‘Girlhood’, and Six Other French Crime Movies You Should See

With a title like that, you might be expecting a female spin on Kidulthood or Adulthood. That wouldn’t be the most inaccurate description, but Girlhood cuts way deeper. Taking the same banlieues setting that La Haine did 20 years earlier, it follows Marieme, a shy teenage girl from a broken family, who falls in with a gang when both her parents and her school fail her. Far more than just a ‘girl gang movie’, it’s a beautiful, vibrant tale of youth, race, society and just growing up in general. 

La Haine, the film dubbed "the French Boyz N The Hood" by lazy critics upon its release in 1995, has lost none of its pulling power. Shot in striking black and white, it follows a day in the life three multi-ethnic kids—including a young Vincent Cassel—from ‘Les banlieues’, Paris’ suburban low-income housing projects. Now, over twenty years later, its depiction of police relations with minorities resonates not just in France, but even as far as Baltimore and Ferguson.

Based on an obscure American ‘70s thriller starring Harvey Keitel, The Beat That My Heart Skipped traces pretty familiar ground—French heartthrob Romain Duris stars as a kid who dreams of being a concert pianist, but was born into a family with a history of criminal dealings. It’s an old cliché, the talented black sheep trying to escape a life of crime, but it’s all about how a story is told. This is a film directed with ridiculous energy and pace, and it’s riveting from the very first scene.

The Beat That My Heart Skipped director Jacques Audiard followed up his international breakthrough with this gritty, powerful prison epic. Newcomer Tahar Rahim stars as a teenage immigrant thrown into a French prison, and drawn into a long battle between the different incarcerated factions. It’s long, but very much worth your time, and the scene with the razor blade will haunt you forever.

Real life criminal Jacques Mesrine became both a cult hero and France’s public enemy number one in the ‘70s—kind of like a Gallic Pretty Boy Floyd. Vincent Cassel (who’s starred in a lot of French gangster movies) took on the role of a lifetime to star in this two-film biopic. Part monster, part rock star, it’s a thrilling mix of violence and ‘60s and ‘70s French cool.

Another appearance from Vincent Cassel, this time starring alongside his real-life wife Monica Bellucci. But don’t expect the realism of La Haine or Mesrine—Dobermann is basically a hyper-violent live action cartoon, kind of like a French Sin City (but in colour). Cassel stars as the titular Dobermann, a charismatic criminal who basically spends the entire film shooting up the whole of Paris. 

The Connection drops in the UK at the end of this month, after making its debut at the Toronto Film Festival last year—so we haven’t had a chance to see it ourselves yet. But it looks like it could be yet another great crime epic. Based on the real life heroin trade between France and the US in the ‘70s, it has The Artist’s Jean Dujardin as a cop trying to break the operation on the European side.