Maghrebi-French sexual citizens: in and out on the big screen.

Over the past several decades, French directors have produced a wide and rich array of films depicting sexual citizens in ways that move in directions well beyond the classic 1970s drag-queen images in Eduardo Molinaro's internationally acclaimed La Cage aux folles. (1) Some of the most successful commercial films have included Les Nuits fauves (Savage Nights, Cyril Collard, 1995), Gazon maudit (French Twist, Josiane Balasko, 1995), Pedale douce (Gabriel Aghion, 1996), Ma vie en rose (Alain Berliner, 1997), Les Roseaux sauvages (Wild Reeds, Andre Techine 1999), Presque rien (Come Undone, Sebastien Lifshitz, 2000), and Le Placard (The Closet, Francis Veber 2001). Indeed, these films portray a wide assortment of characters--HIV positive bisexual and gay men, go-go boys, love-seeking diesel dykes, gay youth, and even nerdy straight men and rugby players working together in condom factories--and recount the stories of their respective struggles, closets, rainbow flags, and coming-outs. Yet sexual citizens of Maghrebi descent and particularly beur sexual citizens have remained virtually invisible in this French cinematic tradition. Only recently in fact have queer Maghrebi-French characters found their place front and center on the big screen in a handful of commercial and low-budget titles. (2) Nevertheless, in contrast to recent academic work on "beur cinema" where this genre is defined as "works by directors of Maghrebi descent" and "films by and about beurs," the French films to date that provide a fresh look at queer Maghrebi-French citizens have not generally been made, at least not as of yet, by beur filmmakers. (3) A short look into previous decades and a survey of recent French films with queer Maghrebi-French characters will show us how this is the case.

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In the 1980s and 1990s, short and feature-length French films generally depicted queer Maghrebi-French characters as victims of unrequited love, or as troubled youth without stable familial and emotional ties, or as simply the object of other characters' same-sex desires and exploitation. For example, Cyril Collard's 1986 film short Alger la Blanche is one of the first films to recount this sort of fragile friendship in a sexual relationship between a character named Jean (Frederic Deban) and a character of Algerian descent name Farid (Ali Baouche) who, at the outset of the film, proposes a getaway to Algiers for the two of them. When Jean becomes indecisive about this suggestion, Farid leaves Jean's apartment in frustration, gets arrested after allegedly stealing a motorcycle and ultimately turns up missing upon his release from jail. Collard sketches a quick portrait of Farid in this twenty-eight-minute film as a

Maghrebi-French character who is disconnected from his family in the banlieue (low-income suburbs) and is unsuccessful at cultivating a lasting male friendship with Jean, his French counterpart. Indeed, the director's later feature-length Savage Nights (1995) presents a similarly rocky relationship for an HIV-positive bisexual male named Jean who participates in risky sexual adventures with a young man of Spanish descent named Samy. (4)

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Stephane Lifshitz's award winning short Les Corps ouverts (1998) presents a somewhat similar tale in a forty-eight-minute format between a French casting director named Marc (Pierre-Loup Rajot) and a high-school student and aspiring actor of Maghrebi descent named Remi (Yasmine Belmadi). (5) Marc meets Remi during a casting event and tries to establish a lasting romantic relationship with the young man. Nevertheless, Remi feels constantly torn between a home-life where he cares for his ailing father, a stressful high-school career where he is required to prepare for his baccalaureat exams, a part-time job in a grocery store, and a burning desire for nighttime sexual encounters with a variety of unnamed male and female sex partners. Remi becomes increasingly preoccupied with his life beyond high school, and begins to cut classes to explore his sexuality and acting potential. Lifshitz's depiction of Remi may remind some viewers of the classic image of the French New Wave of the troubled schoolboy Antoine Doinel in Truffaut's Les Quatre cents coups (1959). Nevertheless, the spectator is ultimately left with a residual image of a highly fragmented Maghrebi-French character who aimlessly wanders one of Paris's multiethnic neighborhoods, and remains situated on the social margins because of his tenuous ties to both his family and fellow French citizens. (6)

