Posterized: one of a kind auteur Leos Carax
Friday, August 6, 2021 at 9:00AM "Posterized" returns for a new season. Every Friday!
by Nathaniel R
If you've followed the career of French director Leos Carax over the years than the response to his latest picture, Annette, which opened Cannes last month and hits theaters today, did not surprise you. He's always been a director who left some scratching their heads while leaving others thrilled or even reverently besotted. If you haven't yet experienced any of his movies we urge you to try them out to see which camp you fall into.
How many of his 7⅓ pictures have you seen? The posters are after the jump...
Act One - The French Enfant Terrible
BOY MEETS GIRL (1984)
MAUVAIS SANG / BAD BLOOD (1986)
Leos Carax was just 24 when he made his first waves in his home country, making a splash at Cannes and receiving a "Best First Film" nomination from the César Awards for his triangular drama Boy Meets Girl. Mauvais Sang, its crazier follow up involving a deadly sexually transmitted virus, made bigger waves at festivals and was nominated for 3 César Awards (but didn't hit the US screens outside of the festival circuit until... 2001.)
Act Two - The International Breakthrough That Wasn't
LOVERS ON THE BRIDGE (1991)
Included three different posters here to reflect how Lovers on the Bridge was sold quite differently everywhere -- look at how misleading and respectable that US Miramax poster was even though this was not a movie that your grandmother would love! This fascinating but troubled-picture about an alcoholic homeless man (Carax's favourite, Denis Lavant) and a girl who is going blind (Juliette Binoche) was an ambitious step-up for Carax but didn't quite put him over. People were somewhat puzzled though the film's critical reputation has most definitely grown over the years.
Further diluting the potential breakthrough of it all was how long it took the film to travel. The movie premiered in France in 1991 (two César nominations), hit festivals and a few countries in 1992 (one BAFTA nomination and three European Film Award wins), opened in some more countries in Europe in 1993. But it wasn't done yet. It finally ended its theatrical run in the United States in... wait for it... 1999 (!!!) long after Juliette Binoche had become an Oscar winner and bankable arthouse star.
POLA X (1999)
TOKYO! (2008)
HOLY MOTORS (2012)
Pola X, arguably his most polarizing picture (I personally love it) was a sexually charged visually bold and enigmatic film filled with mesmerizing beautiful stars like Catherine Deneuve, Yekaterina Golubeva, Laurent Lucas, and the late Guillaume Depardieu (son of Gerard). It opened in Europe in 1999 and hit the States in 2000. Unfortunately afterwards there was yet again a long stretch of inactivity followed by one third of the omnibus film Tokyo! with fellow auteurs Bong Joon ho and Michel Gondry.
And then people were "reintroduced" to Carax's very particular artistry with Holy Motors. It was his first film to open quickly around the world (within the same calendar year) and thus actually capitalize on its bonafides as a critical sensation. It received 9 César nominations and won the LAFCA and OFCS awards for Foreign Film and Best Actor (Denis Lavant) from the Toronto Film Criticis Association.
ANNETTE (2021)
Annette, starring Adam Driver and Marion Cotillard, opens in limited release today in US theaters. Cláudio and Elisa have both already reviewed it, here and here, from Cannes. It will begin screening on Amazon Prime on August 20th.
What do you make of his filmography and do you think a poster can ever accurately capture the mood of his movies?
Reader Comments (21)
Only seen Holy Motors and Pola X. I loved Holy Motors, Pola X is if anything even more deeply strange. Can't really tell how I feel about it, but the idea of making any kind of film out of that source material is madness on its face, so major props for going for it. I wish it was easier to find.
Keep forgetting to get to lovers
2
3. They're perfectly fine. Not alienating, not masterpieces either.
1
I avoided LOVERS ON THE BRIDGE for years because the poster promised the usual Miramax saccharin. I should have read a review. (I'd just started graduate school, though, and wasn't really seeing movies for my own entertainment at the moment, but I still feel bad I didn't get to see it on the big screen.)
None
Zero. But that’s going to change shortly.
I'm not familiar with his work but I just saw the trailer for "Annette" which looks interesting
'Annette' will be my first. :)
I admit that I didn't really like/get HOLY MOTORS, so I'll see with ANNETTE if me and Carax just aren't meant to be.
None.
Lovers on the Bridge was loathsome, Pola X "interesting: (meaning I don't know if it's good or bad, but I enjoyed its attempts to do something new), I'd like Holy Motors a lot better if it weren't so overrated - it's just a succession of odd scenes, some interesting, some not so.
THE LOVERS ON THE BRIDGE has possibly the greatest fireworks scene ever filmed.
Jonathan -- it's way up there, yes.
So far, everything that is listed except for Annette as I just love Carax's style and his approach to chaos. He is a true artist as I'm so excited for this film.
Interesting how I have different posters in my mind of Boy Meets Girl, Mauvais Sang and Pont-Neuf.
All but the new one.
Denis Lavant was just adorable back in the day.
I love "Lovers on the Bridge" so much that i visited that bridge and island when I visited Paris.
And Mauvais Sang has one of my favorite running scenes on film. Can't count how many times I've watched it. Homaged in Frances Ha:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gt2KlkBUgXA
I ended a semester of Film History by showing HOLY MOTERS once, thinking the students would be happy to see the semester end with something so dazzlingly different, funny, sexy, exciting... I even had a guest lecturer that week, a specialist in French cinema, present a lecture that tied the film in to all of film history including some of the films the students had watched earlier in the semester, like Godard's CONTEMPT. It was a great lecture that perfectly explained a great film. Still, at the end, I got evaluations that went out of their way to complain about the final film of the semester--"what was THAT supposed to be about?"
This is why I feel despair about the future.
I've seen Lovers on the Bridge (which I don't remember well), Pola X (fascinating), Holy Motors, (ditto), and Annette (blown the fuck away).
I'm curious about your reaction to Annette, Nathaniel, because I think this "musical" (although, really, it's more of an opera) is maybe the best argument that not all musical-form films need to cast accomplished singers, depending on the needs of the project.
To be clear, I'm fairly sure that at least 50% of Cotillard's song vocals are either fully dubbed or "merged" with opera singer Catherine Trottman's singing. This makes sense because within the world of the film she is a great singer. But the sweetness of her natural voice fits the character.
Simon Helberg mostly "talk-sings" and is quite good and sensitive.
Adam Driver isn't even singing in his natural vocal register for most of the performance and isn't always perfectly in-tune--and this "weakness" was almost entirely irrelevant to the strength of his work or the project in general. It's an astoundingly physical performance (fluid and movement-oriented in multiple scenes, the violence almost dance-like). In the lower registers, he's much stronger, but the weakness of the higher registers was kind of endearing to me, rendering a fairly monstrous man more fragile.
I was trying to think of other "name" actors with decent voices who might have played this part -- Oscar Isaac, Jake Gyllenhaal, Garrett Hedlund, Patrick Wilson, Joaquin Phoenix -- and I don't think any of them would have been right, in multiple important ways.
I'm also really confused about the complaints about the music in general. The score is fantastic, and the musical interludes aren't (except in a couple cases) truly "songs."
Only two: Mauvais Sang and Holy Motors, both of which I loved.
My favorite by far is Lovers on the Bridge. What a spectacular cinematography by the great late Jean-Yves Escoffier.
I remember liking Mauvais Sang.
Pola X, I found creepy and sexy at the same time. Didn't care much about Holy Motors or Boy Meets Girl.