Boy Meets Girl

There are so many same titles of this movie, so it was hard to find this one. This is a black and white movie. All movies of Leos Carax contain beautiful images of decadence. The way of expressing the emptiness of the young generation is one of a kind. Their conversations are always poetic so it hard to understand, same as usual. A variety of music stood out in this movie.

Beautifully shot, but tediously slow. Even with all the references to French New Wave filmmaking from a couple of decades before, the story didn't hold my interest, and the characters were hard to care for. There was not enough effort put into developing them beyond damaged, emotionally fragile people. Carax instead labored over other scenes, like the three full minutes spent with the young man playing pinball near the end, at a point where I was already hoping the remaining run time would pass quickly.

The cinematography is undeniable, however, and there is a certain lonely mood captured here that may resonate, if you can put up with a story that moves in fits and starts. Can love, like a phoenix, rise out of the ashes of former relationships for these two people, we wonder when they talk at length in the kitchen while a party carries on outside, maybe the film's most interesting scene. It had its moments, but isn't one I'd recommend.

I hadn't even been aware of this film when it was passed my way by a very kind fellow IMDb user. It is the debut feature by Leos Carax, a film he directed when he was only 24 years old. Like most of the other films in the cinéma du look movement, in which Carax was a key member, it's not very story-driven and instead favours strange plot tangents and a cool distance from its characters. The basic narrative tells a story of a depressed young man who meets a suicidal young woman after both of them have just suffered rejections from their respective partners. They enter a relationship of sorts.

It feels like Carax must have been influenced by the early 80's Francis Ford Coppola films One from the Heart (1981) and Rumble Fish (1983); like the former he often told simple romantic-drama stories in highly stylized cinematic ways and like the latter in Boy Meets Girl he has did it using crisp black and white photography. It is a very visual and typically left-of-centre approach that has been taken to the material. Unlike most films based around a romance, it takes an hour before the two title characters actually meet at an off-kilter party populated by eccentric characters. So much of the focus is really on other things with a number of little unusual vignettes making up the whole. Its story of young love and alienated youth isn't really a very uplifting one in fairness and could easily be described as a tragedy. Although it isn't necessarily as involving on an emotional level as it might be due to Carax style which always takes a somewhat removed perspective from his characters. I'm not entirely sure that this is the best approach for story-lines involving romance as these work best when you have more empathy and involvement with the characters in my opinion. But I still have to admire the look and feel of the film though which is pretty interesting for the most part. In addition, despite not having an actual score, there is interesting use of music, with a night-time sequence on the Pont Neuf bridge set to an obscure very early David Bowie track, while at another moment a character unexpectedly puts on the record 'Holiday in Cambodia' by the hard-core punk band the Dead Kennedys. These moments cement the fact that this was a film that resolutely celebrated popular culture. All-in-all, while it is not an entirely engaging experience this is a very confident film for a 24 year old novice film-maker to knock out.

The first film by Leos Carax - piercing, sincere. Carax is only 23 years old - a young genius - a genius in depicting the nuances of youthful depression and the loneliness of human existence. The heroine is like a touching Pierrot. Like a fragile crystal flower. And the general impression is the unbearable fragility and beauty of being.

'Boy Meets Girl ' was Leos Carax's first movie, and is remarkably mature for a first film!! Leos went on to tell a similar story in his next films. One of the great things about this film is that it reminds me of the glory days of the French New Wave, because it's fresh and has a new way of telling us something we may have heard before.The best thing is that the film has several great visual sequences that prove Carax has the ability to express things visually that alot of directors could only accomplish by using words. It's hard to track this one down, but if you get a chance make sure you see it. Then see the rest of Leos Carax's movies, one of the most visionary directors at work in the contemporary film scene.