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Perhaps the best example of the narrative tradition of this era is Gael Morel's feature-length A toute vitesse (Full Speed, 1996) in which he crystallizes many of the ethnic and sexual tensions faced by queer Maghrebi-French citizens. In the opening minutes of the film, Samir (Mezziane Bardadi), a young heur of Algerian descent, finds himself alone after his close friend and "blood brother" Rick (Romain Auger) dies in a violent shooting. The remainder of the film recounts Samir's search for meaningful companionship as he meets a nineteen-year-old writer, Quentin (pascal Cervo), his girlfriend Julie (elodie Bouchez), and Quentin's best friend Jimmy (Stephane Rideau). Quentin seemingly befriends Samir by appearing interested in him but uses Samir only to dig into his emotional past about Rick and acquire an exotic storyline for his next novel. Once Samir has divulged his tale, Quentin abandons him and moves to Paris where he works to fulfill his new book contract. In one telling scene, Samir appears sexually aroused after sharing a bed with Quentin; however the latter catches the beur masturbating in the bathroom out of sexual frustration and shames him for having disgusting sexual desires. Following Quentin's departure, Jimmy genuinely befriends Samir and defends the young beur against anti-Arab gang members that live among them in the low-income housing projects. The film ends tragically, however, when Samir demonstrates his mutual friendship and commitment to Jimmy by tracking down one of the skinheads and killing him. Although Samir acts of his own volition to defend his new friend, the narrative closes with his public arrest. The film reinforces several French stereotypes associated with Arab identity and sexuality by depicting Samir as an isolated individual with an overactive libido and as a social deviant with a predilection for crime and violence. Indeed, this film presents one of the most vivid images of queer Maghrebi-French citizens whose sexual desires and emotional attachments to either family members or lovers remain largely unresolved. (7)

While queer Maghrebi-French citizens have appeared in largely underdeveloped roles or as second-class citizens in many of the films of this earlier period, the beginning of the new century has brought about increased cinematic visibility for such characters. In fact, during the past several years, queer Maghrebi-French citizens have emerged as main characters in at least two different categories of films. I will refer to these genres as tales of either "good" sexual citizens who find their way into a socially acceptable (white) middle-class milieu or as "queer" sexual citizens who continue to survive outside that dominant French social space but who are still able to create meaningful friendships and often times even new forms of kinships and queer affiliations. (8)

In the first category, Olivier Duscastel and Jacques Martineau present the "good sexual citizen" in the feature-length Drole de Felix (The Adventures of Felix, 2001), which is a fun-loving road movie about an HIV positive gay man of mixed-raced who embarks on a five-day journey through several provincial French cities on a quest to meet his biological father in Marseille. Although the eponymous character Felix (Sami Bouajila) grows up in the northern city of Dieppe where he has been raised by his French mother and continues to live with his middle-class boyfriend (PierreLoup Rajot), he still maintains a sense of nostalgia for an unspecified Maghrebi tradition and a long-lost father as its representative. While hitch-hiking across France, Felix meets several characters who become an imagined French family for him. He meets his "little brother" in Chartres, his "grandmother" in Brioude, his "cousin" in the Ardeche, his "sister" Isabelle along the national highway #7, and a stand-in "father" figure of Maghrebi descent (played by Maurice Benichou) in Martigues. Many of these characters discourage Felix from looking for his biological father and remind him that the road to acceptance, love, and integration involves the ability to look inside himself and to establish familial-type connections with his compatriots. Felix ultimately abandons his quest to find his real father and is rejoined at the end of the film by his boyfriend with whom he sails happily to Corsica for vacation. At the same time, Felix remains disturbed throughout the film by a racist crime he witnessed shortly after leaving Dieppe, and his own inability to report it to the police out of fear of being mistaken as a criminal because of his own "Arab-looking face." Although, Felix initially "comes out" of Dieppe in search of his Maghrebi roots, he is ultimately resituated as part of a larger French family and a broader national space based in the values of liberte, egalite, et fraternite that do not highlight individual differences related to gender, class, ethnic origin, or sexual orientation. In sum, Felix appears as the "good" sexual citizen because he does not show overt signs of ethnic or sexual difference.

