3/5 check out the melville book first
  by Georgia C. (Boston, MA USA)
I had a copy of "Pierre," the Herman Melville book the movie is based on, and could never quite finish it. I gave it to my boyfriend, who did read it, and then told me about this movie. I found it VERY helpful to watch this movie with someone who had read Pierre, since it fills in some gaps for the characters' motives which isn't at all obvious in the film.

Basic, basic plot: Young man is in love, also kind of sketchy dynamic with his mom. Meets woman who claims to be his half-sister. He decides to abandon his secure life to run off with her, and the results are not good.

Guillaume Depardieu, as well as the two female supporting characters in the form of his girlfriend and the half-sister, do their best in a movie that is just a little too difficult to follow without a knowledge of what Melville had in mind. Catherine Deneuve isn't in the movie enough - she is powerful, beautiful, and absolutely packs in the psychological compulsion that make her scenes the most fun in a mostly humorless movie.

Guillaume Depardieu died a week ago. I am sure that his father, Gerard, was proud of him, but I would have been particularly so given his ability to take on such a potentially ridiculous screenplay and bring it closer to the psychological turmoil that comes across more obviously in the original book.

recommended for: arthouse freaks who would like everyone to know that they also read Melville.

p.s. I didn't find it THAT sexually explicit, particularly for a French film, but there's one scene a lot of reviewers refer to, and yes, it's pretty crazy, but not in an x-rated way. More in a "whoa?! what?" way.

4/5 pola x
  by bigboyone (johnson city , tn)
as a lover of french cinema ( they make the best realistic movies )
what ever the part needs, french actors provide the best drama,comedy and
skin needed
thanks french cinema

2/5 Surprisingly conventional and joyless for Carax
  by Trevor Willsmer (London, England)
Pola X is at once the most accessible and least interesting film from infant terrible Leos Carax. His modernised adaptation of Herman Melville's Pierre, or The Ambiguities is certainly less disjointed than his other features, but it lacks the inspired standout moments that make them worth watching even if they don't entirely work. If you're expecting something like the joyful sequence set to David Bowie's When I Live My Dream in Boy Meets Girl you'll be bitterly disappointed: this is a joyless film that wanders into unintentional self-parody without ever providing much to smile about. This is self-conscious Miserablism in the classic tradition.

It starts out as glacially classical French film-making before moving more into better photographed nouvelle vague with all the usual clichés - self-indulgent disaffected hero (Guillaume Depardieu) flirting with ill-defined violent politics in the pursuit of an equally ill-defined truth while constantly lying to himself; utterly hopeless leading lady (Katerina Golubeva) that either producer or director wants to have sex with delivering a pitifully bad and painfully stilted performance; 'daring' unsimulated sex scene (albeit featuring body doubles); clumsy symbolism and a bleak-chic ending you don't need to have read the book to see coming. There's an interesting note of criticism in the anti-hero's search for truth in poverty and his need to increasingly create a fiction to support his self-image (he persuades his sister to pose as his wife and his fiancé to pose as his sister and while desperate for money constantly refuses to touch the money he and his family have) and it earns Brownie points for its attitude to racism in France, but it's not quite enough. Jacques Rivette declared it the best French film of the last ten years, but I guess that just implies he doesn't see many French films these days.


4/5 Intense and feverish, like Carax's best work.
  by Angry Mofo
In 1992, Leos Carax's career as a film-maker seemed to be over. His film "Lovers On The Bridge," a collection of visual and sensory extremes that took years to complete and bankrupted three producers in the process, received uniformly bad reviews and failed at the box office. No one wanted to work with Carax or sponsor any more of his work.

Carax disappeared. According to later interviews, he spent much of the nineties in the Balkans, observing the various wars there up close. Then, in 1999, he suddenly filmed "Pola X," an adaptation of Melville's bizarre novel "Pierre, Or The Ambiguities." His return sparked some interest, but critics hated "Pola X" about as much as "Lovers On The Bridge." No surprise there -- "Pola X" is even more maximalist and emotional than its predecessor. It's not a "comeback." In this film, Carax so clearly doesn't care if anyone is listening that one can't help but admire him.

