Quotes of the Day

Mathieu Kassovitz wants you to know that he's no sellout. Slouching in an armchair in a suite at Paris's Hotel Royal Monceau, the 36-year-old French filmmaker and actor is talking about Gothika, his sixth film behind the camera and his first in English. It's the story of a prison psychiatrist played by Halle Berry who finds herself on the other side of the bars, haunted by supernatural visions of a mysterious young woman. There's no way around it; with this psychological thriller starring Berry, Penelope Cruz and Robert Downey, Jr., Kassovitz has gone Hollywood — but it's all part of the plan. "It's been a way to learn how to make a different kind of movie," he explains. "To make them better, to work with a studio and understand the politics of it all. Ideally, the best way to make movies is at the crossroads of France and Hollywood, freedom and business." The next time, as he sees it, he will be able to do more than please crowds. "A director like Spielberg has the luxury of making the kinds of movies he wants, with whomever he wants. But you have to go through a lot to get to that point."

He may feel he still has dues to pay, but Kassovitz is already sitting pretty. Known primarily to international audiences for his gentle performance as Nino, the shy collector of discarded ID photos in Amelie, he's a multi-media star in his own country. With his simple, asymmetrical good looks, he was the unorthodox choice as the face of Lancôme's 2001 "Miracle For Men" fragrance campaign, and has acted in more than a dozen movies of all stripes by other directors, both in French and English, as well as his own. But he considers himself first and foremost a director. The first feature he wrote, directed and starred in, Métisse, (aka Café au Lait), was a romantic comedy love triangle about sex and race. But it was with his second film, 1995's La Haine, (Hate) that Kassovitz exploded onto the cinematic and even political scene. Shot in stark black and white, it's a rage against the disenfranchisement and marginalizing of poor immigrants in the Paris suburbs, depicting a brutal 24-hour period in the lives of three friends — a young black man, a Jew and a North African Muslim. La Haine was a primal scream at fans of French cinema accustomed to the romantic vision of Parisian life, and it helped break some taboos for its own citizens; nine years later, issues like immigration, poverty, race relations and the broadening of French identity are commonplace topics discussed all over the media. "The film itself has become a part of the French cultural landscape," says Kassovitz. "It's remained a reference for a lot of people, and I'm very proud of that."

La Haine's enduring image is actor Vincent Cassel, shirtless, his hair closely cropped, offering a menacing, dead-on French mimic of De Niro's "You talkin' to me?" monologue from Taxi Driver. Like director Martin Scorsese, Kassovitz has found his own De Niro in Cassel, who's acted in three of his five French films. The two friends have also shared the screen together in the 2001 Nicole Kidman-vehicle Birthday Girl, playing Russian con men. Cassel says he was drawn to Kassovitz's vision of breaking out of the national cinematic lull the actor calls "the post-French New Wave syndrome." He defines their frequent collaborations as a pragmatic choice. "On the set, he's someone I can argue with, very intensely, then minutes later be having a laugh," says Cassel of his friend of over a dozen years. "When you know someone that well personally, there's a shorthand when you work. You go deeper, faster."

Genetics may explain Kassovitz's attraction to film. His mother is a film editor, and his father Peter, who immigrated to France from Hungary in 1956, is also a filmmaker (1999's Jakob the Liar). "Like any kid, I asked myself if I wanted to join the family business. It doesn't matter what a parent's job is — whether he's a butcher or a director, it's the first place you turn." Having fun with the analogy, he grins wide. "If your dad is a good butcher, he'll make you love meat, and my dad's a good director."

Kassovitz has acted for his father, as well as in a dozen other films and most recently played a priest in Costa-Gavras' 2002 feature Amen about the Vatican's role in the Holocaust. But he says he's through with acting, at least for the moment, in order to concentrate on directing. Just as a passionate American cinephile will gravitate toward the French masters of the New Wave, young Kassovitz found himself enraptured by American films, and language is a big part of the attraction. "There's no comparison to English in the movies. It's the Hollywood language, whether it's Cleopatra or Die Hard, it just has a flow that other languages don't." Directing his first American production, he had his own movie-geek frisson moment. "One day on the Gothika set, I had five actors all barking lines at each other" — he sits up to imitate a police detective in a standard thriller moment — and I said to myself, "This is so cool! I've got cops talking in coptalk in an American movie."

This fascination has been evident in the evolution of Kassovitz's work as a director, with projects that are less and less foreign to Hollywood. His film after La Haine, Assassins, was the story of a hitman and his protégé, and in 2000 he made Les Rivières Pourpres, (Crimson Rivers), a buddy-cop actioner starring Cassel and Jean Reno. Kassovitz's path to Hollywood has seemed almost inevitable. "He's not the only French cinema figure these days looking at success internationally," says Sophie Dacbert, editor-in-chief of Le Film Francais, a weekly publication about the industry. "He's a solid director who's capable of doing Hollywood cinema, as well as personal films, then back again." Dacbert applauds Kassovitz and other French cinema figures with a foot in either door. "Cinema is by nature international, and I think it's great to be able to work in both worlds, as Kassovitz is doing. It's true though, that audiences can be tough, trying to pigeonhole people as too populist, arty or political, and he's trying to avoid these labels."

The director himself acknowledges that Gothika is a calling card of sorts, "my way of saying to American producers that I can write and direct my own movies, that I can finish on schedule and that my word is good." So far, it's panning out; despite mixed reviews, the $40 million-budgeted Gothika has so far earned more than $60 million in the U.S. and another $45 internationally before its U.K. release this week. And he's already in pre-production on his next project, an adaptation of French author Maurice G. Dantec's 1999 cult sci-fi novel, Babylon Babies, which he's planning to shoot later this year. "This is a huge one," he says. "It's expensive, it's in English, and Vincent's going to star." Making big budget movies with his buddy, telling the stories he wants to tell on his own terms — by Spielberg's or anyone's definition, Mathieu Kassovitz has arrived.

• GRANT ROSENBERG
• Gothika's French director is an unabashed fan of American movies