Merzak Allouache is an Algerian director working in France whose 2003 film Chouchou falls into this same genre that involves the "good" sexual citizen. The film's main character Choukri or "Chouchou" (Gad Elmaleh) is a young Algerian man who leaves the bled (unspecified countryside or town) for a better life in France. In the opening scene of the film, he arrives by boat at Marseille and takes the high-speed train to Paris. Upon arrival in the capital, Chouchou stumbles upon a wedding in a local church and following the ceremony meets his own new family when the priest, "father Leon" (Claude Brasseur), and the monk, "frere Jean" (Roschdy Zem), offer him a place to stay while he gets settled. They also arrange a part-rime job for him as a receptionist and maid for the psychologist Nicole Milovavovich, and in this context Chouchou reveals his homosexuality and explains to her that one day he would like to be a woman "from head to toe." Milovavovich encourages him to follow this path and from that day forward Chouchou reports to work dressed as a woman. As the film progresses, Chouchou is reunited with Maghrebi friends and his nephew who have also fled the bled and work as female impersonators and barmaids in L'Apocalypse, a Clichy-based cabaret. Chouchou eventually joins them in the club and works there until he meets his future boyfriend and eventual "husband," the polished Stanislas de la Tour-Maubourg (Alain Chabat). The spectator learns that the couple plans to marry when Stanislas introduces Chouchou to his parents as his fiancee and Chouchou later asks father Leon to bless their "marriage." The film takes a brief tragic turn when an unhinged police inspector, who is also a patient of Doctor Milovavovich, discovers that Chouchou has been residing illegally in France and plans to deport him. However, following a comic chain of events, Chouchou is released from police custody and is reunited with his future bridegroom. This twenty-first-century version of Cinderella and La Cage aux folles ends in upbeat fashion with a wide-angled shot of Chouchou in a wedding dress and red-colored wig running across a field to be reunited with Stanislas. This Hollywood-like ending is accompanied by an electric-guitar rendition of the wedding march and a view of the local church and its congregation, all of which successfully presents the queer Maghrebi protagonist as part of a surrogate French family that openly welcomes "foreigners." However, like Felix, Chouchou's signs of ethnic and sexual differences are never fully developed in a storyline that reinforces the symbolic order of gender roles, the importance of marriage, and gaining a father's holy Catholic blessing. It is no accident that this blockbuster comedy about a "good" sexual citizen sold over three million tickets in France in 2003 and that Gad Elmaleh was nominated for a French Cesar for best actor the following year.

In contrast to these tales of "good" sexual citizenship, several other commercial and low-budget titles have depicted an alternative model for Maghrebi-French characters by relying on less conventional and more "queer" affiliations. Some of these films involve painful stories of sex workers who inhabit Paris's streets around Place Clichy, Place Pigalle, and the Porte Dauphine and these images stand in stark contrast to the happy-go-lucky stories in such feature-length comedies as Chouchou. For example, Liria Begeja's dramatic feature-length Change-moi ma vie (2001) chronicles the life of a young Algerian male prostitute named Samy (Roschdy Zem) who leaves behind the Maghreb and his Muslim family to follow his own dream of racing, however, he ends up instead as an illegal immigrant in France who is forced to work the street corner in order to survive. One day while running in the park, Samy unexpectedly saves the life of a middle-aged actress Nina (Fanny Ardant) who is recently back from an eight-year stint in Russia. This encounter sparks an unexpected friendship between them and they swap stories about their past lives and future goals. Samy dreams of becoming a marathon runner and Nina dreams of getting back into the Paris theater scene. Nina gradually gains a sense of Samy's anguish as an alien and sex worker who turns to drugs in order to escape the pain and she tries to get closer to him one night when she goes looking for him along the boulevard and is mistaken as a prostitute by an anxious and agitated male client. This turning point prompts Samy and Nina to make a deal that will help both of them to reclaim their respective dreams; however, the film ends tragically when Samy falters from this course and dies from a drug overdose. In the final scene, the spectator sees that this short-lived friendship has transformed Nina in profound ways when she decides to devote her acting career to playing the role of a prostitute in an open-air street theater. Hence, the film ends with the death of the queer citizen of Maghrebi origin, yet emphasizes how his story and life continue through Nina's own artistic creation.

