In a film that according to many should have won the Palme d’Or this year at Cannes, Denis Lavant plays mysterious Mr. Oscar who, during the course of the day, takes on various identities in a bizarre show captured by an unseen camera. Bad boy of French film Leos Carax triumphs after a 13-year break with a delightful and provocative spectacle that betrays a sense of awe for Paris, for classic films, and perhaps even for Kylie Minogue’s vocals.
After a thirteen-year lull Leos Carax, the enfant terrible of French film, is triumphally back. In a film that many had tipped for this year’s Palme d’Or at Cannes, the director’s faithful partner Denis Lavant embodies the mysterious Monsieur Oscar, who in the course of a single day assumes a whole range of identities in a disturbing "performance” in front of invisible cameras. "What makes you carry on?” asks his boss, played by Michel Piccoli. "The beauty of the act,” replies Lavant’s chameleonesque hero in what could be a paraphrase of Carax’s own creative creed, which he has shared with us in a mere five films over nearly thirty years. His characteristically anguished romantic vision is combined with a provocative playfulness and a veneration of some of the more bizarre milestones of cinema (among them Georges Franju’s Les yeux sans visage). Woven into this bewitching spectacle is a love of Paris (watching helplessly as the legendary Samaritaine department store goes into terminal decline), the vanishing world of the limousine, and the songs of Kylie Minogue.
115 min / Color, DCP
Director Leos Carax
/ Screenplay Leos Carax
/ Dir. of Photography Caroline Champetier, Yves Cape
/ Editor Nelly Quettier
/ Producer Martine Marignac
/ Production Pierre Grise Productions
/ Cast Denis Lavant, Edith Scob, Eva Mendes, Kylie Minogue, Michel Piccoli
/ Contact GoodFellas, Aerofilms
/ Distributor Aerofilms
Leos Carax (b. 1960, Suresnes, France) joined the editorial team of Cahiers du cinéma at age 20. Shortly afterward he shot his short film debut Strangulations Blues (1980). It took another four years for his first feature, Boy Meets Girl (1984), which marks the beginning of his collaboration with actor Denis Lavant and cameraman Jean-Yves Escoffier. Then followed a somber romance with touches of sci-fi and mystery, Bad Blood (Mauvais sang, 1986), which brought him the Alfred Bauer Prize for innovation at the Berlinale. While shooting The Lovers on the Bridge (Les amants du Pont-Neuf, 1991), Carax’s vision slammed into reality; although a cult movie today, its creation brought on an eight-year hiatus that the director ended in 1999 with his controversial adaptation of Melville’s novel Pierre: or, The Ambiguities entitled Pola X. In 2008 he contributed one of three segments to a film inspired by the Japanese capital, simply entitled Tokyo!.
GoodFellas
65 rue de Dunkerque, 75009, Paris
France
Phone: +33 143 132 164
E-mail: [email protected]
Aerofilms
Milady Horákové 383/79, 170 00, Praha 7
Czech Republic
Phone: +420 224 947 566
E-mail: [email protected]
Ivo Andrle
Distributor
Zuzana Pudilová
Distributor
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