Leos Carax

[zedz]

LEOS CARAX (1960- )



FILMOGRAPHY

Strangulation Blues (short, 1980)
Boy Meets Girl (1984) – The Leos Carax Collection (Artificial Eye OOP) / Fox Lorber OOP
Mauvais Sang (1986) – The Leos Carax Collection (Artificial Eye OOP) / Fox Lorber OOP
Les Amants du Pont Neuf (1991) – Arrow Films / Buena Vista OOP / Lionsgate (DVD-R available through Amazon)
Sans titre (short, 1997) - Pola X ( French Fox Pathe Europa)
Pola X (1999) – The Leos Carax Collection (Artificial Eye OOP) / Fox Lorber OOP
Pierre, ou les ambiguities (TV version, 2000)
My Last Minute (short, 2006)
Merde (segment of Tokyo, 2008) – Liberation / Optimum
42 One Dream Rush (short, 2009)
Holy Motors (2012)

FORUM DISCUSSION

Holy Motors

[Tommaso]

Wasn't sure whether to post this question here or under DVD NEWS/DISCUSSIONS, but I was wondering whether anyone has experienced any of the Koch Lorber Carax releases? I'm very weary of the company due to their many many crappy releases and was wondering whether it is worth purchasing Bad Blood etc. or hold out for other boutique labels in the future (hopefully CC releases).

Unqualified praise for "Bad Blood"/Lorber can be found here.

Sounds like it's really good. I haven't seen the film, though. Can you comment on it? Does it come anywhere near in quality to "Pont-Neuf"?

I also quite like "Pola X", which most people seem to abhor. It's out on a good French DVD with removable English subs, which also has some glimpses at the magnificent Scott Walker recording the soundtrack. Highly recommended!

[DDillaman]

MAUVAIS SANG is my favorite Carax film by a walk (though I really need to watch LOVERS ON THE BRIDGE again; the only one I actively didn't like is BOY MEETS GIRL). I've watched the DVD a couple times, and I don't recall any major issues with it.

Any news on if he's going to make another film, like, ever?

[Tommaso]

Apparently he's working on something new.

[carax09]

I don't think so. That project (Scars) has been listed as "in production" for about three years now. I'm assuming it's been scrapped, which is a shame because it sounded pretty promising...

[stroszeck]

Tommaso, I think in general depending on your own preference, Carax is at least an interesting auteur whose films are very personal and certainly benefit from the beauty of Juliette Binoche. If you are even remotely interested in a film in which she is present in many wonderful close-ups, then go for it. The main story/plot of the film is kind of juvenile but I don't know, I enjoy Carax for his technique and the raw emotions he is able to express through very mysterious, genuinely interesting characters, and Bad Blood is no exception. I think he's actually very underrated in contemporary cinema. That's just my $.02

[Tommaso]

And I agree with you completely, Stroszeck. Apart from Binoche (who is wonderful regardless of who is directing), the two films I've seen of him ("Pont-Neuf" and "Pola X") are really among my favourites when it comes to modern French cinema (apart from the unsurmountable Rivette, of course). Carax really knows how to handle visuals, how to constantly surprise and grip the spectator with his images, whereas many other French directors rely much more on the actors and the talking. That boat ride in "Pont-neuf" is almost as exciting as that space ride thru the lights in the next-to-final scene in Kubrick's "2001" (a weird comparison, I know).
A strange, disturbing beauty, in any case. I think Carax fits somehow in this old French cliché of the 'poete maudit', or tries to get such an image for himself. Thus the scarcity of his output, his somewhat forbidding way in interviews etc. And he's underrated simply because he does not do a film every two years, and thus always passes away from notice.

Enough of my rambling: I have no idea why I haven't seen "Bad blood" and "Boy meets girl" so far, but I think I must get me these DVDs soon.

[carax09]

Yes, you must. I absolutely adore his early films (although I've never had the chance to see Strangulation Blues). He has a pretty unusual methodology at work where he needs to be in love with his female lead in order to make a film (like early/mid Godard), because he commonly explores the theme of "amour fou", and incorporates autobiographical self-reflexive elements into the narrative. He is commonly compared to Garrel, although I've not seen any of his films----I am excited at the prospect of a Regular Lovers R1 release. Leos Carax is the most notorious heavy drinking skirt chaser outside of Chris Doyle in all of filmdom. I think he's too busy with that to create anything...

