1326 Three Films by Leos Carax

[domino harvey]

Burning with stylistic freedom, the first three features by Leos Carax are cinema at its most ecstatically sensorial and deliriously romantic. Built around virtuosic, intensely physical performances from Denis Lavant as three different characters named Alex, these tales of outsiders, criminals, and doomed lovers living on the edge blaze with the whirlwind abandon of youth and the thrilling highs and torturous lows of all-consuming passion. Love letters to the city of Paris, with its streets transformed by cinematographer Jean-Yves Escoffier into expressive dreamscapes, these three films erupt in moments of anarchic euphoria that fuse sound and image to heart-stopping effect.

Boy Meets Girl 1984
Made when he was just twenty-three years old, Leos Carax’s rapturous debut feature returns French cinema to the unfettered experimentation of the New Wave while updating it for the punk 1980s. In velvety black and white, Boy Meets Girl evokes a surreal nocturnal Paris populated by lost souls and wandering misfits, including Alex (Denis Lavant), a disaffected would-be filmmaker whose girlfriend has just left him for his best friend, and Mireille (Mireille Perrier), an aspiring actress nursing her own heartbreak. Drawn together by fate, they share a moment of intense, fleeting connection as bright-burning and ephemeral as youth itself.

Mauvais sang 1986
With his exhilarating second feature, Leos Carax infuses a neonoir scenario with a delirious strain of doomed romanticism for a tour de force of avant-pop invention. Amid the spread of STBO—a sexually transmitted disease acquired by having sex without emotion—a young ex-con (Denis Lavant) is recruited by a veteran criminal (Michel Piccoli) to steal the antidote, only to find himself entangled in a dangerous affair with his new associate’s lover (Juliette Binoche). Constructed with the kinetic verve of a musical, Mauvais sang explodes in moments of pure cinematic adrenaline, from a dizzying skydive to Lavant’s heart-pounding nighttime sprint set to David Bowie’s “Modern Love.”

The Lovers on the Bridge 1991
With this feverish saga of amour fou, Leos Carax pushed his ambitions to glorious new heights. Michèle (Juliette Binoche), an artist who is losing her sight, meets Alex (Denis Lavant), a homeless street performer, while sleeping rough on Paris’s centuries-old Pont-Neuf, beginning an obsessive affair that soon collides with crushing reality. The result of an infamously lengthy, arduous production, The Lovers on the Bridge is a bracing plunge into life on the city’s turbulent margins—a visually arresting, musically intoxicating film that is never more dazzling than when the lovers water-ski madly across the Seine amid a shower of fireworks.

DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
New 4K digital restorations, with uncompressed monaural (Boy Meets Girl and Mauvais sang) and 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio (The Lovers on the Bridge) soundtracks
In the 4K UHD edition: Three 4K UHD discs of the films (with The Lovers on the Bridge presented in Dolby Vision HDR) and three Blu-rays with the films and special features
It’s Not Me (2024), a self-portrait film by director Leos Carax
New interviews with actor Denis Lavant and editor Nelly Quettier
New video essay on the cinematography of Jean-Yves Escoffier
Meet the Filmmakers: Leos Carax, a Criterion Channel original interview
Mr. X: A Vision of Leos Carax (2014), a documentary on Carax’s work
Le Pont-Neuf des amants (1991), a documentary on the making of the main set for The Lovers on the Bridge
Deleted scene, rushes, screen tests, behind-the-scenes footage, and trailers
New English subtitle translation
PLUS: An essay by author Amina Cain

New cover by Cecilia Carlstedt

[beamish14]

Was really hoping for a bevy of deleted scenes from Pont-Neuf, and it doesn’t seem like we’re getting that. Pretty slim extras as a whole, which is disappointing but predictable

[Peter McM]

I am definitely in for this; btw--silly question, I've never been quite sure how his name is pronounced. Can this born-and-raised Indiana tongue get some phonetic help?

[denti alligator]

Not bursting with extras--but I wouldn't call them "slim."

I'm pretty sure it's just cah-RAH-ks.

