Intro
'Leos Carax has ended up with one of the most blighted careers in movies. Seventeen years since his first feature, he has managed just three more films. Carax, who turns 40 in November, was hailed as the new Godard on the strength of his first two films, Boy Meets Girl (1983) and Mauvais Sang (1986). But then, in 1988, he hubristically embarked on Les Amants du Pont Neuf, building a vast Paris set in a field near Montpellier. Rumored to have cost 160 million French francs, the ecstatic romantic drama was a critical and commercial disaster that put Carax out of action for most of the '90s. It remains an unsung classic—a paean to pure cinema that quotes Chaplin's City Lights and Vigo's L'Atalante (though Carax denied the latter's influence).
'In contrast, his most recent film Pola X is a threnody of self-pitying, self-destructive romanticism culled from Herman Melville's corrosive 1852 Gothic satire, Pierre, in which an idealistic young writer becomes besotted with a woman claiming to be his sister. Guillaume Depardieu plays the château-dwelling literary star who takes up with Isabelle, a vagrant who says they have the same father. Played by the heavy-lidded Katerina Golubeva, she's a refugee from the war in Bosnia and, perhaps, a ghost. He takes her to Paris, where brother and sister have sex and are consumed by the shadows of the past.
'Even though Leos Carax's work shows remarkable erudition and an excessive use of intertextuality, his are not films only for movie fans. References and quotes emerge compulsively. He quotes, not intellectually, but emotionally. He does not want us to think about the reference but evoke the feeling emerging from it. The quote in Carax is not between brackets, but articulated inside the sentence, without commas, without full stops, integrated without distorting the narration. He manages to articulate intertextuality in a way that appeals not to movie fans' memory, but to human emotion.
'Carax proposes a dispersed cinema, instead of a strictly directed one – to direct is inevitable, the issue is to not do it in a straight line. Especially in Boy Meets Girl and Mauvais sang, he opens up possible worlds to be inhabited for a limited time, with no need for a full understanding of whatever happens, as in life itself. It is not about avoiding any interpretation at all, it is about not trying to uncover the key, to reach the truth of the work. Interpretation is a game, not a tool for disentangling. It is not about taming the film, it must be free and independent. Poetry seeks the senses before it makes sense.' -- collaged from texts by Graham Fuller & Christian Checa Bañuz
A celebration of Leos Carax's films (7:58)
Leos Carax interviewed in English (3:10)
Quotes
'I feel I’m the only filmmaker in the world. I know that’s pretentious. I feel that cinema is my country. But it’s not my business. I haven’t worked enough, and I don’t get along with people enough to make it my business. Sometimes I feel like there should be an obligation to produce people like me. There shouldn’t be a choice.'
'Now people are much less adventurous. There’s a real cowardice in the movie business. If you don’t meet the right crazy people you can’t do it.'
'My sense of cinema is close to music. If I had to say it was close to something else, it wouldn't be writing; it wouldn't be painting. Composers must hear what they create. And I kind of have an intuition of that process because of the way I write films. The scriptwriting is not interesting for me. When the composer has to put it on paper is not the creative part.'
'I hate people who talk about how mysterious things are. I've never understood why I feel ready once every 4 or 5 years, why I feel the need to make a film. I'm not a storyteller. I don't believe film is like a dream you have and then you try to make it happen on screen. It has nothing to do with that; I don't think so. The act of watching a film has to do with a dream, but the act of making it, no.'
'I've had quite a lot of problems with money and production, but the main problem is personal. After each film, I've been so disgusted with the whole movie thing that it takes time to find the desire again. I've never seen one of my films again. The paradox I can never explain is, Why am I so disappointed in my films and so angry, and at the same time, why do I have this pretentious intuition that they will survive?'
Gallery
Further
Leos Carax @ Senses of Cinema
Leos Carax Discussion Forum
The Fall and Rise of Leos Carax
Leos Carax @ film reference
Leos Carax interviewed @ Artificial Eye
The Leos Carax Collection (DVD)
mp3: How to pronounce Leos Carax in French
'Quelqu’un m’a dit'
Leos Carax @ IMDB
The films
____________Boy Meets Girl (1984)
'The revelation of the 1984 Cannes festival was this first feature by 23-year-old Leos Carax. In its fervor, film sense, cutting humor, and strong autobiographical slant, it suggests the first films of the French New Wave (there's something in the arrogant iconoclasm that specifically recalls Godard), yet this isn't a derivative film. Carax demonstrates a very personal, subtly disorienting sense of space in his captivating black-and-white images, and the sound track has been constructed with an equally dense expressivity. The hero is a surly young outsider who has just been abandoned by his girlfriend; as he moves through a nocturnal Paris, his adolescent disillusionment is amplified into a cosmic cry of pain. The subject invites charges of narcissism and immaturity, but Carax' formal control and distance keep the confessional element in a state of constant critical tension. ' -- Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader
from 'Boy Meets Girl' (3:42)
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Mauvais Sang (Bad Blood) (1986)
'The second film in his so-called Alex trilogy, Leos Carax's Mauvais Sang might be the most ecstatic entry in the French auteur's sparse oeuvre. A movie brimming with giddy excess and hopeless romanticism, Mauvais Sang makes no apologies for privileging sentiment over sense. The improbable sci-fi plot is perfunctory pulp; it's nothing more than an excuse to string together exhilarating bursts of movie-drunk moments. As in the other installments of the trilogy, Carax casts the remarkable Denis Lavant as his lead and alter ego, Alex (Carax's given name). Young and impulsive, Alex is the quintessential Carax protagonist: a brooding and romantic obsessive searching restlessly for pure -- and hence, fleeting -- love. Paralleling this obsession is Carax's own passion for cinema. If his whimsy and earnestness are redolent of silent film, his exploration of the expressive possibilities of the medium recalls the early French New Wave. The movie's elliptical cutting, stylized mise-en-scיne, and sound-stage look cohere into a lyrical, pop-infused view of the world. Perhaps no scene encapsulates the movie's spirit best than a rousing musical interlude. Carax's tracking camera follows Alex as he staggers, limps, and finally breaks into a sprint on a deserted city street to David Bowie's "Modern Love." Anticipating a similar musical epiphany in his next film, The Lovers on the Bridge, the scene also captures the liberating audacity of Carax's cockeyed romanticism.' -- Elbert Ventura, AMG
from 'Mauvais Sang' (5:21)
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Les Amants du Pont-Neuf (1991)
'The 1991 film Les Amants du Pont-Neuf (The Lovers on the Bridge) was one of the most expensive cinema productions ever undertaken in France. Building on the success, and the themes, of his two highly acclaimed films, Leos Carax set out to make a grand cinematic opus that would complete his work on the subject of love. It was beset by myriad filming difficulties, delays and funding problems, and then it flopped at the box office - effectively derailing his career for many years.
