O'Shea concluded that they could not hope to be understood if they borrowed or invented American back-slang. By inverting the syllables of a word, for example, "fliques" (cops) become "keufs," "femmes" (women) become "meufs," "mec" (guy) becomes "keum," "Juif" (Jew) becomes "feuj" and "noir" (black) become "renoi." One challenge was posed by "verlan," or back-slang, which is widely used in poor French neighborhoods and in the movie. O'Shea, who is Canadian but has lived in New York, added: "We therefore decided to do it in a sort of street, hip-hop lingua franca that anyone can understand. "But in the United States, it's difficult to think of inner-city kids going to see a foreign film with subtitles," said Mr. When "Hate" was shown in French suburbs, audiences often included young people from nearby housing projects who were delighted to hear their own language on the screen. This time, he said, he did not want ghetto slang to be used, because he felt that it had alienated audiences.īoth translators agreed with this approach. His first movie, "Metisse," which was released as "Cafe au Lait" in the United States, was subtitled with words taken straight from the language spoken in American inner cities.
#LA HAINE ENGLISH SUBTITLES STREAMING MOVIE#
Two Paris-based writers were recruited to do the job: Alexander Whitelaw, a former movie producer who has written the English subtitles for some 600 French movies over the last 20 years, and Stephen O'Shea, a film critic for Variety who has worked frequently with Mr. ‘Drive My Car’: In this quiet Japanese masterpiece, a widower travels to Hiroshima to direct an experimental version of Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya.”.‘Passing’: Set in the 1920s, the movie centers on two African American women, friends from childhood, who can and do present as white.
When they recover a revolver during a race riot in which a friend is mortally wounded by the police, they at last have a way of getting revenge. All were born in France of immigrant parents, all are fluent in French slang, and all are deeply resentful of a French society that does not accept them. Kassovitz won the best-director award at the 1995 Cannes film festival, focuses on three young men of distinct family backgrounds: Jewish, Arab and African. It was a France that many had not seen - or heard - before. They were taken aback to discover a multiracial underclass, seething with anger, that spoke a slang that most French could barely understand.
Many French moviegoers were nonetheless shocked by its raw portrayal of the violence and frustration gripping the immigrant-packed suburbs of major French cities.
THE TITLE OF MATHIEU Kassovitz's second film, "Hate" ("La Haine"), should have served as a warning.