JEAN-JAQUES BEINEIX:
Beineix started his career as a assistant director on fifteen adverts before releasing his first feature in 1981 ‘Diva’, which attracted the attention of key post-modernism theorist Frederic Jameson, who identified it as the first French postmodern film. Despite ‘Diva’ becoming a cult film for the youth of the time, the French film critic establishment did not appreciate the superficial aspects of its postmodern aesthetics. It was simply considered an irrational attachment to visually pleasing imagery at expense of character development or moral purpose.
‘I think France is a very strange country. There is great intelligence there yet narrowness at the same time… In America, "Diva" is taught in the university. In France they 're told not to like it.’ Beineix http://www.nitrateonline.com/2001/fbeineix.html
As a result of this supposed incoherent attachment to style and surface, Beiniex was stablished as the representative of Cinéma du Look. ‘When people understood cinema and disco; film and video-clips, were no longer separate domains, but elements of an explosive cocktail, cinema took a historical turn. In France, Beiniex represesnts that turn’ (Bonitzer 1983:9). Cinéma du Look was positioned by many including Beineix, in a conflicting position with the Nouvelle Vague cinema. Just as establishment critics who supported the modernist cinema of the Nouvelle Vague were attacking his style, Beineix criticised them for being out of touch with contemporary issues, and youth audiences. ‘I was never the kind of cinephile who belonged to any club. I didn 't get down on my knees at the Cahiers du Cinéma altar.’ (Beineix …) He was later joined by Luc Besson and his film ‘Le Grand Bleu’ (1983), screened at Cannes Film Festival where Beineix’s second film ‘La Lune dans le caniveau’ (‘The moon in the gutter’, 1983) was booed and discredited by most, including Gérard Depardieu, the film’s major star. …show more content…
Despite the bad reviews, Beineix’s third project, ‘37º2 le matin’ (1876) had the same influence and cult-film effect on the youth culture in France and internationally as ‘Diva’ had. This was mainly due to Beatrice Dalle’s unanticipated performance where she managed to flawlessly capture the perfect combination of innocence and rebelliousness characteristic of 1980’s youth Zeitgeist as well as portraying an “icon of femininity in the 1980s” (Wilson, 1999:57). LUC BESSON: Luc Besson is the most ambiguous out of these two directors, receiving constant ridicule from the French critic establishment while at the same time proving a sustained hit within the young audiences. His films tell stories of misunderstood individuals who not only cannot fit into society’s forms, but are also prevented from achieving their goals because of their continuous conflictive state with society. A society that he pictures as the reason for young people’s emotional deprivation up to the age of 20’. (Besson cites in The Observer Review 30.10.94). In his early days, Besson’s only dream was to become a delphinologue. However, after a tragic diving accident affected his sinuses, his dream became impossible. ‘I left my cotton-wooled dream brutally’ (Besson 1993:12 autobiography). At 17, he decided to quit everything, school, family, friends, in order to pursue his career as a filmmaker. “ I was never polluted by the world of cinema. I didn 't even have a TV until I was 16. My expression is a reflection of the world I have seen, and in that world everyone
Beineix started his career as a assistant director on fifteen adverts before releasing his first feature in 1981 ‘Diva’, which attracted the attention of key post-modernism theorist Frederic Jameson, who identified it as the first French postmodern film. Despite ‘Diva’ becoming a cult film for the youth of the time, the French film critic establishment did not appreciate the superficial aspects of its postmodern aesthetics. It was simply considered an irrational attachment to visually pleasing imagery at expense of character development or moral purpose.
‘I think France is a very strange country. There is great intelligence there yet narrowness at the same time… In America, "Diva" is taught in the university. In France they 're told not to like it.’ Beineix http://www.nitrateonline.com/2001/fbeineix.html
As a result of this supposed incoherent attachment to style and surface, Beiniex was stablished as the representative of Cinéma du Look. ‘When people understood cinema and disco; film and video-clips, were no longer separate domains, but elements of an explosive cocktail, cinema took a historical turn. In France, Beiniex represesnts that turn’ (Bonitzer 1983:9). Cinéma du Look was positioned by many including Beineix, in a conflicting position with the Nouvelle Vague cinema. Just as establishment critics who supported the modernist cinema of the Nouvelle Vague were attacking his style, Beineix criticised them for being out of touch with contemporary issues, and youth audiences. ‘I was never the kind of cinephile who belonged to any club. I didn 't get down on my knees at the Cahiers du Cinéma altar.’ (Beineix …) He was later joined by Luc Besson and his film ‘Le Grand Bleu’ (1983), screened at Cannes Film Festival where Beineix’s second film ‘La Lune dans le caniveau’ (‘The moon in the gutter’, 1983) was booed and discredited by most, including Gérard Depardieu, the film’s major star. …show more content…
Despite the bad reviews, Beineix’s third project, ‘37º2 le matin’ (1876) had the same influence and cult-film effect on the youth culture in France and internationally as ‘Diva’ had. This was mainly due to Beatrice Dalle’s unanticipated performance where she managed to flawlessly capture the perfect combination of innocence and rebelliousness characteristic of 1980’s youth Zeitgeist as well as portraying an “icon of femininity in the 1980s” (Wilson, 1999:57). LUC BESSON: Luc Besson is the most ambiguous out of these two directors, receiving constant ridicule from the French critic establishment while at the same time proving a sustained hit within the young audiences. His films tell stories of misunderstood individuals who not only cannot fit into society’s forms, but are also prevented from achieving their goals because of their continuous conflictive state with society. A society that he pictures as the reason for young people’s emotional deprivation up to the age of 20’. (Besson cites in The Observer Review 30.10.94). In his early days, Besson’s only dream was to become a delphinologue. However, after a tragic diving accident affected his sinuses, his dream became impossible. ‘I left my cotton-wooled dream brutally’ (Besson 1993:12 autobiography). At 17, he decided to quit everything, school, family, friends, in order to pursue his career as a filmmaker. “ I was never polluted by the world of cinema. I didn 't even have a TV until I was 16. My expression is a reflection of the world I have seen, and in that world everyone