“I want to take a fucking
slap across the face when I see a movie. I don’t want to be bored” so says
Mathieu Kassovitz during an interview with Steve Rose for The Guardian
newspaper whilst discussing the state of modern French cinema and its lack of
energy. Lack of energy is something that neither his breakthrough film La Haine (1995) or his 2011 return to social
and political filmmaking Rebellion (L’Ordre et la Morale) can be accused of. In the same interview this
rather unhappy Frenchman also told us that “were
as La Haine was about police brutality, Rebellion is about government brutality”.
Mathieu Kassovitz is not only the director and star of L’Ordre et la Morale[1]
but also produced, co-wrote and co-edited it. The story is told from the
prospective of Captain Philippe Legorjus (Kassovitz) (on whose 1990 account of
the incident the movie is based) head of an elite group of the Gendarmarie
Nationale called the GIGN, the National Gendarmerie Intervention Group a
special unit trained to perform counter terrorist and hostage rescue.
 |
| French diplomacy is a gun in the face! |
Told in one long flashback and set on the island of Ouvea,
New Caledonia an overseas territory of France located in the Pacific Ocean, but
filmed in Tahiti, it recreates a version of event’s which became known as the ‘Ouvea
cave hostage taking’ which took place between 22 April 1988 and 5th
May 1988 in which members of
the separatist group, the National Union for Independence-Kanak and Socialist
National Liberation Front took 27 people, including a French gendarme and a
judge hostage demanding the independence of New Caledonia from France. The
French government refused to negotiate and give in to the group’s demands and
sent in a joint hostage recovery team.
 |
| The battle of Ouvea Cave. |
Kassovitz’s movie shows neither the French army nor
the French government in a good light, demonstrating that politics is more
important than human welfare or in fact human life during a period of the
election battle between Prime Minister Jacques Chirac and Francois Mitterrand.
A gritty true story that highlights injustice in this forgotten incident in
French colonial history.
No comments:
Post a Comment