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Algerian-born director Amal Bedjaoui's medium-length film Un fils (2003) presents a similar image of a transvestite and male prostitute named Selim (Mohammed Hicham). This Maghrebi-French character struggles to strike a balance between his life of survival as a prostitute and constant longing for the love of his conservative Muslim father. While both of these films are somewhat reminiscent of the productions of the 1980s and 1990s described above, these directors have deliberately placed the experiences of queer Maghrebi-French characters at the center of their own stories.

Other recent French titles present queer Maghrebi-French citizens as full-fledged characters by placing them in friendships and relations that may initially appear as unlikely pairings or trios. Nevertheless, one of the most innovative and exciting examples of this type of queer storytelling is Lifshitz's dramatic feature-length Wild Side (2004), which portrays the burgeoning relationship between a transsexual prostitute named Stephanie (Stephanie Michelini), a Russian immigrant named Mikhail (Edouard Nikitine), and a young beur hustler named Djamel (Yasmine Belmadi). The film illustrates how each of these characters comes to terms with their own childhoods, biological families, and points of origin. For example, when Stephanie learns of her mother's failing health, she returns to her distant hometown to take care of her and deals with a flood of childhood memories. Mikhail, a deserter from the Chechen war who has lost contact with his extended family in Russia, ends up in Paris working as a dishwasher yet is faced with the constant longing to reconnect with his parents. Djamel has left behind the banlieue where his mother and brother still live and he now earns a living by having sex for money with men and women in the public toilets of Paris's train stations. Indeed, as each of these characters explores their respective familial situations, their affection and commitment to each other deepens and they become part of their own new-found family. The ultimate death of Stephanie's mother and the lowering of her coffin into the grave seal their mutual commitment and propels the narrative forward to the final scene where the spectator is left with an image of the trio sleeping together in a train that speeds back to the nation's capital and away from all things past.

A similar tale can be seen in the comedic adventure Origine controlee (2001) by Zakia and Ahmed Bouchaala who are two directors of Maghrebi descent. This film unites a "French" character of several generations named Patrick Morel (Patrick Ligardes), a French beur named Youssef (Atmen Kelif), and an Algerian prostitute named Sonia (Ronit Elkabetz), who meet in prison and, after eventually escaping, embark together on a series of exploits. Although they keep planning to part ways, each adventurous turn reunites them. The characters ultimately decide to flee France once and for all and in the final scene they head out together all atop the seat of one motorcycle for a new international adventure in Geneva, Saint Tropez, or perhaps Algiers. Although the spectator learns atone point during the film that Sonia is a male-to-female transsexual, and that she and Patrick have fallen for each other over the course of the story, the film ends without any real exploration of this relationship nor how these three characters might manage their lives together once they leave France. What is important to remember however is that such dramatic and comedic titles as Wild Side and Origine controlee are examples of a growing number of films produced in France that propose new forms of kinship for a variety of characters who embody national, ethnic, sexual and other forms of difference. (9)

