In the film Hate, Kossowitz portrays the Parisian suburbs as a place in which the three main characters, Hubert, Saïd, and Vinz, are able to move about more or less freely. They do run into trouble with the police, but it's not a serious problem. When the three go to Paris to meet Snoopy, however, they are met with much more hostility from the police, who also purposely keep Saïd and Hubert in captivity long enough for them to miss the last train out of Paris. They are all stuck now. While Paris may be a famous city bustling with life, culture, romance, art, wine, and all the other wonderful things people associate with Paris, it is only welcoming to those who are welcome.

Paris may not necessarily be a city of closed spaces that trap people in them, but to Hubert, Saïd, and Vinz they are because they are outsiders. In the scene where Hubert, Saïd, and Vinz are in the art gallery, they stick out like a sore thumb due to their attire, standing out from the well dressed, 'cultured' Parisians. It's very easy for someone who is in a city or in a social landscape they are not from to feel trapped by their new surroundings. For example, I come from Washington, DC, a thriving city I feel I can freely navigate through. My parents have a summer house in Piney Point, MD in St. Mary's County, a more rural area of Maryland. Although there is far more open space there, when I go there with them, I feel metaphorically trapped because it's not in an environment I'm accustomed to. I feel trapped by how far spaced everything is; it takes much longer to get from the house to shopping areas, about a half hour, which limits my ability to move around in St. Mary's County because the amount of time it takes me to get from certain places takes away from the spend I can spend at those actual places. I have a feeling someone who grew up in a rural area would also feel trapped in a way if they were to go to a city environment; however, I acknowledge that contrasting my situation with theirs is not accurate nor is it fair.

What Kossovitz is trying to communicate in his movie that an experience of a certain area is a very subjective one, no cities or environments are inherently better than others, and that they're not all or nothing. A person from Paris who visits the Parisian suburbs may view them as being very hostile to them, while a person who actually grew up there might disagree and counter that Paris is a very hostile place for them. It's not fair to say that one place is better than another because they all have their pros and cons, and different people will prefer different kinds of places based on the environment in which they grew up and their personality. Paris may be called the 'City of Love', but that doesn't necessarily make it so to others.