[domino harvey]

Lee-ose (like in hose) Kuh racks

[swo17]

It's a fake name: Le Oscar a X

[therewillbeblus]

It'll be nice to have these excellent films in 4K, though I wish they included his first short Strangulation Blues as an extra

[beamish14]

It'll be nice to have these excellent films in 4K, though I wish they included his first short Strangulation Blues as an extra

Yep. I think he’s made a handful of elusive shorts

[therewillbeblus]

He did, and there are other good ones, but his first is the best

[pistolwink]

It's a fake name: Le Oscar a X

His early articles in Cahiers were published under this name, too. It was sometimes rendered as Leo Scarax as well. (And scrolling through some old issues, I found that Olivier Assayas wrote a review of Carax's short Strangulation Blues.)

Before the era of Wikipedia and web 2.0, it was hard to find info on him. His real name was known to cinema professionals in France, but not as widely known beyond — much less that his mother was an American film critic! He definitely cultivated a mystique.

I don't recall the Kino blu-rays of these films looking too bad, but I didn't have much to compare them to except memories of seeing the films in theaters.

[Ribs]

Hopefully It’s Not Me is included on the 4K discs given it is available as such on their web stores - but concerned given its not listed as such.

[Lowry_Sam]

It'll be nice to have these excellent films in 4K, though I wish they included his first short Strangulation Blues as an extra

Yep. I think he’s made a handful of elusive shorts

Maybe they'll turn It's Not Me into a shorts collection.

[Matt]

I've somehow still never seen these first two films, so I'm eager to pick this up and see them in the best quality. I didn't particularly like The Lovers on the Bridge when I saw it in the late '90s, but it was my first Carax, my first Denis Lavant, and I don't know what I was expecting. Probably something closer to other Juliette Binoche films I'd seen, the more mainstreamish Damage, and Blue. I'm sure I watched it only because she was in it. Or maybe I got it confused with Patrice Leconte's Girl on the Bridge, which I will admit to loving

[beamish14]

I've somehow still never seen these first two films, so I'm eager to pick this up and see them in the best quality. I didn't particularly like The Lovers on the Bridge when I saw it in the late '90s, but it was my first Carax, my first Denis Lavant, and I don't know what I was expecting. Probably something closer to other Juliette Binoche films I'd seen, the more mainstreamish Damage, and Blue. I'm sure I watched it only because she was in it. Or maybe I got it confused with Patrice Leconte's Girl on the Bridge, which I will admit to loving

Boy Meets Girl is incredible. It feels so out of time; deliberately so out of sync with other films of the era and still so unbelievably fresh

But Pont-Neuf is arguably my favorite of the three. Overwhelming in its aural and visual assault. The torched posters of Binoche in the tube station is neck and neck with Guillaume Depardieu lopping off the car mirrors in POLA X as my favorite moments from any of his features

[zedz]

Boy Meets Girl is incredible. It feels so out of time; deliberately so out of sync with other films of the era and still so unbelievably fresh

I feel like it's more in the realm of the French Impressionist films of the twenties and thirties (Epstein, Gremillon etc.) than the Cinema du Look contemporaries that it's often lumped in with.

[spectre]

Excited to finally upgrade my old Artificial Eye DVD set, albeit sans Pola X (which, hopefully, given the recently announced Carlotta set including the TV version, is not too far around the corner of an English-friendly upgrade elsewhere). Boy Meets Girl is a wonderful film, and I agree with zedz that it's more 30s (perhaps even a touch of Vigo?) than nouvelle vague. Nothing else Carax has made has ever quite hit that mark for me, but Lovers on the Bridge is at least interesting and like nothing else that has been made, and while I have mixed feelings about Mauvais sang it at least gives us the transcendent moment of Lavant running along the sidewalk to David Bowie's "Modern Love"!

[malachi_lui]

These are three of my favourite films of all time, especially the first two (Les Amants du Pont-Neuf is great too, but shot for shot is more bloated than the first two which I consider two of the most perfect films ever). I have the Artificial Eye Blu-ray set with the first two and Holy Motors plus that mediocre Mr. X doc that's also in this new Criterion, those AE transfers of the first two already look great but this 4K upgrade will be absolutely worth it, and I still don't have a physical copy of Les Amants du Pont-Neuf. The restoration of that looks great, though I remember it being maybe a little yellow. This will be a day 1 purchase for me, and I'm really excited to see the first two in 4K even though they don't have Dolby Vision

Hoping we get Pola X with English subtitles next year, hopefully Radiance will do it now that Carlotta has liberated the Arena Films stuff. As for Holy Motors, does anyone know if the US Shout encode is better than the UK Artificial Eye disc? The AE is tolerable but the encode isn't great.

