The Cinematheque

New Restoration

“Meteoric … Ecstatic cinema and ecstatic living join together in a pressurized promise of glory and misery.”

Richard Brody, The New Yorker

Leos Carax’s first feature was rapturously received: it was widely hailed as one of the most impressive and original debuts in French cinema since Breathless, and raised hopes that a new Godard had emerged! A moody, black-and-white meander through nocturnal Paris, the film mixes punk sensibility and nouvelle vague aesthetics into a droll tale of doomed love. The startling Denis Lavant—Carax’s onscreen alter ego—is alienated Alex, the Boy. Mireille Perrier is suicidal model Mireille, the Girl. The sumptuous cinematography is by Jean-Yves Escoffier, who would also shoot Carax’s Mauvais sang and The Lovers on the Bridge (as well as Harmony Korine’s Gummo). Like most of Carax’s early films, Boy Meets Girl went undistributed in North America. Not until 2012’s Holy Motors, his meteoric comeback after a 13-year stretch of unfinanceable projects, was his debut released and his status as a generation-bridging artist fully acknowledged.

In French with English subtitles

“The alternately surreal and expressionist imagery is reminiscent of silent cinema at its most elegant.”

Geoff Andrew, Time Out