It's Not Me (Leos Carax, 2024)

Leos Carax's magnificent, striking essay film It's Not Me is an experimental piece that delves into the mind of its elusive maker; one of cinema's most enigmatic auteurs, Carax has made just a handful of films in a career that spans more than four decades.  This 42-minute film—whose running time sees it classed as a feature in the US and UK but not in its director's native France—offers a welcome glimpse into Carax's private and professional worlds.  The film is a reflective, byzantine journey in which Carax mixes excerpts from his and others' movies with newly shot footage to create a patchwork view of his career and influences.  Carax has experienced his share of tragedy, but a more uplifting aspect of his personal life is represented by the inclusion of his daughter Nastya among It's Not Me's eclectic cast.

The film also features Denis Lavant, an actor who has starred in four of Carax's six previous feature films, who here reprises his role as the unnerving Monsieur Merde from anthology film Tokyo! and Holy Motors.  It's Not Me's narrative is at once chaotic and controlled, a testament to Carax's ability to weave disparate elements into a cohesive, satisfying whole.  The film is littered with nods to his earlier works, such as Les amants du Pont-Neuf, Annette and the aforementioned Holy Motors, as well as references to several cinematic luminaries, particularly Jean-Luc Godard, whose essay film aesthetic greatly informs the look, feel and sound of this self-portrait.  Like Godard's final film—the coruscating The Image Book—It's Not Me is a densely packed work, one whose brevity belies its depth and scope.

In terms of visual style, It's Not Me is almost slavishly Godardian, with its choppy edits, bold intertitles and occasionally confrontational imagery serving to recall the work of the most obtuse member of the New Wave—yet Carax's film possesses a warmth that was never present in the oeuvre of his cantankerous idol.  As Carax offsets black-and-white clips against hyper-saturated colour sequences, the film's diverse soundtrack—which includes several Bowie classics, one of which is hidden in a post-credits scene—further enhances the emotional impact of these eye-popping images.  Yet one of the most moving aspects of It's Not Me is Carax's own voiceover, which is both illuminating and self-deprecating as it offers some insight into this singular filmmaker's working methods and artistic touchstones.

Darren Arnold

Images: BFI

EO (Jerzy Skolimowski, 2022)

In the near 60 years since Jerzy Skolimowski's first feature Rysopis, the veteran director has had a rather spotty career, with his most interesting work appearing in the 1970s, when he turned out the likes of Deep End, The Shout and King, Queen, Knave.  In 2015, Skolimowski directed the largely unmemorable 11 Minutes, which many at the time may have assumed to be the filmmaker's swansong; yet seven years later, Skolimowski—who turns 85 next month—returned with the remarkable EO, which arguably stands as his finest film.  EO—whose title is an approximation of the sound made by a donkey—is a quasi-remake of Robert Bresson's 1966 classic Au hasard Balthazar, a work widely considered to be one of the greatest films of all time.  Such was the universality of Bresson's outstanding film that Jean-Luc Godard famously declared it to be "the world in an hour and a half"; with this in mind, a new take on Au hasard Balthazar sounds like a fool's errand—and it almost certainly would be were the film in the vein of Gus Van Sant's ill-fated stab at Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho.

Fortunately, Skolimowski's film is a highly unorthodox remake, one that shares little with its nominal inspiration bar the central character; in these senses, it's cut from the same cloth as Werner Herzog's riotous riff on Abel Ferrara's Bad Lieutenant.  EO begins with the donkey of the title performing as part of a circus act in which he stars alongside the caring Kasandra (Sandra Drzymalska), who has built a deep bond with EO.  It isn't long before animal rights protesters secure the release of EO, with the distraught Kasandra watching on helplessly as her beloved donkey is bundled off in a trailer.  From this point on, EO embarks on an odyssey in which he experiences a wide spectrum of human behaviour, with his fraught, perilous journey across Europe recalling that of the main character in Václav Marhoul's The Painted Bird; as with Marhoul's film, EO is an episodic affair, one that sees its protagonist stumble from one situation to another, with every encounter beginning as an unknown quantity in which he must wait to see if he's in the presence of friend or foe.  Skolimowski, like Marhoul, appears to take the worldview that cruelty is much easier to find than kindness.   