[malachi_lui]

I've somehow still never seen these first two films, so I'm eager to pick this up and see them in the best quality. I didn't particularly like The Lovers on the Bridge when I saw it in the late '90s, but it was my first Carax, my first Denis Lavant, and I don't know what I was expecting. Probably something closer to other Juliette Binoche films I'd seen, the more mainstreamish Damage, and Blue. I'm sure I watched it only because she was in it. Or maybe I got it confused with Patrice Leconte's Girl on the Bridge, which I will admit to loving

Boy Meets Girl is incredible. It feels so out of time; deliberately so out of sync with other films of the era and still so unbelievably fresh

But Pont-Neuf is arguably my favorite of the three. Overwhelming in its aural and visual assault. The torched posters of Binoche in the tube station is neck and neck with Guillaume Depardieu lopping off the car mirrors in POLA X as my favorite moments from any of his features

I rewatched Boy Meets Girl a couple weeks ago and was struck by how hypnotic it remains. Mauvais sang is a bigger movie with more happening, but I'm not sure I can say it's necessarily better than Boy Meets Girl, which is easily one of the greatest debut directorial features ever.

As much as I love the trilogy, Pola X is my favourite Carax and maybe my favourite film, period. I get why many struggle with it, and it's certainly an outlier in his oeuvre (it doesn't have the visual splendour of the trilogy shot by Escoffier, though looks nothing like his more recent digital Late Style films), but I love how fractured it is. So many images and movements that I think about regularly. Carax is truly one of the most singular directors working today.

[Rrobynne]

Hoping we get Pola X with English subtitles next year, hopefully Radiance will do it now that Carlotta has liberated the Arena Films stuff. As for Holy Motors, does anyone know if the US Shout encode is better than the UK Artificial Eye disc? The AE is tolerable but the encode isn't great.

Holy Motors is a difficult one. UK release is more compressed and has visible macroblocking in the darker areas, but has a lighter image overall with details visible in the darker parts of the image. The US Shout release has a higher bitrate, but has a darker image overall (adjusted to hide the macroblocking, if it's baked into the footage? this WAS Carax's first digital feature...) with detail in the darker areas not visible that is visible in the UK release. I have no idea which is closer to what the film looked like in cinemas, been looking for info for some years.

[Rupert Pupkin]

Is a UHD Léo Carax box set planned in France by Carlotta ? I don't think so.
I already had the Artifical Eye's "Mauvais Sang", then I upgraded this blu-ray with the Carlotta US Blu-Ray which was slightly better (better HQ details definition).
Regarding "Les Amants du Pont-Neuf" I have the Japanese blu-ray which was a StudioCanal release (I guess the German Blu-Ray is probably the same). Hope that the color grading will be "accurate" (like this past releases) and not the greenish-yellowish color grading from some new restoration.

[nicolas]

Hoping we get Pola X with English subtitles next year, hopefully Radiance will do it now that Carlotta has liberated the Arena Films stuff. As for Holy Motors, does anyone know if the US Shout encode is better than the UK Artificial Eye disc? The AE is tolerable but the encode isn't great.

Holy Motors is a difficult one. UK release is more compressed and has visible macroblocking in the darker areas, but has a lighter image overall with details visible in the darker parts of the image. The US Shout release has a higher bitrate, but has a darker image overall (adjusted to hide the macroblocking, if it's baked into the footage? this WAS Carax's first digital feature...) with detail in the darker areas not visible that is visible in the UK release. I have no idea which is closer to what the film looked like in cinemas, been looking for info for some years.

The UK Blu-ray has improper gamma levels, which is an encoding mistake and resulted in the washed-out blacks. When you notice any blocking, it’s again the fault of improper encoding instead of a compromised source (most of the time). The Shout release is the best one at the moment but hopefully we’ll get a 4K release one day.

[Peacock]

And both seem to have forced English subs. Shout has a pretty great set of special features however.