De bruit et de fureur (1988) - film review

After the death of his grandmother, 14-year-old Bruno goes to live with his mother on a low income housing estate on the outskirts of Paris.  Bruno hardly ever sees his mother, who communicates with him via messages pinned up on the wall, so he spends most of his time alone in her fifteenth floor flat, with only his budgerigar Superman to keep him company.  At school, he finds a new friend in Jean-Roger, a rowdy delinquent who makes life Hell for his teachers.   Like Bruno, Jean-Roger has been neglected by his parents.  His father is a violent thug who has converted their flat into a shooting range, whilst his own father lies ignored in an adjacent room.   Jean-Roger wants to join a gang of delinquents who terrorise the estate, but his initiation rites require him to rape a woman in front of his mates.  Bruno’s one distraction from this brutal world is his growing affection for his schoolteacher.  She patiently sits with him and helps him to overcome his learning difficulties.  But will she be enough to save him, or is he destined to turn out like Jean-Roger?

One of the most startling and disturbing French films of the 1980s is this stark portrait of adolescent neglect, which offered a vision of contemporary society that was both shocking and extremely prescient.  It was the second film to be directed by Jean-Claude Brisseau, who had previously made the equally uncompromising Un Jeu Brutal (1983), and would later find international renown with his lurid depictions of adult sexuality, notably Choses secrètes (2002).  De bruit et de fureur is unquestionably Brisseau’s most substantial film to date, one that savagely propels the spectator into a world of unremitting brutality and hopelessness, where children are constantly neglected and abused, adults behave in the most criminally irresponsible way imaginable, and no one appears to have respect or consideration for anyone else.  Welcome to the housing estates of Paris, to what French politicians glibly refer to as les quartiers chauds.

This is not an easy film to watch - its unrelenting nihilist perspective makes it a cry of despair that is both distressing and chilling - and yet it is thoroughly compelling.  The centre of attention is Jean-Roger, a kind of demonic alter ego of Truffaut’s Antoine Doinel who, lacking any moral boundary, acts like a teenage anarchist who is hell-bent on trashing the world around him.   François Négret’s intense and provocative performance makes this one of cinema’s most harrowing portrayals of adolescence.  What is more disturbing, however, is the ease with which Bruno, the nice kid with the budgie, is so easily lured into Jean-Roger’s world - not because he has any propensity for evil, but because there is no alternative.  He never sees his mother, he has no other friends and Jean-Roger offers not just companionship but approval and a role model.  The only ray of hope in this mire of social decay is offered by Bruno’s teacher, but in the end even this is not enough to banish the darkness that swamps Bruno’s life and makes his existence completely unbearable.  Combining harsh social realism with some unsettling surrealist flourishes and a few touches of wry black comedy, De bruit et de fureur is a film that both captivates and appals, and having watched it you cannot help feeling as though you have been repeatedly punched in the stomach.   A society in which adults routinely neglect their children and behave like children themselves deserves everything it gets.

© James Travers 2010

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