Striking a balance between culture and fun: ‘quality’ meets hitman genre in In Bruges

Abstract

This paper gives an analysis of In Bruges (2008) that situates the film as a hybrid product offering a mixture of signifiers of cinematic ‘quality’ and ‘lower’ genre ingredients. This paper also considers the extent to which In Bruges offers a combination of tonal registers in which irony and detachment, as markers of distinction, are blended with a more mainstream-oriented appeal to emotional engagement on the part of the viewer, and considers how this might be related to the broader social and industrial contexts in which it appeared.