New French Extremity is a term applied a range of films made at the turn of the 21st century that were considered extreme or transgressive. Films of the New French Extremity are characterized by graphic depictions of violence, especially sexual violence, and explicit sexual imagery. Though initially associated with the work of turn-of-the-century French filmmakers such as Gaspar Noé and Catherine Breillat, non-French films subsequently became associated with "new extremity", and use of the label has endured into the 2020s.
Notable films which have been associated with New French Extremity include The Idiots (1998), Baise-moi (2000) The Piano Teacher (2001), Fat Girl (2001), Trouble Every Day (2001), Irréversible (2002), The Brown Bunny (2003), My Mother (2004), Antichrist (2009), A Serbian Film (2010), Nymphomaniac (2013), Raw (2016), and Titane (2021).
Terminology The term 'new French extremity' was first coined by critic James Quandt in 2004 in a critical piece complaining about the violent turn that French filmmaking appeared to have taken in the late 1990s and early 2000s. This article became the first reference for talking about these films: "Bava as much as Bataille, Salò no less than Sade seem the determinants of a cinema suddenly determined to break every taboo, to wade in rivers of viscera and spumes of sperm, to fill each frame with flesh, nubile or gnarled, and subject it to all manner of penetration, mutilation, and defilement." However, most critics and scholars use Quandt's claims as a starting point for how not to talk about new extreme films, with his work having assumed something of a 'straw man' status. He has been criticized as having a dismissive tone, a reductive amalgamation of a wide variety of quite different films, a nostalgia for the old transgressive films, and an unhelpful conflation of films marked by an arthouse style with new French horror, a series of generically marked horror films.
Since then, substantial work done on these films has produced a variety of overlapping terms to describe the films mentioned above and others like them: 'New European Extremism', 'extreme cinema', 'extreme art cinema', 'new extremism', as well as a '', the 'unwatchable', and 'transgressive art films'. The trend is acknowledged to extend beyond the borders of France to Europe, and in some cases further afield, even as French filmmakers dominate any list of new extreme films.
In general, 'extreme' refers both to the kinds of acts depicted in the films, and the manner in which they are depicted. Acts that frequently occur in new extreme films, which are considered extreme, include visible sex (sometimes called unsimulated sex), sexual and sexualized violence, and graphic depictions of violence. According to Oliver Kenny, visibility, proximity, and duration are the key defining stylistic aspects of the presentation of these acts: they are shown in proximate and visible detail, often in lengthy scenes or in long takes, although many other scholars have contributed to discussions about what 'extreme' means in contemporary cinema.
The 'new' in 'new extreme' suggests that these films constitute a new wave that develops upon a series of 'old' extreme films. While films were rarely described as 'extreme' before the 2000s, the 'old' films in question here are mostly violent, politically engaged films from the 1960s and 1970s. The most commonly cited films as 'older' comparisons to 'new' extreme cinema are Weekend and Salò.
History
Sex and violence have long been a part of art and literary history, so there is much writing that may have influenced contemporary cinema. The most commonly discussed literary and artistic reference points for scholars and critics looking at extreme cinema include Marquis de Sade and his many sexual, violent, and sexually violent novels, Gustave Courbet and his painting , Antonin Artaud’s writing about the Theatre of Cruelty, and Georges Bataille's work on eroticism and transgression. More recently, a trend towards graphic depictions of sex and violence in literature, sometimes under the moniker contemporary extreme, has been associated with writers such as Henry Miller, Bret Easton Ellis, Michel Houellebecq, Marie Darrieussecq, Richard Morgiève, Alina Reyes, and others.
In a cinematic context, it is an established practice to mix supposedly 'low-brow' forms of popular expression with 'high-brow' filmmaking, notably by including sexual and violent imagery in arthouse films. Art cinema has long been seen as drawing its aesthetics and narrative tropes from forms of eroticism and depictions of the body that transgress mainstream rules such as those of Hollywood. Indeed, many now-canonical French and Italian art films of the 1960s and 1970s were marketed together with exploitation films in the USA because their graphic depiction of nudity was considered to exclude them from the status of art film.
There is a huge range of experimental filmmaking from Europe and elsewhere that has influenced new extreme films (most notably explored by Tim Palmer). Specifically in terms of sexual and violent imagery, 20th-century films that are often considered as precursors to contemporary extreme cinema include Un Chien Andalou (Buñuel & Dalí 1929), The Virgin Spring (Bergman 1960), Belle de Jour (Buñuel 1967), Weekend (Godard, 1967), Straw Dogs (Peckinpah, 1971), The Mother and the Whore (Eustache, 1973), Salò, Or the 120 Days of Sodom (Pasolini 1975), Cannibal Holocaust (Deodato, 1980), Possession (Żuławski, 1981), and A Nos Amours (Pialat, 1983). Tim Palmer also suggests other precursors such as Window Water Baby Moving (Brakhage, 1959), Christmas on Earth (Rubin, 1963), Flaming Creatures (Smith, 1963), and Fuses (Schneeman, 1967).
