There is always a trigger point as to why I select the movies that I go see. Either a favorite actor, or its the work of a revered auteur, or simply a recommendation from another cinephile. When it comes to Leo Carax’s latest movie it was simply a critic’s review in the final clip of its manic trailer which declared the movie ‘completely bonkers’ and I was immediately hooked. I simply had to see it.
I should tell you straight away that particular critic nailed it on the head perfectly BUT I should also quickly add that I loved every single frame of it even though some 24 hours later I am still struggling to make any sense of what I saw.
Essentially a white stretch limo driven by Celine a white haired chic elderly woman ferries Monsieur Oscar around the streets of Paris on his different assignments known as his ‘appointments’. Before each stop M. Oscar has a Briefing Dossier which sets out who he is to be and what he has to do. The inside of the limo is one massive dressing room as M. Oscar gets to play men and women, young and old, the living, the dying and the dead.
There is no link to any of the nine ‘appointments’ of the day and all of them are both nigh on impossible to fathom out and beyond bizarre. For example one has him dressed as barefooted glass-eyed madman running amok through Pere Lachaise Cemetery where he kidnaps a fashion model from a photo shoot and drags her into the underground sewers and transforms her into a Muslim before stripping himself naked to show off his erect penis. The model sits there just smoking a cigarette calmly taking this all in as if was all totally normal.
On another ‘appointment’ where he kills and is killed, once Celine drags his body back into the car, he’s alive again and ready to start all over again. And he does for the rest of the day and night.
Why he does all these things and who is arranging all the meticulous details of the plans is a total mystery (to me) and by the end of the 115 minutes I’d given up trying to work it out and just enjoyed the total weirdness of it all. Manohla Dhargis in the ‘NY Times’ summed it up beautifully with ‘it’s not about the destination, but its about the dizzying ride’. And dizzy, it certainly is.
And suddenly towards the latter end Kylie Minogue pops up as another operative who does ‘appointments’ too. She and M. Oscar had a ‘thing’ together some 20 years ago, and because this is a French Movie she sings a sappy song about it before killing her character (or herself?) whilst M. Oscar is driven to his ‘home’ for the night where he is met by his ‘wife’ and ‘child’ who are both apes. Literally.
In Denis Lavant, M. Carax found himself the most perfect chameleon of an actor who transformed himself so fantastically for the whole journey.
Since the movie was premiered at Cannes Film Festival reaction has being either of sheer horror or joy … everyone has very strong views on this one. It is the work of a total genius filmmaker who is obviously totally barking mad. But that’s not such a bad thing when it results in such an glorious anarchic piece of magical nonsense that is so far out there you feel all the same effects as if you had taken some hallucinatory drugs
This is unquestionably the most bizarre film I have seen this year ( maybe for several years?). If you share my taste in totally weird movies, then go see this extraordinary one. It will thrill you and antagonize you, but do not take any recreational drugs before you watch it, as the combination could be far too serious to even contemplate.
★★★★★★★★★
Posted by queerguru at 04:21
Labels: down right weird, French
There is always a trigger point as to why I select the movies that I go see. Either a favorite actor, or its the work of a revered auteur, or simply a recommendation from another cinephile. When it comes to Leo Carax’s latest movie it was simply a critic’s review in the final clip of its manic trailer which declared the movie ‘completely bonkers’ and I was immediately hooked. I simply had to see it.