'To look back at the film now, or to stumble across it without knowledge of the catalogue of disasters that beset the production, is to discover a very different film. The photography is beautiful, and there are moments of divine pleasure scattered loosely throughout the film, such as the stunning fireworks display, and the water-skiing on the Seine. It's such a shame the film hasn't received its due credit. It really is an eccentric, stylistic, avant garde masterpiece.' -- suite101.com
from 'Les Amants du Pont-Neuf' (3:19)
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Sans Titre (1997)
'In 1997, for its fiftieth anniversary, the Cannes Film Festival asked director Leos Carax for a short film; a visual postcard addressed to the festival in which the director could give news of himself and of his current project, Pola X. This official explanation almost suggests some slight, vaguely conventional documentary-like film piece, in which the filmmaker could pay lip-service to the festival organisers and discuss some of the greater trials and tribulations involved in getting his project off the ground. Instead, Sans Titre (1997) is a film that not only works in its own right – drawing us in with an enigmatic story presented in an entirely visual way – but also complimenting the themes and ideas behind the underrated masterwork that is Pola X, in such a way as to make it entirely essential.' -- Shorts Bay
'Sans Titre' (8:45)
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Pola X (1999)
'With Pola X, a noisy epic swirl of breast-beating, hair-tearing angst and portentous symbolism, the 39- year-old director Léos Carax captures the dubious title of French cinema's reigning mad romantic. This sometimes intoxicating, often infuriating film about the frenzied downward spiral of a naïve young writer in search of ultimate truth was adapted from Melville's 1852 novel, Pierre, or the Ambiguities.
'Like the replica of the Pont Neuf that dominated Mr. Carax's last film, the notoriously expensive and hyper-romantic Lovers on the Bridge, the warehouse is this movie's coup de cinéma. With its yard guarded by howling black dogs straining at their leashes, the place suggests a giant, festering Pandora's box that harbors all the emotional, spiritual and political ills of the world. In the heart of this structure, connected to the outside world by a narrow metal bridge, a gaunt, wild- eyed conductor leads an orchestra in an ear-splitting symphony of industrial rock by the cult music artist Scott Walker.' -- Janet Maslin, NYT
The first ten minutes of 'Pola X' *
* the entire film is posted on youtube
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Merde (2008)
'One of the strangest anthology films of recent memory, Tokyo! unites the distinctive visions of three individualistic filmmakers: Michel Gondry, Leos Carax and Bong Joon-Ho. Each short explores Japan's central metropolis through surrealist plots and alienated characters. Needless to say, it's not your average tourist video.
Leos Carax: Merde is not about Tokyo. I have no fascination with Tokyo. When the producers proposed that I write something very fast to be shot in Tokyo, I said yes, just to get back to work. The story didn't have anything to do with Tokyo. It could have been any big city in the world. It's not a filmmaker's project; it's a producer's project. I did use some elements from Japan—that it's an island, being repressed, having almost no foreigners. It's a very racist, conservative country. It's all about regression. Merde [the troll character] is a child. The whole society around him is childish. I think this came from a time of fear — of terrorism, of war, and how we all regressed around that to a bunch of children in the dark.' -- NYPress
from 'Merde' (2008)
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Extras
Leos Carax's video for New Order's 'Crystal' (4:23)
The casting of Denis Lavant in 'Boy Meets Girl' (8:00)
'My Last Minute' (1:00; 2006)
'Naked Eyes' (0:53; 2007)
'Hymn to Merde' (3:54; 2008)
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Hey. Leos Carax is easily among the most interesting contemporary French filmmakers, to my mind. If you don't already know his films, there's an introduction for you. If you do, I'm curious to hear your opinions, obviously. See what you think, in any case. I'm at CDG airport seeing my friend Joel off to the States this morning. Hence, there's not much of a p.s. today, as you can tell, but I'll see you and catch up with your comments from yesterday and today at around my usual posting time tomorrow. Take care 'til then.
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