This need to spit the world's sinister truth in its face is as old as the world itself.

Pola X
Leos Carax 1999 France
Starring: Guillaume Depardieu, Yekaterina Golubeva, Catherine Deneuve, Laurent Lucas, Delphine Chuillot


Since his debut short Strangulation Blues in 1980 the French director Leos Carax has made a series of stunning, virtually indescribable films that often make use of other texts. His 2008 short Merde (part of the portmanteau project Tokyo!) for example borrowed a character from Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita then let it loose as a Godzilla style monster in modern day Tokyo to highlight the discrimination and fear within current society. In 2012's Holy Motors meanwhile he took this device further, using references to, amongst other things, the 1960's French horror film Eyes Without A Face, the Pixar animation Cars, The Man Who Fell To Earth, Kylie Minogue, his own past work, the avant-garde artist Matthew Barney's Drawing Restraint 7, Jean Seberg and Henry James' novel Portrait Of A Lady to allow us to paddle through his rapidly unravelling subconscious. Pola X, made in 1999, is another case of Carax's adaptation, this time using Herman Melville's Pierre, or the Ambiguities (the POLA of the title, with the X representing the number of drafts the script went through), transposing it to 1990's France with Guillaume Depardieu (son of Gerard) in the main role and employing Scott Walker to produce the soundtrack. Despite all this though it's the most 'normal' of all Carax's revision, if indeed there is such a thing, keeping most of the narrative more or less intact and, for once, retaining the main character's name rather than his usual Alex (his own real name; Leos Carax is an anagram of Alex Oscar). As ever though there are many subjects other than the intended with war the first thing we see as a cough leads us into images of bombs being dropped and planes falling from the sky. Later, when Pierre confronts his apparent stalker, Yekaterina Golubeva's Isabelle, she admits her link to him and, rather than questioning her, he stands transfixed as she narrates the story of her battle scarred past. It's not just that he recognises her from his dreams and his in-progress novel or the revelation she's just admitted either. She speaks with an Eastern European accent and, when he leaves his family and fiancée to be with her, she's accompanied by an unidentified woman and child, both of whom disappear from the story as time goes on and Pierre's madness increases. We're never told which country she's referring to or why these two are at her side but it's obvious that something in their past has tied them together, at least until the unfortunate choices of man get in the way. The chief topic however is the search for meaning, both existential and in family, after early privilege and success, in this case after a upper class upbringing and proclamations of genius bombarding a first novel. It's something that drives Pierre to abandon all he has and that eventually drives him crazy until he's next to unrecognisable and what small amount of his second novel he's managed has become a morass of delirious drivel. This could actually be seen as a allegory of Carax himself, seeing as Pola X took eight years and numerous revisions to create and came after his most accessible and much-lauded work Les Amants du Pont-Neuf and, in the end, it's almost as confused and sprawling as Pierre's work. Still, along the way there are many visually tremendous scenes, including one seen only through a partially fogged-up mirror and another where Pierre's fiancée Lucie is in the midst of removing her blouse and shares a passionate kiss with her lover while the shirt is still covering her face (this scene also acts as a precursor to Edith Scob's role in Holy Motors). The acting is excellent at all turns as well, with Golubeva stealing the whole film, which considering that the cast includes Depardieu, Catherine Deneuve and Laurent Lucas is quite an achievement. Walker's soundtrack meanwhile, performed in conjunction with Sonic Youth, industrial metal bands and Bill Callahan of the band Smog (who has a cameo), is as odd as one might expect and then some. As a finished project it doesn't always make sense and by the end it gets seriously frustrating but its power to mesmerise never slips. It's overall just very Leos Carax.