Mathieu Kassovitz can be a restrained actor and an emphatic director. We value him most for La Haine, where three funny, difficult friends matter more than his occasional urge to make a point.
Fi1m perspective
In La Haine (1995), Vinz, Hubert and Saïd can be tiresome company, and that is part of why their friendship persuades us. Kassovitz lets them argue and joke without tidying them into exemplary young men. Vincent Cassel presses Vinz’s resentment hard; Hubert Koundé and Saïd Taghmaoui keep the friendship believable around him. We laughed at their exchanges because the humour came from knowing one another, rather than from jokes inserted to soften the subject. This is the directing we rate most highly: attentive to actors, even when Kassovitz has plenty else he wants us to notice.
His first feature as writer, director and actor, Métisse (1993), preceded the breakthrough of La Haine. The directing then took him towards The Crimson Rivers (2000) and the Hollywood projects Gothika (2003) and Babylon A.D. (2008). Rebellion (2011) returned to institutional violence, a subject his earlier film had approached through the daily company of its three friends.
Scott Stevenson and Kassovitz edit La Haine so that the wandering seldom feels slack, giving individual encounters time without letting the day settle. The music credited to Assassin supplies a restless hip-hop energy that belongs with these characters. We are less persuaded when a conversation is steered towards a useful remark, or a visual flourish competes with the actors. Occasionally, we wanted him to leave the actors alone. Nothing in those flourishes makes us care as much as hearing the friends talk.
His acting offers a quieter counterpoint to that insistence. Alongside directing, he played Nino Quincampoix for Jeunet in Amélie (2001) and Robert for Spielberg in Munich (2005). The restrained supporting work in Munich is a useful reminder that he need not be emphatic to be credible. He also plays Studer in Soderbergh’s Haywire (2011), which we recommend for its hard, plainly staged fights. Start with La Haine, and give its apparently aimless conversations as much attention as its more conspicuous technique.
Biography
Mathieu Kassovitz is a French actor, film director, screenwriter and producer. Born on 3 August 1967 in Paris, he began his career as an actor in the early 1990s. He is known for roles including Nino Quincampoix in Amélie (2001), Robert in Munich (2005) and Studer in Haywire (2011).
As a director, Kassovitz is best known for La Haine (1995), for which he won César Awards for Best Film and Best Editing, as well as the Best Director prize at Cannes. Other directorial credits include The Crimson Rivers (2000), Gothika (2003) and Babylon A.D. (2008). He has also appeared in The Fifth Element (1997), Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra (2002) and Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017).
