Pola X France / Switzerland / Germany / Japan
1999, 134min.
Prod.: Bruno Pésery, Script: Leos Carax, Jean-Pol Fargeau, Lauren Sedofsky, based on Herman Melville’s novel "Pierre, or, the Ambiguities", Dir.: Leos Carax, Dir. of Phot.: Eric Gautier, Compos: Scott Walker, Art. Dir.: Laurent Allaire, Sound: Jean-Pierre Laforce, Béatrice Wick, Sound Design: Jean-Pierre Laforce, Jean-Louis Ughetto , Sound Mix: Vincent Montrobert, Stéphane Thiébaut, Edit.: Nelly Quettier.
Cast: Guillaume Depardieu (Pierre), Yekaterina Golubeva (Isabelle), Catherine Deneuve (Marie), Delphine Chuillot (Lucie), Laurent Lucas (Thibault), Patachou (Margherite).
A story of love, incest, and descent into hell. Pierre lives with his mother in Normandy, not far from the banks of the Seine where Victor Hugo's daughter drowned with her lover. The good-looking mother and son are happy, healthy, and wealthy, and they love each other deeply. Pierre is romantically attached to the beautiful and delicate Lucie (Delphine Chuillot) and visits her every morning with the motorcycle he has inherited from his father. One summer night, his mother tells him that she has chosen a date for his wedding. Overexcited, Pierre rushes through the night to break the news to Lucie. As he is speeding down the road, a strange creature with a familiar face suddenly leaps from the dark. She tells him in broken French that she is his sister. Pierre is shocked, but he decides to believe her and make up for the mistake of his father.
(All Movie Guide)
Awards
Gijón IFF, 1999 (Best Actor), Biarritz International Festival of Audiovisual Programming (Golden FIPA).
| Carax, Leos  Leos Carax (born 1960, Suresnes, Hauts-de-Seine, Île-de-France, France)
Director, critic and writer. Leos Carax was born Alexandre Oscar Dupont His professional name is an anagram of his first and middle names. His mother was American and his father French. He began his film career with a series of short films, and as a film critic, before he released Boy Meets Girl. That piece established Carax's reputation for mature visual style. It also saw the first teaming of Carax with Denis Lavant and cinematographer Jean-Yves Escoffier. He followed with a science fiction themed Bad Blood in 1986, which alienated some of his audience, though this work continued to explore the complexities of love in the modern world, this time through a darker, more criminal viewpoint. The work was clearly an homage to French New Wave cinema, and his use of such actresses as Juliette Binoche proved a touching tribute to his influences, especially Jean-Luc Godard.
Five years later, Carax returned to directing with Lovers on the Bridge, which proved to be an expensive undertaking as Parisian authorities granted him only 10 days in which he could film on Pont Neuf. His initial reaction to the problems of filming on a public bridge had been to construct a model of the bridge in the community of Lansargues, in Southern France. However, on the first day of filming Denis Lavant severely injured his thumb, which pushed the movie by a month. Subsequent financial difficulties pushed filming over a much longer period than intended. The movie was released to critical acclaim and opened the door for Carax to enter more experimental waters with his fourth feature, Pola X. That film, released in 1999, was an adaptation of Herman Melville's tale of incest, "Pierre: or, The Ambiguities." (From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)
Filmography
Strangulations blues (1980, short), Boy Meets Girl (1984), Bad Blood (Mauvais sang, 1986), Lovers On The Pont-Neuf (Les Amants du Pont-Neuf, 1991), Sans titre (1997, short), Pola X (1999).
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