Which is not to say that the film is all doom and gloom: Skolimowski punctuates this stressful ride with moments of real humour, and EO's inscrutable features are used to good effect in this regard.  In EO, Skolimowski taps into the humble, immutable nature of donkeys—as Bresson did in Au hasard Balthazar—but he also infuses EO with a layer of mischief that sets him apart from the title character of Bresson's masterpiece, as does his general demeanour: more everyman, less Christ-like.  Or is this simply what we project onto EO (or Balthazar, for that matter), who over the course of the film is played by six different donkeys?  Smokilowski's film may centre on an animal, but it reveals a great deal about humans—be they on the screen or in the audience—and it is very surprising that this incredibly insightful work didn't win the Ecumenical Prize at Cannes (although it did leave the festival with a well-deserved Jury Prize).

As EO makes his way across the continent, the various environments he finds himself in are often as baffling to the viewer as they are to the endearing donkey.  Whether watching a hotly contested football match or visiting the palatial home of a haughty countess (a late, gasp-inducing cameo from Isabelle Huppert), EO approaches matters with an indifference that stands in sharp contrast to the range of human emotions on display.  While EO seems to be very accepting of life and all its hardships, Skolimowski inserts some dazzling sequences which suggest that EO is capable of dreaming—which might well be the case.  If Charlotte Wells' equally heartbreaking Aftersun highlights the silent gap that separates children from their parents, EO prompts us to ponder the mysterious relationship between humans and animals; we think we know all about them, but how do they perceive us?  This formally daring film makes for a moving, immersive experience, one that lingers in the mind long after the end credits have rolled.

Darren Arnold

Images: I Wonder Pictures

End of Cinema

Rutger & The Wreck: A Chat with Ken Rowles

The late Dutch actor Rutger Hauer left behind a highly impressive CV, one which includes the likes of 80s classics Blade Runner and The Hitcher, along with four Dutch-language films directed by Paul Verhoeven: Katie Tippel, Turkish Delight, Spetters and Soldier of Orange.  In his later years, Hauer was more often than not seen in supporting roles, and during this century he appeared in several big-budget productions including Luc Besson's Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets and Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins; towards the end of his life, he had a part in Jacques Audiard's outstanding The Sisters Brothers.  Back in the late 1980s, Hauer was due to star in a film called Torment, yet there's virtually nothing in the way of information regarding this title, despite it occurring during the height of the actor's popularity.  Although there are a few scant production details listed on the British Film Institute's website, Torment has always presented something of a mystery, so I'm pleased to have finally learned a bit more about it, courtesy of the man who was in place to direct the film.

Back in October, I spent a very pleasant couple of hours or so with filmmaker Ken Rowles, who has numerous credits dating back more than fifty years.  I actually met with Ken to ask him about his work on Jean-Luc Godard's Sympathy for the Devil, but our conversation also covered a number of Ken's other projects, both realised and unrealised, with Torment coming under the latter category.  In Ken's many years in the film industry, he's encountered and/or worked with the likes of Stanley Baker, Tony Curtis, Dick Emery, Simon Ward, Ken Russell, Peter Sykes, and Ian McShane, and his film with Rutger Hauer sounds like an intriguing project, one which will sadly never come to fruition.  Torment was to be written and produced by Christian Bel, who took on the same duties for the Anthony Quinn–Lauren Bacall love story A Star for Two, a project that was made after Torment failed to get off the ground.  A Star for Two is a remarkably difficult title to track down, although Bel has uploaded a promo reel for the film to YouTube; Bel, like yours truly, has a solitary feature film to his name on the IMDb, and it seems that he left the film industry following the 1991 release of A Star for Two, which was directed by Canadian Jimmy Kaufman.

Anyway, Ken informed me that Torment was to be a film centring on the Algerian War, or, more accurately, the aftermath of the conflict, as the lead character struggled with his memories of the war as he tried to live out his life in Paris, and this mental anguish is presumably what the film's title referred to.  As the director, Ken spent a lot of time in Paris as the film entered its pre-production phase, and he also flew out to Tunisia to look at potential locations.  But, despite all the groundwork, the film never made it into production; while Torment is by no means unusual in this regard, it does sound like a film that had real potential, and it would have been interesting to see Hauer at work in such a project.  The efforts Ken described served as a reminder of the huge amount of work that goes into each of the many films that never get made, and so often it's merely a simple matter of luck that determines if a film goes ahead or falls by the wayside.

