Taking part in a French challenge event on ICM,I started trying to decide what the final film to watch would be. Seeing auteur Leos Carax's Boy Meets Girl and The Lovers on the Bridge during my own 100 days/100 French films last year,I decided that it was the perfect time to find out the age of the night.
The plot:
After the death of his dad,Alex is hired by his dad's old friends/fellow gangsters Marc and Hans to steal the only known created cure to a sexual virus. Leaving his girlfriend Lise,Alex joins up to prepare for the task. Staying at Marc's place,Alex meets Marc's young lover Anna. Soon falling in love for Anna,Alex starts pushing his mission to steal the cure aside,in order to focus on his new mission of getting Anna from Marc.
View on the film:
Joining the movement after it was established by Jean-Jacques Beineix's 1981 Diva,writer/directing auteur Leos Carax (who also has a cameo) & cinematographer Jean-Yves Escoffier fully embrace the stylisation of Cinema du Look. Caught in the middle of the lo-fi Boy Meets Girl and the blockbuster Lovers on the Bridge,Carax begins to expand on his major themes,with Girl's David Bowie tunes and rustic,crisp black and white overlapping images following Alex on the robbery. Lining the walls surrounding Alex and Anna in decadent wall paper,Carax drinks up his first colour film with ravishing Cinema du Look bright greens,blues,reds and neon yellow being splashed across the screen. Gliding along the colours,Carax and Escoffier unleash hyper-stylised camera moves such as extended tracking shots with razor sharp jump- cuts that give the tale a Sci- Fi atmosphere.
Starting as a hired hand heist mission,the screenplay by Carax uses Anna's feeling for the older Marc to draw Alex as the young Cinema du Look loner. Displaying an impressive level of ambition,Carax builds on his troubled young romance theme with an off-beat Sci-Fi twist. Whilst not going into too much detail over how the virus was created,Carax spins the Sci-Fi elements to give an urgency to Alex's love for Anna. Made before she went to Hollywood, Julie Delpy gives an enticing,siren call as Lise,while Juliette Binoche gives Anna a fittingly quirky attitude. Playing an "Alex" for the 2nd of 3 times in Carax's work, Denis Lavant gives a great performance,which finely balances Alex's slight cockiness with a sweet,romantic naivety,that reveals itself to Anna as the night gets old.
The plot:
After the death of his dad,Alex is hired by his dad's old friends/fellow gangsters Marc and Hans to steal the only known created cure to a sexual virus. Leaving his girlfriend Lise,Alex joins up to prepare for the task. Staying at Marc's place,Alex meets Marc's young lover Anna. Soon falling in love for Anna,Alex starts pushing his mission to steal the cure aside,in order to focus on his new mission of getting Anna from Marc.
View on the film:
Joining the movement after it was established by Jean-Jacques Beineix's 1981 Diva,writer/directing auteur Leos Carax (who also has a cameo) & cinematographer Jean-Yves Escoffier fully embrace the stylisation of Cinema du Look. Caught in the middle of the lo-fi Boy Meets Girl and the blockbuster Lovers on the Bridge,Carax begins to expand on his major themes,with Girl's David Bowie tunes and rustic,crisp black and white overlapping images following Alex on the robbery. Lining the walls surrounding Alex and Anna in decadent wall paper,Carax drinks up his first colour film with ravishing Cinema du Look bright greens,blues,reds and neon yellow being splashed across the screen. Gliding along the colours,Carax and Escoffier unleash hyper-stylised camera moves such as extended tracking shots with razor sharp jump- cuts that give the tale a Sci- Fi atmosphere.
Starting as a hired hand heist mission,the screenplay by Carax uses Anna's feeling for the older Marc to draw Alex as the young Cinema du Look loner. Displaying an impressive level of ambition,Carax builds on his troubled young romance theme with an off-beat Sci-Fi twist. Whilst not going into too much detail over how the virus was created,Carax spins the Sci-Fi elements to give an urgency to Alex's love for Anna. Made before she went to Hollywood, Julie Delpy gives an enticing,siren call as Lise,while Juliette Binoche gives Anna a fittingly quirky attitude. Playing an "Alex" for the 2nd of 3 times in Carax's work, Denis Lavant gives a great performance,which finely balances Alex's slight cockiness with a sweet,romantic naivety,that reveals itself to Anna as the night gets old.