20. Kramsch, C. (2006). ‘The traffic in meaning’, Asia Pacific Journal of Education, 26:1, 99–104. — (2012). ‘Authenticity and legitimacy in multilingual SLA’, Critical Multilingualism Studies, 1:1, 107–28. Lampropoulos, A. (2012). ‘Blood, sweat and tears: failed mappings of un-abjection in Hostage and La Haine’, Studies in European Cinema, 9:2/3, 197–210. Lim, H. S. (2007). ‘Is the trans- in transnational the trans- in transgender?’ New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film, 5:1, 39–52. Loshitzky, Y. (2010). Screening Strangers: Migration and Diaspora in Contemporary European Cinema (Bloomington: Indiana University Press). — (2014). ‘Screening Strangers in Fortress Europe and Beyond’, Crossings:

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208 References Journal of Migration and Culture, 5:2/3, 187–99. Lykidis, A. (2012). ‘Spatial allegories of democratic pluralism in Laurent Cantet’s Entre les Murs’, Crossings: Journal of Migration and Culture, 3:1, 3–17. McDonald, C. and Rubin Suleiman, S. (eds). (2010). French Global: A New Approach to Literary History (New York: Columbia University Press). McLaughlin, N. (2008). ‘Code-use and identity in La Grande Illusion and Xala’, Glottopol, 12, 123–34. McMahon, L. (2008). ‘Figuring intrusion: Nancy and Denis’, Contemporary French and Francophone Studies, 12:4, 463–70. Mamula, T. (2013). Cinema and Language Loss: Displacement,Visuality and the Filmic Image (New York: Routledge). Marivaux, P. (1730). Le Jeu de l’amour et du hasard (Comédie Italienne). Marshall, B. (2001). Quebec National Cinema (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s Press). — (2012). ‘Cinéma-monde? Towards a concept of francophone cinema’, Francosphères, 1:1, 35–51. Meylaerts, R. (2013). ‘Multilingualism as a challenge for translation studies’ in Bartrina, F. and Millán, C. (eds), The Routledge Handbook of Translation Studies (New York: Routledge), 131–42. MINERVA Europe. (2005). ‘Multilingual Issues in France – Country Report for Minerva Plus in 2005’ www.minervaeurope.org. Mingant, N. (2010). ‘Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds: a blueprint for dubbing translators?’ Meta: Journal des Traducteurs, 55:4, 712–31. Mishra, S. (2006). Diaspora Criticism (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press). Morrissey, J. (2013). ‘Objectification and resistance: dance performances in Abdellatif Kechiche’s La Graine et le mulet (2007) and Vénus noire (2010)’, French Cultural Studies, 24:3, 306–18. Murray, Levine, A. (2008). ‘Mapping beur cinema in the new millennium’, Journal of Film and Video, 3:4, 42–59. Naficy, H. (2001). An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking (Princeton: Princeton University Press). — (2006). ‘Situating accented cinema’ in Ezra, E. and Rowden, T. (eds), Transnational Cinema: The Film Reader (New York: Routledge), 111–30. — (2010). ‘Multiplicity and multiplexing in today’s cinemas: diasporic cinema, art cinema, and mainstream cinema’, Journal of Media Practice, 11:1, 11–20. Nettelbeck, C. (2007). ‘Kechiche and the French classics: cinema as subversion and renewal of tradition’, French Cultural Studies, 18:3, 307–19. O’Shaughnessy, M. (2000). Jean Renoir (Manchester: Manchester University Press). O’Sullivan, C. (2008). ‘Multilingualism at the multiplex: a new audience for screen translation?’ Linguistica Antverpiensia, 6, 81–95. — (2011). Translating Popular Film (New York: Palgrave Macmillan). Oscherwitz, D. (2010). Past Forward: French Cinema and the Postcolonial Heritage (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press).

