This energetic, jumpy first film by writer-director Mathieu Kassovitz takes a seriocomic look at three young Parisians whose relationship is complicated by race and sexual jealousy.
Jamal (Hubert Kounde), a Muslim law student, is the affluent, well-groomed black son of African diplomats. Felix (Kassovitz) is a white Jewish bicycle messenger who works for Maurice (Marc Berman) and lives with his sister Sarah (Eloise Rauth) and his Yiddish-speaking elderly aunt (Rywka
Wajsbrot) and grandparents (Tadek Likcinski, Jany Holt). They both love Lola (Julie Mauduech), a light-skinned black woman who was born in Martinique, but neither knows of the other's existence. When Lola announces to them simultaneously that she's pregnant, adding that she loves them both and
intends to have the baby, both men are understandably shocked. Felix cuts off all communication with Lola, while Jamal moves in with her, quitting school and taking a job in a fast-food restaurant.
Talking with her grandmother (Berthe Bagoe), Lola is coy about who the father is--she may not know. Felix, suffering unasked-for advice from his drug-dealing older brother Max (Vincent Cassel), starts following Lola and Jamal. Eventually he apologizes to Lola, and she suggests that they all live
together platonically, with the boys helping out with shopping, cooking, and cleaning. Felix and Jamal grow to like each other, although their possessive squabbling often irritates Lola. The baby is born at last, and the film fades out on a shot of three beaming, proud young parents.
CAFE AU LAIT begins with an view of the Earth from outer space; cutting in sequentially to a Paris neighborhood, the camera continues on a zoomy tour of the bustling haunts of the three main characters, all shot from the level of a bicycle's pedals. It's the perfect introduction to a volatile
world of housing projects, tough-talking street life, noisy bars, and rock clubs. The film resembles an audaciously updated French New Wave movie, although Kassovitz's jumping-off place is Spike Lee's SHE'S GOTTA HAVE IT. Kassovitz efficiently delineates the disparate backgrounds and cultures of
his lively, appealing characters, and he plays cleverly with the contradictions of race and class: Jamal fears parking his expensive car in bad white neighborhoods and is lousy at basketball, while Felix's thundering rap music annoys Jamal. Pierre Aim's camera seems constantly in motion, although
Kassovitz also has the good sense to simply stand still and watch, as when Felix's grandfather performs a Yiddish song-and-dance number. The movie is also casually amoral--Felix and Max both occasionally deal drugs--and rigorously unsentimental. Consequently, its idealized, open-ended conclusion
seems a little incongruous with all that has preceded it. (Even this scene, however, is offset by a racist rant under the end-credits; a right-wing politician is heard warning that modern French youth is heading for "a bastardized, impoverished race.")
In a too brief appearance, veteran Jean-Pierre Cassel (whose son plays Max) is especially fine as Lola's sympathetic gynecologist, and Jany Holt, who played the prostitute in Renoir's THE LOWER DEPTHS (1936), is amusing as Felix's grandmother. The French-Belgian co-production premiered at the
1993 Venice Film Festival under its original title METISSE, which translates as "half-breed." (Nudity, sexual situations, substance abuse, profanity.) leave a comment
