"Cinéma du look was a French film movement of the 1980s and 1990s, analysed, for the first time, by French critic Raphaël Bassan in La Revue du Cinéma issue n° 448, May 1989, in which he classified Luc Besson, Jean-Jacques Beineix and Leos Carax as directors of the "look".
"These directors were said to favor style over substance, spectacle over narrative.It referred to films that had a slick, gorgeous visual style and a focus on young, alienated characters who were said to represent the marginalized youth of François Mitterrand's France. Themes that run through many of their films include doomed love affairs, young people more affiliated to peer groups than families, a cynical view of the police, and the use of scenes in the Paris Métro to symbolise an alternative, underground society. The mixture of 'high' culture, such as the opera music of Diva and Les Amants du Pont-Neuf, and pop culture, for example the references to Batman in Subway, was another key feature.
"French filmmakers were inspired by New Hollywood films (most notably Francis Ford Coppola's One from the Heart and Rumble Fish), late Fassbinder films (Lola), as well as television commercials, music videos, and fashion photography" - Wiki
Never heard of this until, well, now.
It overlaps with, or is a subset, of what I call "Time Out films" - films that Time Out would give rave reviews, often there'd be a big feature or a cover story. So you would go and see the latest rave, "must see" film - and be entertained - they had certainly had style and flash - but, a curious thing - they would leave no after trace - certainly nothing that would haunt and linger in the way an earlier era of arty European film (or a darker Hollywood film) that you'd caught on BBC2 as a teenager (in the hope most of the time that there'd be a bit of nudity) might stick with you for years and years after... a troubling scene or an unhappy ending or a disquieted mood... The Time Out film would just pass straight through the system - glossy entertainment with a tinge of art.
Examples of Time Out films = Betty Blue, Jesus of Montreal, many many others whose names I've forgotten (which is memory doing its job, eliminating the non-nutritive)
"Time Out films" = a period-bound genre to me only because of a relatively defined era in which I lived in London and therefore read Time Out fairly regularly (the dowdier, less yuppie oriented City Limits was preferred and usually bought, until it became too dowdy and thin) i.e. end of '85 to 'end of '94).
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