TALES OF MODERN LOVE: LEOS CARAX, REBIRTHING CINEMA

Though the often-fraught and meticulous creative process of Leos Carax (1960–) has resulted in the production of only six features and a handful of shorts, the fabulist French writer-director’s imagination, sincerity and acknowledgement of the unknowable has remained consistent across his 45-year career. Born Alex Christophe Dupont, Carax announced his unconventionality early in life by changing his name at the age of 13. Often non-verbal as a teenager, he became fascinated with silent film while attending the Cinémathèque française. After a handful of aborted projects and a brief stint with Cahiers du cinéma, he completed the dreamlike short Strangulation Blues (1980), and gained international attention with the equally nocturnal feature Boy Meets Girl (1984). Categorised as part of the cinéma du look movement due to his work’s bold aesthetics, Carax diverges from contemporaries Luc Besson and Jean-Jacques Beineix through his interest in pre- and early cinema, referencing and channelling the explorations of photographer Eadweard Muybridge and maintaining a creatively codependent relationship with theatre and circus performer Denis Lavant. His cinema is also characterised by a desperate search for genuine romance that bled into his off-screen relationships with a number of featured actresses: Mireille Perrier, Juliette Binoche and Katerina Golubeva. The essential Carax moments combine magic and love, such as in Mauvais sang (1986) when Lavant, attempting to woo Binoche, throws a single apple off-screen, only for a barrage of other food to rain down on him. More recently, the filmmaker has reflected on the death and rebirth of cinema through new forms of motion-capture and digital video in Holy Motors (2012), and the adoption of the traditional forms of opera and puppetry in Annette (2021). This season presents most of Carax’s singular body of work, including the extravagant Les amants du Pont-Neuf (1991), the rarely seen extended miniseries version of 1999’s Pola X, Pierre ou les ambiguïtiés (2001), and the recent self-portrait It’s Not Me (2024), chronicling an outsider who paradoxically remains at the centre of late-20th and early-21st-century cinema.

Wednesday 25 February

7:00pm LES AMANTS DU PONT-NEUF

Leos Carax (1991) 126 mins – M

Alex (Denis Lavant) is an amateur circus performer addicted to sedatives. Michèle (Juliette Binoche) is a painter haunted by a failed relationship and an affliction which is gradually making her blind. Set primarily on Paris’ oldest bridge, the Pont-Neuf, Carax’s feverish love story blends elemental imagery and documentary components to powerful effect. With its extraordinary set pieces shot during France’s 1989 Bicentennial celebrations, Jonathan Rosenbaum declared it “the great urban expressionist fantasy of the ’90s”. With Edith Scob.

35mm print courtesy of the National Film and Sound Archive, Australia.

9:25pm MAUVAIS SANG

Leos Carax (1986) 116 mins – Unclassified 15+

Often described as a neo-noir, this romantically exhilarating and stylish science-fiction thriller almost defies categorisation. Juliette Binoche and Denis Lavant give remarkable performances as beautiful, desperate lovers in a delirious, alienating, nocturnal Paris. The film features an iconic soundtrack including music by Benjamin Britten and David Bowie, but Jonathan Rosenbaum likened Carax’s style to that of silent cinema, “with its melancholy, its innocence, its poetics of close-up, gesture, and the mysteries of personality”. Co-starring Michel Piccoli, Julie Delpy, Mireille Perrier and Serge Reggiani.

Wednesday 4 March

7:00pm IT’S NOT ME

Leos Carax (2024) 41 mins – Unclassified 15+

Responding to the Centre Pompidou’s prompt, “Where are you at, Leos Carax?”, this “self-portrait seen from behind” explores the filmmaker’s work and influence against the legacies of postwar Europe. Told mainly through a collage of narration and archival materials, Carax’s Godard-Miéville-inspired essay film also includes new scenes featuring his daughter Nastya Golubeva Carax, Denis Lavant and the director himself. Preceded by two other diaristic commissions for cultural organisations, Sans Titre Leos Carax (1997) 9 mins – Unclassified 15+, a visual letter addressed to the Cannes Film Festival for its 50th anniversary, and My Last Minute Leos Carax (2006) 1 min – Unclassified 15+, a haunting and hilarious trailer for the 44th Viennale.

8:05pm PIERRE OU LES AMBIGUÏTÉS

Leos Carax (2001) 174 mins – Unclassified 18+

Since its first broadcast on German–French TV channel Arte in 2001, this now legendary alternative extended version of Carax’s polarising 1999 avant-garde horror film Pola X has rarely screened. A loose adaptation of Herman Melville’s extraordinary 1852 novel, it follows a wealthy young novelist (Guillaume Depardieu) who is shadowed by a mysterious woman (Katerina Golubeva) claiming to be his sister. Reconceived as a three-part miniseries paying homage to the serials of Carax’s youth, this brand-new restored version contains new sequences and, according to the director, is closer to his original conception. Featuring Catherine Deneuve and a memorable score by Scott Walker.

Wednesday 11 March

7:00pm HOLY MOTORS

Leos Carax (2012) 116 mins – MA 15+

Monsieur Oscar (Denis Lavant; the director’s regular alter ego at his most protean here) is ferried about Paris from one appointment to another over the course of a day and night by limousine driver Céline (Edith Scob); each appointment sees him adopt a wildly different guise and form of interaction with others. At once nostalgic and ferociously forwards-facing, Carax’s ludic, allusion-drenched surrealist fifth feature is, for all that it’s haunted by ghosts of cinema past, a true and refreshing original. With Eva Mendes, Michel Piccoli and, improbably but touchingly, Kylie Minogue.

9:10pm BOY MEETS GIRL

Leos Carax (1984) 100 mins – Unclassified 15+

Marking the first collaboration between the director and his key muse Denis Lavant, Carax’s debut feature is a deft study of youthful ennui on the streets of Paris. Only in his early 20s at the time of filming, the extraordinary clarity of Carax’s determined vision belied his young age. Inspired by the youthful works of the nouvelle vague, while connected to, but distinct from, the other films of the cinéma du look movement, Carax’s film is filled with a burning vigour embodied by the strikingly luminous black-and-white cinematography of Jean-Yves Escoffier (a key collaborator who shot Carax’s first three features). With Mireille Perrier.