Leos Carax 1984 France
Starring: Denis Lavant, Mireille Perrier, Maïté Nahyr, Carroll Brooks
In my opinion the French actor Denis Lavant is one of the most underrated performers of his generation. An unusual leading man, he's short, pockmarked and certainly not beautiful but the circus training of his early years has resulted in a towering but subtle physical presence which sees him swaggering, dancing, dragging himself along endless streets, engaging in slapstick yet never failing to find the gentility behind even his most monstrous roles. If a film were ever to be made of my life (and what a dull prospect that is) he's definitely the person I'd want to play me. Here he plays the first of Leos Carax's alter egos, once again named Alex (Carax's real name) and he attacks, spins, his mouth often open in a silent scream, as outstanding as ever. Carax is on cracking form too, kicking off the proceedings in black and white with a strained, deathly, somehow childlike voiceover before introducing us to Maïté, speeding away from a breakup accompanied by a child called Pimpernel in a car with what looks like a tricycle balanced on the window screen as if she's just mowed down a toddler; to Alex, spurning alcohol for milk (with at the very least a hint of A Clockwork Orange's Alex DeLarge), attempting murder through misunderstanding, throwing coins to a kissing couple as one might a busker, his checkerboard jacket alone in a sea of crisp white shirts; and to Mireille (an exceptional Mireille Perrier), sitting rigid and still as tears appear in her eyes before moving onto tap-dancing, verbal destruction and restlessness to a soundtrack of the Dead Kennedys' Holiday in Cambodia. All are facing ending relationships, one is never seen again and the other two meet up briefly and connect with one another. Honestly that's about as far as the plot goes but the film is no worse for it, instead feeling reminiscent of the wildly inventive, freefalling, free-form early works of Jean-Luc Godard before his political conscious wholeheartedly kicked in, full of whimsy, pop culture references and eminently serious children. As with Godard there are moments of hilarity alongside more sad, poignant ones and others that delight, particularly the extended sequence where Lavant blags his way into a party for the gifted but damaged and tries to entertain a positively baffled baby. I've seen most of Carax's work and I'm a great fan of his but the one thing that really struck me about Boy Meets Girl is that, while it's frequently wonderful, there's not a true authorial voice as there is in his later works. In a way it's understandable being that it was the debut of a then twenty four year old voracious fan of cinema but it still doesn't feel like quite the complete package, largely lacking a genuinely fully-formed personality of its own.
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