The most direct and influential presence looming over contemporary European extremity is the films of Michael Haneke, who may be considered as something of a godfather of new extremity. Haneke's films have become very well known for their self-reflective approach to violence—especially The Seventh Continent, 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance, Benny's Video, Funny Games, Hidden, and The Piano Teacher. Scholars often read these films as explorations of violence and spectatorship: the films' "aesthetic reflexivity is conducive to the spectator's moral reflexivity", and they also present cultural-political critiques of society: "it is not just the violence depicted in or by cinematic and other audiovisual images but the violence of conventional cinematic representation that Haneke's films diagnose and criticize". Similar analyses will later be made of new extreme films; however, with a few key exceptions, Haneke tends to avoid the direct depiction of violence—whilst his films can be considered extremely violent, there is relatively little on-screen violence, because Haneke considers the ear to be "a more direct route to the imagination".
Themes and characteristics
The body New extreme films are especially known for their intimate and challenging images of bodies, what Tim Palmer has called a 'brutal intimacy' and a 'cinema of the body', films "that deal frankly and graphically with the body, and corporeal transgressions, [...] whose basic agenda is an on-screen interrogation of physicality in brutally intimate terms". Palmer describes a cinéma du corps within which he includes many new extreme films (although he does not use this term): This consists of arthouse dramas and thrillers with deliberately discomfiting features: dispassionate physical encounters involving filmed sex that is sometimes unsimulated; physical desire embodied by the performances of actors or nonprofessionals as harshly insular; intimacy itself depicted as fundamentally aggressive, devoid of romance, lacking a nurturing instinct or empathy of any kind; and social relationships that disintegrate in the face of such violent compulsions.
Rape and sexual assault A defining characteristic of new extreme films is the spectacular depiction of sexual violence, especially rape; most emblematically, the 10-minute rape scene in the middle of Irreversible, when the camera remains static for most of the scene while Alex (Monica Bellucci) is anally raped and then almost beaten to death by her assailant. Lengthy scenes of rape are also a key feature of A Serbian Film, Irréversible, Baise-moi, Fat Girl, Free Will, Holiday, Romance, The Tribe, and Twentynine Palms. As Dominique Russell notes, "these directors' engagement with rape and its on-screen representation is part of their engagement with art cinema itself", and Olivier Joyard contends that "it's unbelievable, but it's like this: rape is a trashy, chic experience, a trendy aesthetic loop-the-loop, the dark horizon of modernity."
New extreme films have been very controversial for their sexually violent imagery. As well as issues with censorship and audience walk-outs, scholars regularly critiqued the representation of rape and sexual assault in these films. One key criticism is the use of rape as an aesthetic element—to create shock and exhilaration in the spectator—and subordinated to political or philosophical purposes, rather than being considered as a physical, literal violation. Another concern is how new extreme films exploit the affect and legal ambiguity of rape, creating challenging scenes of sexual violence that are commonly read in terms of their impact on the viewer, rather than in relation to what they have to say about rape in society.
Women and feminism Many of the key filmmakers associated with new extreme films are women and have been discussed in terms of their depictions of women: Catherine Breillat, Claire Denis, Virginie Despentes and Coralie Trinh-Thi, Marina de Van, and, more recently, Julia Ducournau, Coralie Fargeat, Maja Miloš, and Isabella Eklöf. Although some of these female filmmakers have tried to downplay their interest in feminism (e.g., de Van), Breillat, and Despentes are important figures in contemporary French discussions of feminism. Work in French studies has explored how films such as Romance, Fat Girl, and Anatomy of Hell depicted female sexuality, the construction of femininity, gender identity, and sexual violence. Baise-moi has been examined in terms of sexual violence—most notably because of its graphic early rape scene, which created significant controversy—female sexuality, and the female gaze. In My Skin, Raw, Clip, and Holiday have also all been explored in terms of their depiction of female sexual awakening, gendered power relations, sexual violence, and the construction of gender. Key issues for feminist film studies, including sexuality, sexual violence, the gaze, and gender, are repeated concerns for new extreme films, especially those directed by women.
National politics Several new extreme films explore political and historical issues (e.g., Battle in Heaven, A Serbian Film, and Taxidermia)
Much analysis of Battle in Heaven reads it in the context of Mexican history and society. The characters are often understood as representative of a two-class system divided between a lighter-skinned dominant class and a darker-skinned lower class: 'Batalla en el cielo's opening scene juxtaposes the corporeal rigidity and moral deficiency of Marcos's brown male figure, with a sensuous and emotionally layered image of Ana, a phenotypically white Mexican woman'. In this reading, the violent and sexual imagery in the film is a cinematic way of making a socio-political critique of Mexican society.