La Haine
Short description
Set in a housing estate on the outskirts of Paris, La Haine follows three friends over a single day. Vinz, Hubert and Saïd drift through the banlieue after a night of rioting that broke out when a local teenager was badly beaten during police questioning and ended up in hospital. While they wait for news of his condition, the three move between the estate and the city, and the tensions around them keep building. Vinz is Jewish, Saïd is of North African descent and Hubert is Black; their day is shaped by hostility from the authorities, by their own anger, and by a gun that has come into their hands.
Mathieu Kassovitz wrote and directed the film, which was his first feature as director and opened in 1995. Vincent Cassel plays Vinz, with Hubert Koundé as Hubert and Saïd Taghmaoui as Saïd; Abdel Ahmed Ghili appears as Abdel, and 53 cast members and 52 crew members are credited. Christophe Rossignon produced the film, which runs 98 minutes and cost about 3 million dollars.
Audiences have rated La Haine highly: on IMDb it holds 8.1 out of 10 from 224,000 votes, and on TMDB it also stands at 8.1 out of 10, from 4,705 votes. A film critics' rating of 8.2 out of 10 from 73 reviews places it in similar territory, showing that professional and general viewers have responded to it in much the same way.
What's left behind the scenes
- In the bathroom scene where Vincent (Vincent Cassel) looks at himself in the mirror, two actors were used, mirroring each other's movements. Otherwise, the camera would have been visible behind Vincent.
- French police officers were deeply offended by the way they were portrayed in the film, so at the premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, the police cordon turned their backs to the film crew.
- The main characters of the film speak in Verlan – a slang in which the syllables and sounds of French are arranged in a different order.
- Initially, the film was shot in color, but it was converted to black and white in post-production.
- The film is based on the true story of a young criminal's murder by a police officer in a police station.
- In October 1995, the President of France, Jacques Chirac, and the cabinet of ministers watched the film at a specially organized screening.
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