La Haine (1995)

There are films that arrive at precisely the right moment and embed themselves in the cultural conversation so thoroughly that it becomes almost impossible to separate them from the arguments they provoked. Mathieu Kassovitz's La Haine, released in France in 1995, is one of those films. Set across roughly twenty-four hours in the banlieues on the outskirts of Paris, it follows three young men, Vinz (Vincent Cassel), Hubert (Hubert Koundé) and Saïd (Saïd Taghmaoui), as they drift through the aftermath of a night of violent unrest, waiting on word about a hospitalised friend and trying, with varying degrees of success, to keep a lid on the tension simmering between them. The film arrived at a time when France was wrestling publicly with questions of police violence, racial inequality and the isolation of its peripheral housing estates, and it did not politely sidestep any of those questions. When it screened at Cannes, Kassovitz won the Best Director prize, and the French government reportedly arranged a private screening for the cabinet. Films rarely get to be both art and social document at the same time, but La Haine managed it, and its reputation has only grown in the decades since.

Kassovitz, who had already made Rebellion (2011), shot the film in black and white on a relatively modest production supported by Kasso Productions, La Sept Cinéma and Les Productions Lazennec. The monochrome palette gives the concrete landscapes of the banlieue a look that sits somewhere between documentary realism and expressionist cinema, a choice that feels considered rather than merely stylish. The three leads were largely unknown at the time. Vincent Cassel, who has since built a substantial international career (you can see him in a very different register in Black Swan (2010)), brings a nervy, coiled energy to Vinz. Hubert Koundé and Saïd Taghmaoui are equally committed, and the chemistry between the three is the engine that keeps the largely plotless premise moving. The film runs at 98 minutes and takes its time, which has always been part of both its appeal and, for some viewers, its difficulty.

It is worth placing La Haine alongside other French-language cinema of the period and since, because it did not emerge in a vacuum. France has a long tradition of socially engaged filmmaking, from earlier pictures rooted in questions of class and identity (such as Sugar Cane Alley (1983)) to more recent work still grappling with marginalised communities (Lingui, the Sacred Bonds (2021)). Kassovitz was tapping into something with a long history, even if La Haine's particular setting and register felt urgent and new at the time. Thirty years on, the film is taught in schools, cited in academic papers, and regularly listed among the most important European films of its decade. Whether that reputation holds up under honest scrutiny is, as ever, a fair question to ask.

First time I watched this I loved it. I was stoned. 2nd time I watched this with my girlfriend was many years later as an adult. Honestly? It's quite boring. Very little really actually happens. Vincent really isn't a likeable character either. I find myself not rooting for him at all. Hubert's character is great and all feels very "Boyz n the hood" as a character trying to escape the surroundings they grew up in only to ultimately fall victim to it. The story is still relevant today as it was back then, it's just a little slow to build.

I think that tension, between the film's obvious cultural weight and the honest experience of watching it, is something a lot of people quietly feel but rarely say out loud. The Hubert thread genuinely earns its place, and that Boyz n the Hood comparison lands because it is accurate rather than lazy. The rest of it, though, does ask quite a lot of your patience, and there is a difference between a film being slow and a film earning its slowness. Coming back to a film years later, sober and with different expectations, is probably the truest test of whether something has substance or whether it was always more myth than movie.

Rating: ★★★½  | Year: 1995  | Watched: 2025-04-13

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Trailer

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Related on Movies With Macca

More from Mathieu Kassovitz: Rebellion (2011)
More with Vincent Cassel: Black Swan (2010)
More from France: Fantastic Planet (1973) · Letter from Siberia (1957) · Lessons of Darkness (1992) · Here and Elsewhere (1976)
More from the 1990s: Lessons of Darkness (1992) · Shinjuku Boys (1995) · Blue (1993) · Cemetery Man (1994)
More drama: Viy (1967) · Wonder (2017) · A Better Tomorrow (1986) · Beautiful Boy (2018)