"Decades before the emergence circa 1995 of a French self-styled 'hood' film, and indeed from the beginnings of cinema itself, French filmmakers looked beyond the gates of the capital for inspiration and content. In the Paris suburbs they found an inexhaustible reservoir of forms, landscapes and social types in which to anchor their fictions, from bourgeois villas and bucolic riverside cafe<U+00cc><U+0081>s to postwar housing estates and postmodern new towns. Themes central to French cultural modernity (class conflict, leisure, boredom or anti-authoritarianism) cut across the fifteen chapters."--Publisher's website.