Mauvais sang
* * 1/2
With The Lovers on the Bridge being my first Carax, I thought he was just passionately eccentric. Holy Motors I took as the wild stab of an artist with more cool ideas than he could fit into a single film. Now I believe that Lovers was the mostly normal exception, while Motors is typical of his ambition. Mauvais Sang drinks deep from the well of Godard, but it's mostly from Pierrot le fou, which I like for its cinematic experimentation (where you can throw an apple into the air and catch celery), and only a portion from Breathless, mainly the endless talking that turns dialogue itself into a cinematic device to be de/re-constructed.
This is the type of film that can be very appealing to a large cinematic group that I am not one of. There's a quote I love by Otie Wheeler on Letterboxd that goes "The kind of movie that, even on a third viewing, makes you ashamed of the last 100 movies you watched, the last 100 days you lived or rather didn't, your humdrum existence a pathetic placeholder for what should be called living." I'm more of a grindhouse guy, but I at least appreciated Carax's talent.