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Finally, Remi Lange's Tarik el hob (2003) is perhaps the most striking film to date to present a fresh look at "queer" Maghrebi-French sexual citizens. This low-budget film is Lange's first feature-length dramatic production and it charts the sexual discovery of a supposed "heterosexual" beur of Algerian descent named Karim (Karim Tarek) who attends university in Paris. Prompted by an assignment in his sociology course, and a television report on the tradition of homosexual marriage between the working-class Zegala men in the Siwa Oasis in Egypt, Karim decides to conduct an original video report on male homosexuality among Maghrebis. While working on this project, he meets several characters in Paris and Marseille who willingly participate as research subjects. The story takes a different turn, however, when Karim meets Farid (Riyad Echahi), a self-assured gay Algerian airline steward who helps Karim explore his own sexuality and "road to love." The remainder of the film chronicles the burgeoning love story between the two young men and Karim ultimately leaves Paris and his girlfriend Sihem to travel with Farid to Morocco where they explore the "homosexual practices" of the Maghreb.

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What is most striking about this film is the mix of references that are derived from both a queer French tradition and longstanding North-African references. The director draws at once on several references to a French literary tradition associated with the works of Jean Genet, who is often depicted as the ultimate sexual outlaw, and the Egyptian tradition of same-sex marriage between men in the Siwa Oasis. Indeed, this mix culminates visually in the final scenes of the film when Karim and Farid travel to Larache, Morocco, to visit Genet's tomb, and when they later declare their respective love for each other on the town square in Marrakech and exchange wedding rings. In sum, Lange brilliantly charts a new path of queer affiliations for these Maghrebi characters that draw them to nondominant images and spaces that have traditionally thrived both on the margins inside of France, and outside of France all together. (10)

In conclusion, I would argue that these recent films about "queer" sexual citizens that include citizens of Maghrebi descent and their new forms of kinship have much to tell us not only about a multiethnic France, but also about a multicultural France that embraces a whole range of manifestations of difference. As film scholar Carrie Tarr has recently noted, "[F]ilms by and about the beurs offer a touchstone for measuring the extent to which universalist Republican assumptions about Frenchness can be challenged and particular forms of multiculturalism envisaged and valued" (3). Indeed, films like the ones discussed in this essay can also participate in this project of nation rebuilding. In fact, I would argue that films involving the intersection of both ethnic and sexual differences hold the radical potential to challenge the French universal model in the most significant of ways and change the notions of citizenship and belonging to the "French family" in new multicolored and queerly visible ways, and ultimately assisting an entire new generation of French citizens--beur and otherwise--out of their respective closets. (11) I encourage the reader to look later this year for the DVD release of the comedy Beurs Appart', a story about gay beurs who leave the banlieue and set up a glamorous home in Paris, to see how this could potentially play out in storylines about queer Maghrebi-French citizens made by beur-identified directors." (12)

Maghrebi-French (Beur) and Related Cinema:

A Guide to Resources (continued)

Selected Maghrebi-French (Beur) Writing

Begag, Azouz. Le Gone du Chaaba. Paris: Seuil, 1986. Edited and cotranslated by Mec G. Hargreaves as Shantytown Kid, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007.

Begag, Azouz. Ethnicity and Equality: France in the Balance. Edited and translated by Alec G. Hargreaves, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007.

Belghoul, Farida. Georgette! Paris: Barrault, 1986.

Benaicha, Brahim. Vivre au Paradis: D'une oasis a un bidonville (autobiography). Paris: Desclee de Brower, 1992.

Benguigui, Yamina. Femmes d'Islam. Paris: Editions Albin Michel, 1996.

Benguigui, Yamina. Memoires d'immigres, L'heritage maghrebin. Paris: Canal+ Editions, 1997.

Charef, Mehdi. Le The au harem d'Archimede. Paris: Gallimard, 1983.

Le Harki de Meriem. Paris: Gallimard, 1991.

Guene, Faiza. Kiffe kiffe demain. Paris: Hatchette Litteratures, 2004.

Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow. New York: Harcourt, 2006.

--Du reve pour les ours. Paris: Hachette Litteratures, 2006.

Nini, Soraya. Ils disent que je suis une beurette. Paris: Fixot, 1993.

End Notes:

(1) For more on sexual citizenship, see Bell and Binnie, The Sexual Citizen: Queer Politics and Beyond (Malden: Blackwell, 2000).

