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.