A swift but singular filmmaking self-portrait, Leos Carax’s It’s Not Me reflects on the French auteur’s 40-year directorial career, as well as his many cinematic – and canine – influences. Carax is in typically inventive form, blending various forms while at the same time evading anything as confining.
★★★★☆
“Spare me from the melancholic!” exclaims a subtitle early on, preparing us for a whirlwind tour of concepts and ideas spanning world wars, mass genocide, childish fantasies, refugees and even Roman Polanski. Carax’s latest would make a fitting – if rather obvious – partner piece with the late Jean-Luc Godard’s The Image Book, even if its didactic messages are more direct in their delivery and less aggressively opaque. Segments of Carax’s more “commercial” endeavours – most frequently 2012’s Holy Motors – are sliced between a mix of real-world events and filmic references: occasionally for dramatic effect, more often in the service of playfulness and mischief.
Hitchcock’s influence on a young Carax is both obvious and surprising (“I did do 1 POV shot”, he admits), and it’s refreshing to hear a filmmaker’s own internal conflict over how much the work of others has instructed/not instructed is own path in the medium. An obsession with Marilyn Monroe’s beauty mark emerges in physical form on the face of Eva Mendes in Holy Motors, another small but knowing callback to Hollywood’s yesteryear.
It isn’t hard to imagine a broader, more sprawling investigation into the inner musings of a filmmaker as distinct as Carax in the hands of another. Thankfully, Carax has neither the sense of self-importance nor patience to dally on grand extrapolations. At just over 40 minutes in length, It’s Not Me offers tantalising hints and suggestions rather than defined pathways and set conclusions. Even Carax’s next film, which will shoot in France and reunite him with Annette star Adam Driver alongside Leá Seydoux, is shrouded in mystery. In the age of test screenings and all-access junkets, Carax’s elusive air of mystery feels like something to cling on to.
Visit the BFI London Film Festival page to delve deeper into the wealth of films on show this year.
Daniel Green