[Barmy]

Nice box.

[tavernier]

Nice box.

Hmmmm....who's that pictured at the top, Piccoli?

[Barmy]

He's had some work done.

[carax09]

You can't be serious! She kept her looks longer than just about anyone in the history of humankind. Let's see what you look like, Mr. Big Round Balls.

[tavernier]

You can't be serious! She kept her looks longer than just about anyone in the history of humankind. Let's see what you look like, Mr. Big Round Balls.

Try looking at the list of actors on the box, and you'll see the joke...maybe.

[carax09]

I mean I see what you're getting at, but it would have been a more striking screw-up if Delpy's name wasn't on there. As it is, I actually think this cover is pretty half-assed what with Lavant's face cut off in the Boy Meets Girl image. Whatever, I just hope the transfers aren't equally half-assed.

[franco]

DVDTimes reviews the set.

[Barmy]

The reviewer calls those films "interesting failures". I can hardly agree. Yeah they are a bit over the top, but why is that bad?

[David Ehrenstein]

The first time I met him was on the press junket for The Unbearable Lightness of Being. He was trailing after Juliette Binoche like a small, whipped, puppy dog. He was amazed that I knew who he was as no one else had so much as bothered to ask.

Several years later I ran into him in the lobby of the Chateau Marmont. He was in town tryingn to find a distributor for Les Amants du Pont-Neuf and was having a screening of it at Universal in the Hitchcock theater that night. Wiped me out! It wasn't until a few years later that it got a fitful release. I last saw him about a year ago at Book Soup on Sunset. He said he was trying to get a new project together but it was "VERY hard."

All his films are worth seeing, and some of them a lot more than just that.

[James]

It appears Arrow is re-releasing Les amants du Pont-Neuf.

[warren oates]

Finch, I'd start with Boy Meets Girl if you can. Impossible not to like that one. A gorgeous romantic (in many senses of the word) b&w fantasia of youth and love in Paris. Endlessly inventive visually.

[Cold Bishop]

Mauvais Sang! Mauvais Sang! Mauvais Sang!

[zedz]

There are only a handful of films. Might as well work through them chronologically. If that AE box is still around and still cheap there isn't even much of an outlay involved.

EDIT: Going by Amazon, at least, it's not still around, and it's certainly not cheap!

[Finch]

Thank you all for the suggestions!

[warren oates]

I agree with Cold Bishop and Zedz too. All of the films are worth watching. I even like Pola X. Mauvis Sang is fascinating too, though I'd probably say it's his most mannered and least accessible, at least baring Holy Motors, which I can't wait to see. I'm not as much of a fan of the poopy short as some others here, but even that one is not bad.

[Cold Bishop]

Mauvis Sang is fascinating too, though I'd probably say it's his most mannered and least accessible, at least baring Holy Motors, which I can't wait to see.

I think it's quite the opposite, actually. It's essentially half-romance, half-gangster film (a genre I'd really love to see Carax tackle head-on), all with sci-fi overtones. I don't understand why it didn't become as much a crossover hit as Diva or La Femme Nikita, other than the tendency of people to not like good things.

Pola X is fantastic, but it is certainly a departure from the swooning, anarchic romance of the Alex Trilogy, which Holy Motors seems possibly a return to. Frankly, I think Carax is among the ten greatest living filmmakers around, a case that would be bolstered if the guy could actually work consistently.

[carax09]

I think it's quite the opposite, actually. It's essentially half-romance, half-gangster film (a genre I'd really love to see Carax tackle head-on), all with sci-fi overtones. I don't understand why it didn't become as much a crossover hit as Diva or La Femme Nikita, other than the tendency of people to not like good things.

I completely agree! Mauvais Sang (and even The Moon In The Gutter) is so much greater, and yet those two have always gotten all the oxygen, when critics discuss Cinema du Look. Eh...whatever...I guess it should be of no surprise that critics aren't exempt from the same tendency.