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References 209 Otsuji, E. and Pennycook, A. (2015). Metrolingualism: Language in the City (New York: Routledge). Oxford English Dictionary. (2011). (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Phillips, A. (2003). ‘Review: An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking’, Screen, 44:3, 343–6. Phipps, A. (2013). ‘Unmoored: language pain, porosity, and poisonwood’, Critical Multilingualism Studies, 1:2, 96–118. Pratt, M.-L. (1991). ‘Arts of the contact zone’, Profession, 33–40. — (2009). ‘Harm’s way: language and the contemporary arts of war’, PMLA, 124:5, 1515–31. — (2012). ‘“If English was good enough for Jesus …” Monolinguismo y mala fe’, Critical Multilingualism Studies, 1:1, 12–30. Rascaroli, L. (2013). ‘Becoming-minor in a sustainable Europe: the contemporary European art film and Aki Kaurismäki’s Le Havre’, Screen, 54:3, 323–40. Rearick, C. (2011). Paris Dreams, Paris Memories: The City and Its Mystique (Stanford: Stanford University Press). Romney, J. (2011). ‘Memento mori’, Sight & Sound, 21:1, 50–3. — (2016). ‘Jacques Audiard: “I wanted to give migrants a name, a shape … a violence of their own”’, The Guardian (3 April). Rosello, M. (2001). Postcolonial Hospitality: The Immigrant as Guest (Stanford: Stanford University Press). — (2011). ‘Ismaël Ferroukhi’s babelized road movie’, Thamyris/Intersecting: Place, Sex & Race, 23, 257–76. — (2012a). ‘Plurilingual Europeans in a multilingual Europe: incomplete and imperfect communication tactics’, European Studies: A Journal of European Culture, History and Politics, 29, 215–33. — (2012b). ‘French–Romani dialogues in Gadjo Dilo: who teaches European languages and minority cultures?’ European Studies, 29, 307–23. Saer, M. B. and Higbee, W. (2010). ‘Re-presenting diasporas in cinema and new (digital) media: introduction’, Journal of Media Practice, 11:1. 3–10. Saïd, E. (1978). Orientalism (New York: Pantheon Books). Sanaker, J. K. (2008). ‘Les indoublables: pour une éthique de la représentation langagière au cinéma’, Glottopol, 12, 147–60. Serna, L. I. (2014). ‘Translations and transportation: toward a transnational history of the intertitle’ in Bean, J., Horak, L. and Anupama, K. (eds), Silent Cinema and the Politics of Space (Bloomington: Indiana University Press), 121–46. Shohat, E. and Stam, R. (1994). Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media (Bristol: Biddles). — (2006). ‘The cinema after Babel: language, difference, power’ in Shohat, E. (ed.) Taboo Memories, DiasporicVoices (Durham: Duke University Press), 106–38. Shohat, E. and Stam, R. (eds). (2003). Multiculturalism, Postcoloniality and Transnational Media (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press). Sibor, D. (2014). ‘So, um, about that Chinese writing in Lucy’, Complex (1 August).

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210 References Smith, A. (2010). ‘All quiet on the filmic front? Codeswitching and the representation of multilingual Europe in La Grande Illusion (Jean Renoir, 1937) and Joyeux Noël (Christian Carion, 2005)’, Journal of Romance Studies, 10:2, 37–52. — (2012). ‘Crossing the linguistic threshold: language, hospitality and linguistic exchange in Philippe Lioret’s Welcome and Rachid Bouchareb’s London River’, Studies in French Cinema, 13:1, 75–90. Spector, C. (1997). Le pouvoir (Paris: Flammarion). Stam, R. (1997). ‘Multiculturalism and the neoconservatives’ in McClintock, A., Mufti, A. and Shohat, E. (eds), Dangerous Liaisons: Gender, Nation, and Postcolonial Perspectives (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press), 188–203. — (1999). Film Theory: An Introduction (Malden: Wiley-Blackwell). Strand, D. (2009). ‘Etre et parler: being and speaking French in Abdellatif Kechiche’s L’Esquive (2004) and Laurent Cantet’s Entre les murs (2008)’, Studies in French Cinema, 9:3, 259–72. Swamy,V. (2007). ‘Marivaux in the suburbs: reframing language in Kechiche’s L’Esquive (2003)’, Studies in French Cinema, 7:1, 57–68. Tarr, C. (2005). Reframing Difference: Beur and Banlieue Filmmaking in France (Manchester: Manchester University Press). — (2007a). ‘Introduction: French cinema: “transnational” cinema?’ Modern and Contemporary France, 15:1, 3–7. — (2007b). ‘Maghrebi-French (beur) filmmaking in context’, Cineaste, 33:1, 32–7. — (2007c). ‘Transnational identities, transnational spaces: West Africans in Paris in contemporary French cinema’, Modern and Contemporary France, 15:1, 65–76. — (2007d). ‘The porosity of the Hexagon: border crossings in contemporary French cinema’, Studies in European Cinema, 4:1, 7–21. — (2009). ‘Franco-Arab dialogues in/between French, Maghrebi-French and Maghrebi cinema’, Contemporary French and Francophone Studies, 13:3, 291–302. UNESCO Institute for Statistics. (2012). Linguistic Diversity of Feature Films (Montreal: Université de Montréal Ecole des hautes études commerciales). Vanderschelden, I. (2007). ‘Strategies for a “transnational”/French popular cinema’, Modern and Contemporary France, 15:1, 37–50. — (2008). ‘Luc Besson’s ambition: EuropaCorp as a European major for the 21st century’, Studies in European Cinema, 5:2, 91–105. Vincendeau, G. (1998). ‘Hollywood Babel’, Screen, 29:2, 24–39. — (2008). ‘Southern discomfort’, Sight & Sound, 18:7, 46–7. — (2009). ‘Within a closed world’, Sight & Sound, 19:11, 20. — (2010). ‘The Frenchness of French cinema’ in Higbee, W. and Leahy, S. (eds), Studies in French Cinema: UK Perspectives 1985–2010 (Bristol: Intel­­ lect), 338–52. von Bagh, P. (2011). ‘Finland’s master of bleak comedy opts for fairytale optimism in Le Havre’, Film Comment, 47:5, 38–42. Wahl, C. (2005). ‘Discovering a genre: the polyglot film’, Cinemascope, 1, 1–8.

