Search - Boy Meets Girl on DVD

Companion To Eraserhead

R. Max Totten | San Francisco, Ca United States | 09/10/2001

(4 out of 5 stars)

"I have finally found a film to view alongside David Lynch's Eraserhead! This film shot in Black and White has the same grotesque abnormalities of Eraserhead, as well as the deadpan humor. The characters are shape much the same way, lonely but lovable in that they deal with life's uncertainties and love that has failed or been lost.Bountiful with all the Lynchian eccentricities that, either you'll find yourself understanding them or you just won't! The film, is playful in much the same way as early French New Wave but thought provoking and with a sense of muted charisma. This film will definitely take more that a one-time viewing to really get any thing out of it due to emotions flying high and low throughout. The shots of Paris at night are truly remarkable in that the warmth of the wet streets can almost be touched ,walked, and perhaps even a slight aroma can be imagined. The "you are there" surroundings seem like a heated dream you are about ready to wake up from. A surreal moment in modern french cinema or rather a filmed performance piece with textures abound. Watch with the intent of being a fly on the wall and you may experience certain particles of your life appear before your very eyes. ..."

A weak beginning for a good director.

Angry Mofo | 01/14/2006

(2 out of 5 stars)

"I admire Leos Carax. How could one not admire a man so fixated on his grandiose ideas that he once bankrupted three producers and built a life-size replica of part of central Paris? At the same time, I confess that I don't so much like Boy Meets Girl, his first film. It leaves me with a feeling of dissatisfaction.

The protagonist, who looks exactly like Nick Cave, is an unemployed young man of ambiguous origins. He lives by himself in a small room somewhere in one of the shadier parts of Paris. When he gets tired of hearing the bickering of the couple next door, he skulks about the streets with his portable cassette player and glowers darkly. By chance, he comes across a depressed young woman named Mireille, and follows her to a party somewhere. He makes her acquaintance, they talk about their woes, and then he gets her to bring him home with her. Finally, disaster strikes and their romance is tragically cut short.

Mireille is also disturbed. She lives with a man who hates her and whom she despises. This situation is painful to her, and has presumably gone on for a long time. However, she shows no desire to change it, and continues to live in idleness, although her boyfriend is not so rich or successful as to be able to provide her with a luxurious existence. She is not married to him, and they have no children. It appears that she has never loved him at any point in time.

The film presents these facts without explaining or analyzing them. So, we learn that the protagonist wants to be a film-maker, although he has never actually made a film, and he does not really want to go through the process of making one. Similarly, we are told that Mireille wanted to be a model, but failed for some reason. We do not learn how they came to accept the lifestyles that they now lead, or even what they think about them. They make no attempts to justify themselves. Consequently, they come across as total ciphers.

Worse yet, both of them are incapable of empathy with each other, or with anyone else. When the main character has a chance to talk to the heroine, he talks about his suffering, argues that the woman should love him because she will eventually grow old and lose her good looks, and suggests that she could participate in a polyamorous relationship with him and his ex-girlfriend. Earlier, we learn that he has mistreated his ex-girlfriend, lied to her and even hit her, and that she has left him. He does not wonder whether she might have had good reason to do so. Mireille's troubles do not interest him either. But he does not even attempt to analyze his own feelings. It is impossible to understand what thoughts, objects and activities comprise his world. His apartment is totally bare. The only object in it is a typewriter that he doesn't use.

Mireille, likewise, is devoid of compassion for anyone other than herself. In depicting her, the film does not show her ever having a single kind thought. Her self-obsession, however, is lacking in self-awareness. She wallows in endless self-pity without really thinking about her life, or even acknowledging events and people around her. She is unwilling to do so. The film gives no plausible explanation for what might have driven her to such a state. Because of this, it is difficult to take her angst seriously.

And, since the film revolves exclusively around the angst of the protagonists, that means that there is nothing else to engage the viewer's own empathy. The viewer is left to wonder, uncharitably, whether the main characters are not merely engaging in such strange behaviour to be fashionable, there being no apparent cause for it in their lives. As the tagline of the film is "love without regrets," this was probably not the director's intention.

In addition, the dialogue is badly written. Carax's later film Lovers On The Bridge is much stronger and more believable in this regard. Here, the characters talk into space, not to each other. With each thing they say, the film becomes progressively more detached from reality. The plot device used to separate the main characters in preparation for the tragedy is especially silly. When Mireille leaves the party and takes the protagonist along, he has to stop somewhere to use the restroom, and then becomes engrossed in an arcade game for no apparent reason, so Mireille gets tired and leaves without him. Carax dwells on the arcade game for longer than necessary. He's not alone there, though. Such acclaimed directors as Wim Wenders and Chris Marker were also unduly fascinated by eighties technology.

To top it all off, the film isn't particularly visually interesting. Certainly it pales in comparison to Carax's own later films. The blurb on the cover says something about "night scenes in Paris," but there are almost no such scenes. Most of the film takes place indoors, in generic-looking apartments and kitchens. Despite Carax's love of the French New Wave, his camera here is boring and static. There are just a couple of Godard-style jump cuts, awkwardly placed. But it's not that he doesn't have a voice of his own. He just hadn't found it yet by this point.

The one scene here that works perfectly is the one where the protagonist overhears his ex-girlfriend talking in bed with her new boyfriend. Not only is it realistic, in contrast with the overwrought monologues that comprise most of the script, but it suddenly makes the protagonist's angst more comprehensible. Surely any man who overheard a woman he loved saying such things would feel just about the same way. Still, I think that the film is weak on the whole, and that Carax's next two films are far superior in both style and content."

TUFF LOV!

Angry Mofo | 06/18/2002

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This bizarre, graphic and ultimately very moving journey through love's little foibles is brilliantly realized by auteur LEOS CARAX. In some ways a 'throwback' to the glorious days of Alain Resnais - superbly photographed and deliberately paced to draw the viewer [voyeur?] into the lives of our loving couple. Carax later works disappoint slightly, but let's face it he never is quite as boring as the other 'would be's"!If you yearn for a good moody art movie - get this one!Then explore the beginnings of this movement!"