Self-Portrait

C'est pas moi/It's Not Me (2024) - Carax The question, "Who is Leos Carax?" was put on the French filmmaker of such films as Holy Motors and Annette by a museum, in preparation of an exhibit that didn't happen - explains Carax in the beginning of this 41 minute self-portraiture, ironically titled, C'est Pas Moi/It's Not Me. Like many artists, Carax has had his share of ups and downs in his 40-year career: Once touted as Godard's heir-apparent and an enfant terrible of French cinema, his grand, blurring vision of young love and cinema got him into a lot of trouble. His passionate affair with Juliette Binoche, and stormy relationship with the late Lithuanian actress Katerina Golubeva (whom he had a daughter with, Nastya Golubeva Carax, who is in the film), are often reflected in his films.

In C'est pas moi, Carax pays not too subtle homage to the late mentor, Jean-Luc Godard, in more ways than one. JLG's signature wordplay displays on the center of the screen in C'est pas moi, same size, same font - linking cinema, history and ghosts. His gravelly voice narration also reminds me of the late old master. He even includes a voice message Godard left him on his phone.

Here comes the full circle: Carax's earlier films were heavily influenced by the French New Wave. He started his career as a JLG's pupil (even appearing in JLG film King Lear), garnered acclaim for imitating JLG's style, but without the weight of the political, cultural subjects of his mentor. Instead, he aimed for youthful love, longing and whimsy that attracted many admirers like me. After the long hiatus (his magnum opus Les amants du Pont-Neuf/Lovers on the Bridge (1991)and its subsequent box office and critical failure almost destroyed his career and couldn't finance another film for decades), his resurrection with Holy Motors (2012) and Annette (2021), two very self-reflexive, fantastical films, Carax is back, embracing Godard again more openly, for the benefit of composing a dense, visually sumptuous self-portrait.

All Carax's past films are present – his vibrant color palette pristinely preserved in glorious celluloid (he was once idiosyncratically grouped with other 80s French filmmakers as ‘Cinema du Look’ in conjunction with his then cinematographer, the late Jean-Yves Escoffier).

It’s almost euphoric to see adorable faces of young Binoche, Julie Delpy and Golubeva, also baby Denis Lavant, a longtime collaborator of Carax, playing the filmmaker’s alter ego, Alex (Carax’s real name is Alex Oscar Dupont). His penchant for controversy (or bad French humor) is there too - in the form of Hitler and Polanski.

Carax is not a visual essayist commenting and reflecting on the state of the chaotic world we live in - maybe only a little bit but not in Godard's sense. The film is all about him. And it's beautiful and glorious. It builds up to a stormy solo piano session of the theme from The Young Girls of Rochefort, played by his daughter, Nastya - perfectly capturing the essence of Carax's career, his sentimentality, his art and beauty haunted by the ghosts of the past (including but not limited to departed: Golubeva, Guillaume Depardieu, Escoffier, Godard). C’est pas moi is the best cinematic self-portrait of an artist you can wish for. One of the year’s very best

Legionnaire's Disease

The Human Flowers of Flesh (2022) - Wittmann "When you have no home, a round world is the best you could have," is one of many poignant phrases uttered in Helena Wittmann's sopomore film The Human Flowers of Flesh. Just like her debut film Drift, Wittmann's preoccupation with being at sea continues. "A woman from Marselle who lives on her sailing ship with her crew," turns out to be Ida (Angeliki Papoulia of Dog Tooth). Most of the film we see Ida and her crew doing chores and living on the ship - cleaning, cooking, reading, exchanging annecdotes and stories and swimming.

We see forever undulating sea on the deck and through the round windows from inside the ship, the horizontal sea level bobbing up and down as the ship sails through the waves. Just like Drift, the long stretches of these scenes has its own hypnotic rhythm. The crew converse in many different languages - English, German, Arabic, Portuguese, Greek and so on, yet nothing is explained about their background. Instead, Wittmann concentrates on the film's visually blissful moments - the shimmering sunlight reflected on the waves just below the deck, a piece of reef Ida brought from Antigua being passed around the crew, a dance party on the deck at night with colorful flags and lights gleaming and the blue sea as Ida swims back and forth. There are some show stoppers like the camera plunging into the blue depth to find a wreckage of a downed WWII plane at the bottom of the ocean floor. The film's full of sensual images that recalls Claire Denis films. But I think the aime here is different. In Wittmann's hands, the gleaming water and the sun are the subjects. They are vital to human life and we see that in Ida and her crew's uneroticised browned skin.

Speaking of Denis, Wittmann touches upon the legacy of colonialism and French Legionnaires in Mediterranean world and North Africa. As the ship lands on the shores of these parts, we see Ida walking past the military ports. At times we hear the military choir singing a legionnaire's hyper militaristic song of sacrifice. Then we see paratroopers jumping out of the planes, dotting the frame against the blue sky in Corsica. It's Denis Lavant's presence that accentuates this historical context cinematically. As we cinephiles are aware, Lavant played a lovelorn dancing French Legionnaire in Claire Denis's masterpiece, Beau Travail, in 1999. Lavant, almost a quarter decade older but still very much a physical presence, shows up at the end of the film in the streets of North Africa, and invites Ida, who's been following him, for some scrambled eggs in his flat. Is this Wittmann's way of commenting on the colonialism or what's left of it? I'd like to think that it's more of a kinship between two people who understand not having a home and its loneliness.

