A French Kiss for Spike- Will the Paris retrospective of Spike Lee's work force the French to deal with their own attitudes on race?

By Miles Marshall Lewis

From skin-privilege arguments, girlfriends greasing dry scalps, 1970s street games and more, race is inarguably the thread connecting all the films in Spike Lee's 20-year-plus career. This month, the famed Cinémathèque Française is running a Spike Lee retrospective in Paris, topped with Lee's appearance at a preview screening of his latest, Miracle at St. Anna, which opens nationwide today in the U.S.

It is an interesting time to open up an exploration of race in the city of Paris, whose reputation is by turns colorblind and friendly to the black American soldiers of the world wars yet racist toward its native French-African immigrants. A fellow expatriate recently remarked that France would take another century to produce its own Barack Obama, and his sentiment is correct. Despite its creed of "liberty, equality and fraternity" for all, social developments like the November 2005 riots have inscribed ethnicity into the general consciousness here like never before. Thirteen years after the homegrown, race-instructive film, La Haine, the city could use some of the enlightened elements of Lee's work right about now.

Evidence of interest in the Spike Lee film festival is found all over the City of Light. The Cinémathèque Française took the rare promotional route of plastering posters in the métro stations. Lee showed up at Fnac, France's major entertainment retail chain, signing autographs and fielding translated questions. It was a media tour de force.

A French Kiss for Spike....