Halley comet. aids. alienation. the power of youth. the danger of youth. the envy of elders about young love. carax seems to film this fascinated mostly by the themes of young love. love that can have no meaning for elders, but it's what makes younger people run. even if they're in love with elders and not people of the same age. it seems to somehow be an allegory to the aids disease that was started to spread in the time of the film.
what is well done here is how kinda how it wants to be a film and cinema at the same time. this movie has a plot: a heist involving an antidote that cures deaths from loveless sex. in a way that loveless sex was consequence for aids: elders thinking the "crazy youths" were having sex like rabbits, that's why aids deaths were growing. i was born in the time of the film, so in the aids epidemic i was a child, but i can only imagine the huge amount of religious groups declaring abstinence. hekc, in our days, putting the same mouths in a fountain could be a receptor for aids in our heads. i'm not joking.
at the same time it's cinema: it has influences in the french nouvelle vague which honestly is still field i need to discover properly. it has some influences on mute cinema. and mostly it's cinema in the sense on how it wants to communicate: not through the script or the plot, like the movies, but through the images and the poetry that goes of the mouth of the characters. let's face it: most of the dialogues have that poetic side that makes them transcend any type of films: they want to transcend life. they want to create a new heart about that disparate youth, that feeling of doing things for the sake of it and not let them go. the fear is for the elders. they don't seem to fear the "american lady".
it's style over substance? no: here it seems to be the stile providing the actors to create the substance, the result are two generations in confrontation. one fearless and one fearful. one seems to breathe love, the other seems to have rationality as prevalent. technically is very well made, mostly the colors, but also the big shots carax makes - they don't take that long - and how he films the characters talking. there's no confort here on see.
i don't know who is going to love this. but the first step to enjoy something like this is to forget rules and the things you think are "correct". there's nothing correct, there's good and bad. is to go deep into the cinema it breathes and try to enjoy it without fear of love or hate. it's feeling. it's poetic. that's why it stays.
what is well done here is how kinda how it wants to be a film and cinema at the same time. this movie has a plot: a heist involving an antidote that cures deaths from loveless sex. in a way that loveless sex was consequence for aids: elders thinking the "crazy youths" were having sex like rabbits, that's why aids deaths were growing. i was born in the time of the film, so in the aids epidemic i was a child, but i can only imagine the huge amount of religious groups declaring abstinence. hekc, in our days, putting the same mouths in a fountain could be a receptor for aids in our heads. i'm not joking.
at the same time it's cinema: it has influences in the french nouvelle vague which honestly is still field i need to discover properly. it has some influences on mute cinema. and mostly it's cinema in the sense on how it wants to communicate: not through the script or the plot, like the movies, but through the images and the poetry that goes of the mouth of the characters. let's face it: most of the dialogues have that poetic side that makes them transcend any type of films: they want to transcend life. they want to create a new heart about that disparate youth, that feeling of doing things for the sake of it and not let them go. the fear is for the elders. they don't seem to fear the "american lady".
it's style over substance? no: here it seems to be the stile providing the actors to create the substance, the result are two generations in confrontation. one fearless and one fearful. one seems to breathe love, the other seems to have rationality as prevalent. technically is very well made, mostly the colors, but also the big shots carax makes - they don't take that long - and how he films the characters talking. there's no confort here on see.
i don't know who is going to love this. but the first step to enjoy something like this is to forget rules and the things you think are "correct". there's nothing correct, there's good and bad. is to go deep into the cinema it breathes and try to enjoy it without fear of love or hate. it's feeling. it's poetic. that's why it stays.