ABSTRACT
Paris has long enjoyed a privileged place in the filmic imaginary. However, recent televisual images of violence in the Parisian suburbs create a dichotomous contrast with more than a century of cinematic clichés representing the cradle of cinema as city of light, lovers, and culture. Examining three recent internationally acclaimed French and French-co-produced features – Mathieu Kassovitz’s La Haine/Hate (1995), Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain/Amélie (2001), and Michael Haneke’s Caché/Hidden (2005) – this discussion adds a new perspective to the analysis of representations of Paris. It addresses the relationship between deliberate and unwitting representations of spatial and symbolic exclusion, and between the internalized experience of the city and France’s involvement in an earlier phase of globalization: colonialism.
