Boy Meets Girl (15.)
1984. Directed by Leos Carax.
Starring Denis Lavant, Mireille Perrier and Carroll Baker. In black and white. 99 mins. Part of the Leos Carax Box set
At the start of Boys Meets Girl everybody talks about the heat, but nobody seems to be hot. Carax's debut film is another French film about love. French films about love are just like English pub conversations about football – earnest, passionate talk about something they have never done.
In his first film, 24 year-old Carax cast the 22 year old Denis Lavant, the man who would be the Mastroianni to his Fellini, as Alex, a young man mooning around Paris on a summer evening after his girlfriend revealed that she was having an affair with his only friend.
His attention fixes on Mireille, a would be model whose boyfriend no longer loves her, who is contemplating suicide. In a series of magically realised sequences he circles around her, getting ever closer. Then when they finally meet, in the kitchen at a party, the film grinds to a halt as they talk to each other because this is the kind of film that can only appreciate the expectation of love, not the actuality. Alex says he can only appreciate the first time of something, which is not a very practical philosophy to go through life with.
What the film is in love with, is cinema and the striking image. Teaming up with cinematographer Jean Yves Escoffier was a serendipitous for Carax – according to Mr X the pair were almost co-directors and the film is full of moments you can tell they were just dying to get onto screen. Take for example the shot of Levant in a phone box, his head pinpointed in a circle of shattered glass. Or Mireille's apartment which has a wall made of glass, an extravagance that comes into its own in the final scene.
The film is an obtuse, even perverse homage to the silent cinema. It's like a mime show with dialogue, almost all of it is communicated visually. It's a silent film without music, or at least without a soundtrack. You get a few songs – Holidays In Cambodia by The Dead Kennedys, an early pre-fame David Bowie song (the start of a Carax obsession), a Gainsbourg song – but mostly events play out in an eerie silence.
There's no real plot, mostly the film is like an existential vaudeville show. Various figures appear, take centre stage, do their little turn and then disappear again. Lavant is like a kid in a sweet shop. He always seems so small, like the set had been built for a larger actor. He's a screen natural, but so raw, half formed: he looks like a clay model version of Sid Vicious.
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1984. Directed by Leos Carax.
Starring Denis Lavant, Mireille Perrier and Carroll Baker. In black and white. 99 mins. Part of the Leos Carax Box set
At the start of Boys Meets Girl everybody talks about the heat, but nobody seems to be hot. Carax's debut film is another French film about love. French films about love are just like English pub conversations about football – earnest, passionate talk about something they have never done.
In his first film, 24 year-old Carax cast the 22 year old Denis Lavant, the man who would be the Mastroianni to his Fellini, as Alex, a young man mooning around Paris on a summer evening after his girlfriend revealed that she was having an affair with his only friend.
His attention fixes on Mireille, a would be model whose boyfriend no longer loves her, who is contemplating suicide. In a series of magically realised sequences he circles around her, getting ever closer. Then when they finally meet, in the kitchen at a party, the film grinds to a halt as they talk to each other because this is the kind of film that can only appreciate the expectation of love, not the actuality. Alex says he can only appreciate the first time of something, which is not a very practical philosophy to go through life with.
What the film is in love with, is cinema and the striking image. Teaming up with cinematographer Jean Yves Escoffier was a serendipitous for Carax – according to Mr X the pair were almost co-directors and the film is full of moments you can tell they were just dying to get onto screen. Take for example the shot of Levant in a phone box, his head pinpointed in a circle of shattered glass. Or Mireille's apartment which has a wall made of glass, an extravagance that comes into its own in the final scene.
The film is an obtuse, even perverse homage to the silent cinema. It's like a mime show with dialogue, almost all of it is communicated visually. It's a silent film without music, or at least without a soundtrack. You get a few songs – Holidays In Cambodia by The Dead Kennedys, an early pre-fame David Bowie song (the start of a Carax obsession), a Gainsbourg song – but mostly events play out in an eerie silence.
There's no real plot, mostly the film is like an existential vaudeville show. Various figures appear, take centre stage, do their little turn and then disappear again. Lavant is like a kid in a sweet shop. He always seems so small, like the set had been built for a larger actor. He's a screen natural, but so raw, half formed: he looks like a clay model version of Sid Vicious.
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