Quite a bizarre film here, especially in regards to asking yourself how it should make you feel, or what makes it good or bad. Previously the only Leos Carax movie I'd seen was Holy Motors, which receives an immense amount of praise internationally, yet I was unable to find much about it to like. I decided to watch this for 2 reasons: 1. Because it was one of 3 films that one of my favorite musicians (Scott Walker) did the score for (the other two being Childhood of a Leader, and Vox Lux) - they showed a clip from the production in 30th Century Man, the Scott Walker documentary, and it looked nuts. 2. Because it has Catherine Deneuve in it.
To summarize, like many French/Italian movies I've seen, there is a not-so-subtle air of incest throughout the film, and that seems to be why it's referred to as "erotic", because the only sexual encounters that occur are between siblings. Lead actor Guillaume Depardieu (the IRL rebel son of infamous actor Gerard, who died of pneumonia at age 37 in 2008) plays a writer who seems to have more sexual tension with his older sister (Catherine Deneuve, the legend) than he does with his girlfriend. But wait, that's just the precursor.
Enter Yekaterina Golubeva (who's face reminds me of a bit of Anna Falchi, one of the most striking actresses of all time, especially in Cemetery Man), playing a disheveled girl who he keeps seeing in his dreams, then suddenly he's seeing her in real life. She claims to be his long lost sister, and without even questioning it, they end up having a lot of intense sex. When we get to talking to her, her character's name is ISABELLE and she bears a striking resemblance in both looks and vibes to Isabelle Adjani's alternative persona character, Helen, from Possession, yet she retains a heavy dose of Adjani's manic hysteria from her primary "Anna" in her performance as well. I can't help but feel like this is in direct homage to the Zulawski classic (my favorite film of all time), especially because, by the end of this film, the entire thing really feels like it wants to capture the otherworldly surrealism that Zulawski was such a master of, but, sadly it always falls short.
Other than the immensely good looking cast, there are only a couple sequences that I feel will really stick with me. The very brief "raging river of blood" dream sequence is pretty mind-blowing, and thus iconic - I still wonder how they shot that, but it's literally less than a minute long and serves no true purpose in relation to the rest of the film. I cracked up every time the giant experimental noise band was performing and being conducted by the "cult leader" in the warehouse - but that's only because I'm such a big Scott Walker fan and it feels as if it's all coming directly from his bizarro brain. There were also a couple moments of surprisingly effective violence that were unexpected and a bit of a surprise. But those things aside, the film mostly floats on an ineffective path somewhere between realism and surrealism, never making enough sense to allow emotive response, but never poetic or symbolic enough to allow itself to evolve into a fully realized art film. I doubt I'd ever watch it again, but I'm glad I did this once.
I wonder if there's a Leos Carax film out that I actually will connect with...
To summarize, like many French/Italian movies I've seen, there is a not-so-subtle air of incest throughout the film, and that seems to be why it's referred to as "erotic", because the only sexual encounters that occur are between siblings. Lead actor Guillaume Depardieu (the IRL rebel son of infamous actor Gerard, who died of pneumonia at age 37 in 2008) plays a writer who seems to have more sexual tension with his older sister (Catherine Deneuve, the legend) than he does with his girlfriend. But wait, that's just the precursor.
Enter Yekaterina Golubeva (who's face reminds me of a bit of Anna Falchi, one of the most striking actresses of all time, especially in Cemetery Man), playing a disheveled girl who he keeps seeing in his dreams, then suddenly he's seeing her in real life. She claims to be his long lost sister, and without even questioning it, they end up having a lot of intense sex. When we get to talking to her, her character's name is ISABELLE and she bears a striking resemblance in both looks and vibes to Isabelle Adjani's alternative persona character, Helen, from Possession, yet she retains a heavy dose of Adjani's manic hysteria from her primary "Anna" in her performance as well. I can't help but feel like this is in direct homage to the Zulawski classic (my favorite film of all time), especially because, by the end of this film, the entire thing really feels like it wants to capture the otherworldly surrealism that Zulawski was such a master of, but, sadly it always falls short.
Other than the immensely good looking cast, there are only a couple sequences that I feel will really stick with me. The very brief "raging river of blood" dream sequence is pretty mind-blowing, and thus iconic - I still wonder how they shot that, but it's literally less than a minute long and serves no true purpose in relation to the rest of the film. I cracked up every time the giant experimental noise band was performing and being conducted by the "cult leader" in the warehouse - but that's only because I'm such a big Scott Walker fan and it feels as if it's all coming directly from his bizarro brain. There were also a couple moments of surprisingly effective violence that were unexpected and a bit of a surprise. But those things aside, the film mostly floats on an ineffective path somewhere between realism and surrealism, never making enough sense to allow emotive response, but never poetic or symbolic enough to allow itself to evolve into a fully realized art film. I doubt I'd ever watch it again, but I'm glad I did this once.
I wonder if there's a Leos Carax film out that I actually will connect with...