I thoroughly enjoyed speaking with Ken, and much more of our conversation (particularly the material regarding Jean-Luc Godard) should eventually surface as part of a writing project I'm currently working on.  Ken still makes films, and in recent years he has directed a documentary about the wreck of the SS Richard Montgomery, an explosives-laden vessel that sits just 30 miles from London.  The Wreck is narrated by Ian McShane, and I've been lucky enough to see a workprint of the film; it provides a fascinating look at a remarkable situation: despite this ship and its deadly cargo remaining on a seabed close to densely populated land, the authorities apparently have little interest in tending to the issue.  You can view the film's promo reel below.

Darren Arnold

Images: DWDD [CC BY 3.0] / UniFrance

The Lost Prince (Michel Hazanavicius, 2020)

OSS 117 director Michel Hazanavicius won an Oscar in 2012 for The Artist, his charming (if slight) silent movie which netted four other Academy Awards, including one for OSS star Jean Dujardin.  Hazanavicius faltered with his next film, a poorly-received remake of Fred Zinneman's The Search, but bounced back in 2017 with the excellent Jean-Luc Godard biopic Redoubtable.  Happily, his latest film provides further proof that The Search was little more than a blip.  As with the majority of his work, The Lost Prince stars Hazanavicius' wife Bérénice Bejo, who is here joined by Omar Sy, an actor who in recent years has landed a string of roles in entries in long-running Hollywood franchises such as Jurassic Park, X-Men and Transformers.  There's also a sizeable part for Belgian star François Damiens, who brings his fine sense of comic timing to what can perhaps be best described as a fairy tale with a rather unique twist.

Djibi (Sy) is a single dad who is completely devoted to his young daughter Sofia (Sarah Gaye).  Every night, Djibi settles down with Sofia and reads her a bedtime story, and it is during these tales that the father enters a Day-Glo fantasy world in which his words really do come to life.  In this realm, Djibi is a prince, one who always comes to Sofia's rescue when the wicked Pritprout (Damiens) has executed some dastardly plan or other.  But although Djibi's prince always saves the day, it does seem that he is aware this is just a role: once a story's finished, the main characters are revealed to be played by actors, and we witness the crew and all the backstage efforts that go into mounting these elaborate scenarios.  All of this is in sharp contrast to the modest reality occupied by Sofia and Djibi, who live in a small but cosy flat where they soon gain a new neighbour in the form of the chatty, likeable Clotilde (Bejo), who will soon appear in both worlds.  

While Djibi seems quite happy with the status quo, he fails to catch on to the fact that Sofia is growing up fast, and once she gets to high school she discovers other things in her life, meaning she would like her evenings to consist of a bit more than Djibi's stories.  Among these other interests is Max (Néotis Ronzon), a friendly classmate who is one of the first to befriend the 12-year-old at her new school.  As Djibi continues to make forays into the fantasy world, he soon discovers that he's no longer the star of the show, having been usurped by a much younger prince.  Joining the dots between the events of the two worlds isn't exactly difficult, and Djibi - who's now been relegated to little more than a bit player - plots to restore things to how they were.  In the fictional universe, Djibi is aided in his quest by an unlikely ally in the shape of former nemesis Pritprout, while in the real world it is down to Clotilde to provide some much-needed perspective.

The Lost Prince proves to be a more satisfying film than the somewhat overrated The Artist, and it's a warm if rather predictable tale which features typically winning performances from Sy, Bejo and Damiens.  The scenes set in the fantasy world look incredible, with Hazanavicius' regular cinematographer Guillaume Schiffman turning in some sterling work here.  The film features a nice nod to Schiffman's mother Suzanne in the form of a glimpse of a bus stop which bears her name; Schiffman Sr. worked closely with Truffaut, Godard and Rivette, among other greats, and it's often overlooked that she was the co-director (with Rivette) of the 13-hour Out 1.  The Lost Prince was certainly not a cheap film to make, so it's something of a pity that it appears to be set for middling box-office returns; it's a well-crafted slice of family entertainment, one which shows a bit more ambition than most films of its ilk.  While his two OSS 117 films remain this director's best work (a third instalment has just finished filming - without Hazanavicius - and is set for release next year), The Lost Prince is certainly a worthy addition to his CV.

Darren Arnold

Images: 01 Distribution