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References 211 Wheatley, C. (2012). ‘Polisse’, Sight & Sound, 22:7, 74. Williams, J. (2011). ‘Open-sourcing French culture: the politics of métissage and collective reappropriation in the films of Abdellatif Kechiche’, International Journal of Francophone Studies, 14:3, 397–421.

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Index accent 13, 40, 78, 134–6 banlieue film 42–4, 78–80, 85–8, 98, 115, 143, 146, 149 beur film 5, 21, 31, 42–4, 77–80, 85, 87, 98, 115, 122–3, 127, 144, 146–7, 180 border(-crossing) 9, 33, 45–6, 49– 50, 53–5, 56–7, 87, 90, 103, 119–22, 127, 129–32, 137, 139–40, 142–3, 145, 148–9, 152, 154–5, 157–8, 189 Bourdieu, Pierre and language 16, 70, 116, 178 Cannes film festival 11, 29, 61, 71, 165 César awards 10–11, 28–9, 61, 122 CNC (Centre national du cinéma et de l’image animée) 10–11, 17, 32–4, 37 co-productions 9–11, 14, 17, 20, 22, 31, 33, 36–7, 40, 47, 54, 102, 127 code-switching 6, 8–9, 25, 39–41, 62–3, 65–9, 71, 76, 84, 90, 92, 103, 117, 128, 169–70, 188, 192 Eurocentrism 4, 12, 24, 50, 55, 60, 66, 70, 88, 102, 111, 116, 119, 130, 144, 153, 162–3, 178, 182, 186, 188, 190 Europe 1, 3, 9, 17–19, 31, 33, 36–9, 42, 44, 46–7, 50, 52–4, 62, 76–7, 80, 82, 100, 103, 115–16, 120, 127, 130–2, 145, 148, 152, 154–5, 157–8,

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161–2, 164, 166, 185, 189, 191 exile 42, 73, 86, 127, 146–7, 151 Foucault, Michel and power 4, 15–16, 103, 189 francophone North Africa 18–19, 22, 40, 42–4, 50, 52–4, 63, 69, 77–81, 96, 119, 129–32, 137, 143, 145, 148, 151, 153–5, 157–66, 174, 178, 180, 183–5, 190 francophone South-East Asia 22–3, 26, 46, 53, 77, 112, 190 francophone West Africa 4, 18, 33, 40, 54, 57, 71, 73, 79, 81, 87, 96, 114, 160, 163, 175, 177, 190 ‘Frenchness’ 10–12, 14, 24, 34, 49, 122, 133, 149, 155 funding/film financing 10–12, 18, 20, 32–4, 37, 81, 102 globalisation 3–4, 14, 44–5, 51, 55, 119–22, 138, 154, 159, 160, 164, 167, 188 hospitality 53, 119, 132–43, 155, 167–8, 170 immigration 1–3, 19, 31, 43, 47, 55, 85, 97, 112, 115, 117, 121–3, 130–2, 142–6, 152, 154–5, 163, 166, 188, 191 interpreting/ers 1–2, 6, 21, 25–7, 38, 74–5, 77, 81, 84–5, 89–98, 100, 104, 112, 115–17, 125, 128, 169, 170, 172, 174, 177

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Index 213 intersectionality 68, 163 language contact zones 3, 51–5, 68, 71, 158 lingua franca(s) 33, 54, 77, 85, 90, 101, 115, 117, 120, 123–4, 139, 141, 155, 157, 159, 161–2, 168, 174, 177–8, 186, 192 Mediterranean 3, 53, 119, 129–32, 137, 139, 143, 154, 157, 191 Middle East 53–4, 80, 148, 153, 158 migrant women 44, 62, 71, 73–5, 78, 81, 94, 99, 132, 134, 146 Paris 1, 3, 19, 41–2, 45, 49, 51–4, 56–8, 60, 62, 66, 70, 72, 75, 78–9, 82, 84–5, 87–8, 102, 144–55 polycentric multiculturalism 4, 17, 115, 185 postcolonialism 3, 5, 12, 19, 22–4, 30, 40, 44, 46, 51, 55, 81, 119, 127, 141, 144, 155, 180, 191

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racism 41–2, 87, 111, 121, 127, 142, 191 religion 6, 13, 44, 56–7, 65–9, 80, 147–8, 151, 160, 163–6, 170, 173–4, 177–82, 184–6 rhizome/rhizomatic relations 50–1, 55, 70–1, 157 school/language classes 6, 25, 38, 52, 56, 58–60, 71–3, 75–6, 87, 89, 98, 120, 126, 149–51, 171–5, 177, 184 subtitles 3, 5, 25–7, 38, 62, 65, 74–5, 77, 80, 93–4, 96, 99, 116, 126, 128, 175, 190 transnational film 4–5, 9, 11–14, 19, 33, 46, 50, 93, 102, 127, 188–9 violence 7, 15, 19, 67, 69, 73, 84–6, 88–9, 91–2, 100, 103–16, 118, 127, 137, 139, 146, 159, 163, 166–7, 171, 181, 186, 191 terrorism 3, 158, 160, 163, 166–7, 177, 180–2, 192

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