(2) For the purposes of this essay, I will use the term "queer Maghrebi-French citizens" to refer to French citizens of Maghrebi descent and other residents of Maghrebi descent who embody nonnormative notions of gender and sexuality. I will avoid the use of the term "queer Franco-Maghrebi" which generally refers to individuals of mixed parentage and/or to relations between the two places (i.e., France and the Maghreb). Moreover, I avoid the use of terms like "gay" or "lesbian" because these labels tend to deal with sexuality in ways that reinforce sexual categories that have been largely associated with an Anglo-American style of identity politics and consumer culture, and ultimately have little to do with the experience of French characters of Maghrebi descent. I also use the term "beur" cautiously in this essay because, while it is evident that these cinematic characters are of Maghrebi origin, it is not always dear from what country they originate, nor if they are actually second- and third-generation Maghrebis born in France. Nevertheless, whenever possible, I will clarify the country of origin for these queer Maghrebi-French characters.

(3) For more on beur filmmaking, see Tarr, Reframing Difference: Beur and Banlieue Filmmaking in France (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005).

(4) Indeed, this character of Spanish descent could be considered as a stand-in for a character of Maghrebi origin.

(5) This film was awarded the Prix Jean Vigo in 1998.

(6) See also Lifshitz's made-for-television movie Les Terres froides (1999).

(7) This type of marginalization continues into the twenty-first century with such characters as the young bodybuilder Daniel (Jalil Lespert) in Jean-Pierre Sinapi's Vivre me tue (2003) whose sexuality remains problematic.

(8) For more on "good" and "bad" sexual citizenship in France, see Provencher, Queer French: Globalization, Language, and Sexual Citizenship in France (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007). It is noteworthy that both French- and Tunisian-born directors have also made films on Maghreb-based sexual citizens. These include, for example, Nouri Bouzid's L'Homme des cendres (1986), and Bezness (1992), as well as Philippe Vallois's Un parfum nomme Said (2003). In at least two of these films (Bezness and Un parfum nomme Said) the male protagonists--Roufa and Said--prostitute themselves through their "petit bezness" ("sex work') to European male and female sexual tourists in Tunisia and Morocco in hopes of finding the financial means to flee the Maghreb for a better life in Europe. Although the subject of such films lies beyond the scope of this current essay, we will see further below how the theme of prostitution persists in other more recent films about queer Maghrebi-French characters.

(9) Indeed, Gael Morel's Le Clan (2004) is part of this narrative tradition with its homoerotically charged tale of kinship between three motherless brothers (Marc, Christophe, and Olivier) who each struggle to find their own way and yet have trouble ever parting ways. Nevertheless, the mother's ambiguous ties to Algeria are not developed and the secondary beur character Hicham (Salim Kechiouche) is only allowed to discover a fleeting moment of love with the youngest of the three brothers named Olivier (Thomas Dumerchez).

(10) A somewhat similar image of a new generation of queer Maghrebi- French characters emerges in Robert Salis's Grande ecole (2004). One of the main characters Paul (Gregori Baquet), a student in one of France's prestigious graduate schools, has a sexual and emotional adventure with the working-class Mecir (Salim Kechiouche), who reminds his upper-middle class counterpart that sexual identity categories like "gay" or "homo" no longer matter in this day and age. While such characters are indicative of a new queer turn in French cinema involving sexual citizens, Mecir is still only a secondary character and occupies a position of unrequited love like several of the other characters discussed herein.

(11) It is worth noting here that few films to date deal with the issues of queer Maghrebi-French female characters. See for example such made-for-television films as Patrick Grandperret's Clara, cet ete-la (2002), and Alain Tasma's La Surprise (2007), which is due out on DVD sometime this year.

(12) This title is forthcoming in November 2007 from the production company Les Films de l'Ange under the direction of Remi Lange. For more information, visit: http://www.myspace.com/beursappart.