Dis-Locations: Mapping the Banlieue

Representations of the French suburbs in contemporary French film have, since the late 1980s, identified an apparent generic specificity that is linked closely to this location. I will explore the narrative tropes of alienation and exclusion—as dislocations—which have dominated the filmic representation of banlieue spaces and their populations before examining examples in which the realignment of sociocultural topographies and film space foregrounds the question of whether representations of the banlieue remain inherently and generically connected to realist discourses dominated by spatial representation of exclusions, or whether the over-determined spaces of the banlieue can act as décor, as setting and wider spatial frame. I will then focus on the presence and function of banlieue spaces and narratives in two recent French films—Girlhood/Bande de filles (Céline Sciamma 2014) and Palme d’or winner Dheepan (Jacques Audiard 2015)—suggesting that the banlieue continues to provide a complex site that both asserts socio-economic specificities and serves as a stylized setting through which to foreground other negotiations of territory and agency.