Wednesday, April 1, 5:00pm
Student Union Movie Theater, UNC Charlotte Main Campus
Mauvais Sang / The Night is Young
Director Leos Carax
France, 1986 & 2013, 105 min
In French with English subtitles
Presented as part of The Tournées Festival, which was made possible with the support of the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the US, the Centre National de la Cinématographie et de l’Image Animée, and the Franco-American Cultural Fund.
Additional sponsors are the Alliance Française de Charlotte and the UNC Charlotte French Club.
Introduction and discussion by William Davis, Instructor of Film Studies, UNC Charlotte
Photo credit: Mauvais Sang © Carlotta Films US
Leos Carax’s second film, from 1986, is a salute, at once moody and ebullient, to the cinema of the past and the ferocious intensity of youth. Like its predecessor, Boy Meets Girl (1984), Mauvais Sang, nominally a neo-noir set in Paris in the near future, is deeply in thrall to the masters of the Nouvelle Vague, particularly Jean-Luc Godard. But Carax’s endlessly romantic film transcends homage to capture ineffable states of being. Those outsize emotions are housed in the peewee, pliable body of Denis Lavant, the writer-director’s alter ego and one of cinema’s most kinetic actors. Lavant plays Alex, a conjuror and card sharp who teams up with gangster Marc (Michel Piccoli). All-consuming passion is ignited once Alex sees Anna (Juliette Binoche, here styled to resemble Anna Karina, Godard’s muse) on a bus, only to discover that she is Marc’s lover. She and Alex share a stunning, wordless moment, tethered together during a parachute jump (performed without stunt doubles). As we watch them float somewhere above the countryside outside Paris, this lavish spectacle becomes the perfect expression of the enormity of Alex’s infatuation—and of Carax’s singularly expansive, breathtaking cinema.
Reviews:
Let’s just say that Mauvais Sang is a total amazement. To speak of this film, we have to give meaning to words that have been a little bit tarnished, or mostly weakened: poetry, inspiration, dazzling shots, in a word: emotion. —Cahiers du Cinéma
Social Media Links: Mauvais Sang on YouTube
