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most resonant question of the book is a measure of its signicance, and also of its intellectual strength and honesty.
doi:10.1093/fs/knl067
MICHAEL SYROTINSKI UNIVERSITY OF ABERDEEN
Reframing Difference: Beur and banlieue Film-Making in France. By CARRIE TARR . Manchester New York, Manchester University Press, 2005. ix 230 pp. Pb 15.99. Films made by second-generation immigrants of Maghrebi descent beurs and about the problems endemic to the banlieue have been the focus of much interest over the past twenty or so years, and the recent outbreaks of rioting have shown that a decade after Kassovitzs La Haine their relevance is as great as ever. Tarr presents the rst book-length survey of this important corpus in either English or French, and her volume is an admirably thorough and well-researched overview, demonstrating a good grasp of lm theory, French social and political history, and gender issues that will make it of interest to those working in a variety of elds. The fault lines in the universalist discourses of French Republicanism (p. 1) become plain in a variety of ways, through the lms diverse ways of negotiating space as well as through their articulation of memory, gender and history. The unavailability of many of the lms in English-speaking countries, frustrating though it inevitably is, is to some extent palliated by lucid plot-summaries and analyses along with a judicious choice of illustrations. From time to time there may be a sense that the author is ticking boxes or awarding marks to lms on the basis of their ideological acceptability. Thus, while Chibanes Hexagone does much to engage pleasurably with a beur audience (p. 60), it also receives a mild rap over the knuckles for failing to problematise the dominant cultures construction of French national identity (p. 61). This is perhaps an inevitable consequence of, on the one hand, the fact that the essays that go to make up the volume were written, and sometimes previously published, separately, thereby requiring separate individual conclusions, and on the other, the problems inevitably associated with so ideologically fraught an area as Tarr is tackling. It is unfortunate that the lay-out of the lmography is periodically marred by glitches, but this is a minor criticism of a book that will certainly become a standard resource in its eld and could indeed protably nd a French publisher. KEITH READER GLASGOW UNIVERSITY
doi:10.1093/fs/knl103
Montreal-Glasgow. Edited by BILL MARSHALL . University of Glasgow French and German Publications, 2005. xiv 262 pp. Pb 15.00. This well-edited volume deals with the culture (in the broadest sense) of two great cities and is divided into several sections: Architecture, History, Literature, Theatre, Film and Television, and Exchanges. The approach is largely but not exclusively comparative. Holly Kinnear shows how personalities involved with both cities were responsible for the impact made on their urban landscapes by the
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Beaux-Arts movement, and Francois Dufaux underlines the high proportion of rental accommodation in the shape of multi-family tenement-type buildings to be found in both cities, but notes a number of differences in their architectural conceptions. Prochazka Alena discusses the extent to which major new buildings in Montreal conform to the established character of the citys built environment. Iain Stevenson studies the Canadian Pacic service of passenger liners that linked the two cities for much of the twentieth century, illustrating the chapter with several stunning poster images. The Scottish presence in Montreal is explored in two chapters by Gillian Leitch and Paul-Andre Linteau, and Harold Berube compares major commemorations of their history, during the crises of depression or war, by the two cities as well as by Toronto. The ne arts are represented by Alexandria Pierces study of Lord Strathconas art collection in nineteenth-century Montreal. Sebastien Socque highlights the importance of the writer and politican, Andre Laurendeau, in integrating Montreals cosmopolitan and exceptional character into a coherent notion of French Canada. As for literature, Maureen E. Waters explores the Gothic in the urban landscape of the two cities, although her text reads like the synopsis of a much longer work. Jacques Cardinal provides a dense interpretation of Jacques Ferrons novel, Les Contures de coings, highlighting the political dimension of the work. Jean-Francois Chassay compares Gaetan Soucys LImmaculee Conception (1994) and Andrew OHagans Our Fathers (1999), but the two novels seem too distant, in every sense, to lead to signicant insights. Bill Findlay demonstrates how Glasgow audiences were particularly receptive to translations into vernacular Scots, by Martin Bowman and Findlay himself, of plays by Michel Tremblay, because of the continuing tradition of variety theatre in the city. David Hutchison studies the manner in which television drama with a Glasgow context portrays working-class, but rarely middle-class, experience and hence in some sense betrays the complexity of modern Scottish, especially Glaswegian, life. Pierre Veronneau, in a notably well-w...