Poupolina, also starring in any less enigmatic A Little Love Package (by Argentine Gaston Solnicki), rises as a big supporter/collaborator of new talents who are pushing the cinematic boundaries into uncharted territories. And I very much welcome it.

Lobotomizer

The Mountain (2018) - Alverson

Director Rick Alverson's The Mountain is a fresh breath of air among Summer sensory overlord movies season. From its measured framing in Academy ratio, muted color palette, minimalist period production design, old timey big band jazz ballads to most actors mumbling their lines, there is something inexplicably comforting about the film, like a foggy Saturday morning in November.

Shy and reserved Andy (Tye Sheridan) lives with his old figure skating coach dad (Udo Kier) and drives a zamboni in the skating link where his father coaches. His mother is in a mental institution. His scope of the world is limited to his small town surroundings. All he can do really is to daydream about girls in skates. After his father's sudden death on the link, Andy is approached by Dr. Wallace Fiennes (Jeff Goldblum) who specializes in lobotomy. Wallace was his mom's physician and possibly responsible for her lobotomy as well. Traveling from asylum to asylum, performing shock treatment and lobotomy, Dr. Wally is in need of portrait photographer and asks Andy to Join him.

The Mountain is a peculiar film about self discovery and the price of freedom. Its somber tone is only broken by the presence of Denis Lavant, a veteran French actor, known for his acrobatic physicality and manic energy in films by Leos Carax and Claire Denis. Here he is Jack, a father of Susan (Hanna Gross), a girl with an unstable mental state which her father deems in need of lobotomy, who becomes a love interest for Andy. Lavant's over the top screeching, unintelligible, animalistic, (at least it sounds like) largely improvised monologue (in French and English and otherwise) steals the latter part of the film. Alverson has a singular sense of humor and tone, rarely seen in American indie cinema. And I welcome it.

Resurrection of Alex Oscar

Holy Motors (2012) - Carax

I'm pretty sure I won't see anything more audacious this year than Leos Carax's self reflexive, funny, goofy and touching ode to cinema. Holy Motors follows Alex the performer (Carax's alter ego played by Denis Lavant) as he goes through 9 different lives in one night. The film makes full use of Lavant's acrobatic skills- especially in 'the motion capture' segment that highlights the actor's physical agility and pays a tribute (on a treadmill) to his own film, Mauvais Sang. It also features some of the most bizarre casting choices- aside from Lavant, Michel Piccoli, Edith Scob, it also stars Eva Mendes and Kylie Minogue. Carax retraces his steps onto the Pont-neuf even, ever so slightly: after 20 years, old lovers Jean (Minogue) and Alex meet at empty Le Samaritaine department store overlooking the famed bridge which was the setting for Carax's magnum opus (and my personal favorite) Lovers on the Bridge (1991).

Holy Motors marks a comeback of a major French auteur (his last feature was Pola X in 1999). It was very disconcerting to see him all broken up and bitter at a Q&A session for an omnibus film, Tokyo!, in which his contribution Merde was definitely the highlight of the three. He was having a hard time financing any of his projects. He talked about his desire to use his character Merde (Lavant)- a flower eating, deformed creature living in the Tokyo sewer, again in some other occasions and I'm glad he gets to do that in this film. Holy Motors is a product of a frustrated artist finding ways to express himself under difficult financial circumstances. Its disjointed, episodic narrative reflects that. It's vastly different from his earlier work but just as mesmerizing nonetheless. And how can anyone get tired of watching Denis Lavant on screen? He is in top form in this.

I want to destroy something beautiful...

Beau Travail (1999) - Denis

Claire Denis loosely adapts Melville's Billy Budd- a story about the human desire to destroy something pure and beautiful, with a sensual, languid imagery. Arid, rocky Djibouti backdrop clashes with smooth, muscular bodies of young Legionnaires as they carry on their boring daily routines (mostly shirtless) with no real enemies in sight. Galoup (Denis Lavant), a seasoned military man takes an immediate dislike to a beautiful, righteous new recruit Sentain (Grégoire Colin) and looks for excuses to destroy him. His feelings are mixture of desire, jealousy and envy.

It's Lavant's physicality on full display here. His pockmarked face and athleticism dominate the screen. I thought Galoup's narration was unnecessary at first since it doesn't add anything much to the plot. Then again, Denis has little concerns for that. On this viewing, I can see how it accentuates Galoup's loneliness and isolation. Plus, Lavant's gravelly voice is music to my ears and makes the narration all the more poignant. Great Michele Subor also stars as the commandant without principles. The ending is definitely my favorite movie ending of all time. I really hope Criterion picks this one up in the future because New Yorker DVD sucks.