I’m continuing my 80s Arthouse Film Festival with this movie — which I haven’t seen before (or indeed any Leos Carax movies, I think). But I got a Carax box set because Denis Lavant is in this, and Claire Denis cast him in Beau Travail because of these movies, so I wanted to have a look.

Hey! That’s very solution orientated.

She’s a woman of culture.

Um… I dunno. This is the sort of film that seems like something I’d really like, but I’m not really feeling it. The performances are super stilted and stylised — but not in a Robert Bresson way, but more like in a fumbley way?

And the plot (FSVO plot) isn’t exactly gripping either.

The film wants to say something about movie history and reality, I think? There’s a lot of people observing other people and stuff. But it seems kinda half baked to me.

Ah:

It is the debut feature by Leos Carax, a film he directed when he was only 24 years old. Like most of the other films in the cinéma du look movement, in which Carax was a key member, it’s not very story-driven and instead favours strange plot tangents and a cool distance from its characters.

Cinéma du look? Nice.

But I mean… look at these shots. They look amazing. So it’s impossible to just dismiss this movie, even if it’s perhaps mostly just a goofy comedy.

By the end here, I was super impatient with the movie. So:

Boy Meets Girl. Leos Carax. 1984. ⚂

I’m continuing my 80s arthouse cinema festival with this movie, which I saw at the Cinematheque back in the 80s, but remember exactly nothing about.

Is this the basis of a meme?

Ah, yes, twelve drawings… Which reminds me of The Falls, which I also saw at the Cinematheque. Which is a 92-part series of interviews with people who experienced the Violent Unexplained Event. It was really cool — more than half of the already thin audience disappeared during the viewing.

I mean, it’s more than three hours long, and while it does have a kind of cumulative effect, it’s a lot.

So this is scaling it down a bit.

This is a fascinating movie, but I’m not sure whether the fascination comes from what’s actually happening or because of the cod-Shakespearean dialogue which makes things hover on the edges of comprehensibility.

And, of course, Michael Nyman’s cod-Philip Glass soundtrack doesn’t hurt.

This restored blu ray edition is a bit weird? The white bits are really #fff — they seem digital and blown out. It might have been that way on the original film, but that would have been pretty odd.

And see? There’s like VHS-like artefacts on this, and of course this hasn’t been near a video, so that’s just weird.

It’s like they’ve over-sharpened the film when transferring to digital?

Ah:

In 2003 the BFI restored the film digitally and this restoration was released on DVD.

It was digitised in 2003? That was the worst possible time, because the tech around that time was just horrible.

Ah yeah. It’s extremely 80s, what with the sort of meta mystery embedded in the movie — and it’s also very unpleasant, what with all the sexual abuse the protagonist (well, perhaps not protagonist, but the main character) perpetrates with a presumed snicker from the audience.

So the Shocking Upper Class Ending falls flat, because I really wanted that guy to die, anyway. And their burning the artwork was supposed to be extra super shocking, but the artwork isn’t very good, so…

I’ve been wondering why there’s no Greenaway movies on the Best Of List, and now I kinda understand: This movie is brilliantly made, but it’s bullshit.

The Draughtman’s Contract. Peter Greenaway. 1982. ⚃

Oooh. It’s been a minute since I’ve seen that logo…

I got this bluray because I rewatched Smoke/Blue In The Face recently, and that reminded me that I’ve never really gotten into Wayne Wang’s movies — he was another one of those 80s hot shit indie directors that’s basically been forgotten now.

Weird. I mean, the aspect ratio. It’s aaaalmost 16:9, but no movies are shot in 16:9. And indeed imdb says 1.85:1, but it’s been cut down slightly for this bluray.

And the subtitles are weird! There are three of them! One translates from Cantonese to English, but whenever they’re talking in English, there’s nothing. The third subtitles the English, but when there’s Cantonese, it just says [speaking in Cantonese]. And I have no idea what the second does, but it’s not useful, either.

Because when they’re speaking in English, it needs subtitles, and when they’re speaking in Cantonese, it really needs subtitles.

Why do everybody in this movie have a perm?

I’ve never been upstairs in an airplane… do those even exist anymore? They do! Hm, I wanna do that once in my life… The -8 is allegedly the newest iteration (but it’s more than a decade old).

Yeah… Arthouse. There really was a separate genre of films in the 80s, wasn’t there? Movies that were shown in the local cinematheques all over the world: Think Jim Jarmusch, Wim Wenders, Peter Greenaway… Which was a separate “market” from the experimental movie market: Indie movies that are pretty conventional, really, but appeal to a slightly different market than the mainstream one.

I used to go to the cinematheque here all the time in the late 80s/early 90s, but I haven’t been in decades. I wonder what they’re showing now?

Oh! Lots of movies for children… and Goodfellas? OK. Cube!? That’s a horror movie… There’s a Woody Allen movie, which I’d guess would be there. And Cleo from 5 to 7, which is a stone cold classic. Heh, Ghost Dog — Jim Jarmusch, and Do The Right Thing — the Spike Lee movie people like.

Yeah, no. It’s old movies — 40 years older or more — and commercial movies. Doesn’t seem like they are showing new, interesting movies at all, which is a huge change from what it was like in the 80s. I guess those movies go on the festival circuit now, before being bought by Criterion for streaming?

Aaanyway. I really enjoyed this movie. I kept smiling the entire time. But it’s really… I’m not really gripped? So it’s really a kinda ⚃ movie? But I just really enjoyed letting it wash over me, so let’s go with:

Dim Sum: A Little Bit of HeartDim Sum. Wayne Wang. 1985. ⚄