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Poll

What's your favorite film by Leos Carax?

haven't seen any
3 (25%)
don't like any
0 (0%)
other
0 (0%)
Boy Meets Girl
1 (8.3%)
Mauvais Sang
3 (25%)
The Lovers on the Bridge
0 (0%)
Pola X
0 (0%)
Tokyo (segment "Merde")
0 (0%)
Holy Motors
4 (33.3%)
Annette
1 (8.3%)

Total Members Voted: 12

Author Topic: Carax, Leos  (Read 9194 times)

goodguy

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Re: Directors Best - Leos Carax
« Reply #10 on: June 28, 2011, 12:18:46 AM »
Boy Meets Girl
Les amants du Pont-Neuf (The Lovers on the Bridge)
Pola X
Holy Motors
Mauvais sang (Bad Blood, AKA The Night Is Young)
Annette

« Last Edit: November 11, 2021, 05:48:44 AM by goodguy »

worm@work

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Re: Directors Best - Leos Carax
« Reply #11 on: June 28, 2011, 08:57:17 AM »
Boy Meets Girl
Les amants du Pont-Neuf (The Lovers on the Bridge)

Woo! You make me happy, goodguy :).

FLYmeatwad

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Re: Directors Best - Leos Carax
« Reply #12 on: October 25, 2012, 04:25:13 PM »
Not really any spoilers, so have at it I guess.

Holy Motors (Carax, 2012)

Continuing my paltry coverage of the Philadelphia Film Festival, I want to take a bit of time to write about one of the craziest theatrical experiences I have had in quite some time. Specifically, it all happened when I sat down to watch Holy Motors, the audacious new (mostly French) film from Leos Carax. Much like Beyond The Hills this one generated heaps of positive buzz at Cannes earlier in the year despite not coming away with any of the major awards. But unlike the relatively straightforward, though still complex, Beyond The Hills, one cannot as easily describe all the intricacies and surprises on display in Holy Motors, and I wouldn't want it any other way.

Though scarce on details, if one was to describe what Holy Motors is 'about' it could quite easily be said that it's a film that follows an actor during a day where he plays many different roles. Of course said actor, Mr. Oscar (played by Denis Lavant, who acts as a screen presence right up there with Joaquin Phoenix in The Master for the year's best actor thus far), actually doesn't seem to visit sets and the only hint of a visible camera is the awareness that we ourselves are watching a film and something is being used to record the man we are watching.

And it's in that murky area that the brilliance of Carax's film begins to fully emerge. Marked by a visual style that is a dynamic as the performances of Mr. Oscar himself, Carax creates this constantly shifting world where literally anything becomes possible. It is through this that the film's comedic sensibilities are firmly established, but to label the film a comedy is a huge injustice to the sweeping emotional panorama on display.  There are musical sequences, a lengthy scene of motion-capture, and about three different concluding points that range from hysterical to tragic all at the same time.

What grounds the film is Mr. Oscar's desperate search for a sense of belonging, a need for a home that seems to be as elusive and outdated as many of the technologies strewn about. Mr. Oscar is always changing, so much so that we are never sure we have even seen the real him, if there even is such a thing anymore. However, through a number of brilliant soundtrack cues and constant reminders of a domestic sphere Carax underscores the entire film with a certain tragedy. It's a marvelous balancing act that requires a delicate approach to make sure that nothing ever feels out of place without a reason. There's a certain open-ended quality to the way themes manifest in the film, and it's because of all the symbols that Carax makes use of that the movie elevates itself above an exercise in style. Even the title, which seems fairly nondescript at first, even comes together at the end to remind us of this idealized world that, even in a constantly changing environment, will always retain its splendor and glory even if it becomes increasingly difficult to replicate.

And so this meta-textual look at filmmaking, this hopefully tragic tale of a man in search for respite, stands as one of the most invigorating and engaging works of the year. The benefits of the theatrical experience cannot be overstated, but given how surprisingly resonant this film is emotionally and how thematically intriguing it becomes the more it goes on and the farther away you get from the film this is definitely a title that demands to be seen. Such an uninterrupted vision, such daring work, all oozing from the very core of Holy Motors.

As usual there's a rating on my blog if you can't glean it from the text. A couple other notes as well. I shall head to the spoiler thread for this one at some point, probs.

ArmenianScientist

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Re: Directors Best - Leos Carax
« Reply #13 on: November 02, 2012, 12:18:23 AM »
Boy Meets Girl - Best film directed by someone under 25?

1SO

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Re: Directors Best - Leos Carax
« Reply #14 on: November 02, 2012, 12:28:17 AM »
Boyz N the Hood (23)
Evil Dead (22)
Vincent (24)
Who's That Knocking at My Door (25)

ArmenianScientist

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Re: Directors Best - Leos Carax
« Reply #15 on: November 02, 2012, 12:58:32 AM »
Boy Meets Girl is definitely better than Who's That Knocking at my Door. Haven't seen the rest of those.

Gotta love the moment in Boy Meets Girl when an Armenian kid in a subway randomly starts saying strange things to Denis Lavant in Armenian.

Totoro

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Re: Directors Best - Leos Carax
« Reply #16 on: November 02, 2012, 01:24:29 AM »
Citizen Kane (25).

ArmenianScientist

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Re: Directors Best - Leos Carax
« Reply #17 on: November 02, 2012, 01:53:47 AM »
I said under 25, but yeah, it's insane to think Welles directed CK when he was 25.

I got a Lynch vibe during the party (?) sequence of Boy Meets Girl. Surreal elements like the uncomfortably stilted small talk, the random video of that bald woman crying, and the fish tank in the middle of the kitchen cabinets gave the film a darkly comic tone.

goodguy

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Re: Directors Best - Leos Carax
« Reply #18 on: November 02, 2012, 03:00:14 PM »
Boy Meets Girl - Best film directed by someone under 25?

Fassbinder's Katzelmacher is the only other one I have in my Top 100, I think.

roujin

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Re: Directors Best - Leos Carax
« Reply #19 on: November 20, 2012, 12:17:03 PM »
Pola X Leos Carax, 1999

All of Carax's films previous to this were born out of a certain youthful passion, a romantic naivete that was contagious. Not only because the characters possessed those things, but because Carax himself seemed determine to fill his movies with moments that expressed that sentiment. Think "Modern Love," think waterskis and Public Enemy, think tap dancing, cutting off your hair, etc. Pola X seems to me to be a slightly different proposition. Depardieu lives a fun life in a quasi-incestuous relationship with his mom, Deneuve, and his fiancee cousin person along the way. He doesn't seem at all dissatisfied. Except he keeps dreaming about a strange woman. Soon enough he's abandoned his bourgeois lifestyle, feeling sure that he's finally seen thru the facade of the life he's left behind. The youthful passion turns dark, destructive, obsessive; it goes into some pretty dark and CINECAST!ed up places, ultimately arriving at a hysteria fueled by grand gestures. It's the destruction of a dream. The hidden life you were meant to live turning out to be not good at all. But in the dark, dark forest, everything is forgotten; the pain we want to possess and protect others from is the one we inflict. We are together, bathed in blood.

This was a rather peculiar movie.
« Last Edit: February 21, 2020, 08:21:01 PM by 1SO »

 

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