Unlike "Lovers On The Bridge," where the plot had a very strong realistic underpinning at its core, "Pola X" is contrived from beginning to end, like the book it's based on. But it is a very impressive and intense film. Objectively, "Lovers On The Bridge" might be "better," but "Pola X" has a way of forcing one's admiration.

Leading man Guillaume Depardieu is the film's biggest strength. Carax's films tend to draw more attention to their director than to their actors, so it may be easy to overlook Depardieu's performance, but it is actually very strong. Like all of Carax's protagonists, Depardieu's character is desperate and obsessed. But Carax's previous favourite actor Denis Lavant always seemed to get some kind of smug self-gratification from exhibiting his pain, whereas Depardieu looks like he's credibly suffering from his mania. This makes a big difference. "Pola X" might be the first Carax film where the protagonist's desperation is genuinely affecting.

Unfortunately, the leading lady is the film's biggest weakness. Katerina Golubeva, as Pierre's long-lost half-sister, is insufferable. She has a huge monologue in one scene where she drones on, and on, and on, in a heavy monotone voice. This is the entire range exhibited by her character. She only talks in this shrill, harsh tone. And she does a lot of wide-eyed, helpless staring. This aspect of the film is not necessarily Carax's fault -- the monologue and the characterization come directly from the source material -- but it's still very irritating. As befits a Carax film, her character is hopelessly selfish, and can think of nothing better to do than to curse her lover for no apparent reason even as he's going mad.

The other actors, however, are all quite good. Delphine Chuillot reminds me of Julie Delpy from "Bad Blood," and actually her character is pretty much identical to that one. She's the saintly, long-suffering Carax heroine, but she has the good grace to suffer quietly and look innocent and pretty. And she makes an actual sacrifice for Pierre, as opposed to Isabelle, who is incapable of doing anything other than dragging him further down.

In "Pola X," there is a sense that Carax has detached himself from his protagonist, and no longer views romantic excess as something glamorous and wonderful. This can be perceived in the scene between Pierre and his publisher. She tells him that his earlier, immature writing was superior to his latest work, precisely because it was in some sense more honest. Pierre is an immature young man, and it is beyond his ability to find any kind of deep, original truth about life, much less shock someone with it. This is echoed later, when Pierre receives a rejection letter that characterizes his writing as "a raving morass which reeks of plagiarism." This is very interesting. If it had merely said "raving morass," then we might be inclined to think that Pierre's writing is actually brilliant, and the world has cruelly misunderstood him. But the part about plagiarism suggests that the publisher may be right.

Pierre even says something to this effect, addressing Isabelle: "I thought I could give you everything, but I have nothing." It's presumptuous to try to read into the director's motives, but Carax might be saying something about himself here. If he spent much of the nineties observing wars, he may have come to find the hip romanticism of his early films to be inadequate. Such a line certainly never appears in any of those films.

Carax's long absence has only improved his visual style. "Pola X" has less expensive visuals than "Lovers On The Bridge," but it rivals the earlier film in grandeur. The brief opening montage of a wartime bombing raid is arguably Carax's most effective image. It's vastly superior to Godard's attempts at something similar in his last film "Notre Musique."

The warehouse is also very impressive, in some way even more than the Pont-Neuf from "Lovers On The Bridge." Like the depiction of Bastille Day in that film, the warehouse scenes combine visuals and sound to great effect. The camera pans over the rusty, forbidding set, while a bunch of stern-faced guys (apparently extremists of some sort) play gloomy, rhythmic music. It's kind of ridiculous, the way Carax sticks this weird industrial band into the set for no apparent reason, but at the same time it somehow reflects and illustrates Pierre's increasingly demented, warped condition. The camera lingers on the rust on the walls and the sharp corners. So, even if the plot of the film makes no sense, at least it's possible to believe it on its own terms while one is watching the film.

If "Pola X" is really Carax's last film, it's a strong conclusion to an unfortunately short career. But, as recently as 2006, there have been rumours that Carax has started work on a new film. Will we see him again?

5/5 Must-see French cinema: Carax's Pola X.
  by G. Merritt (Boulder, CO)
"Faithful readers will know I have an affection for raving lunatics," Roger Ebert says about Carax's Pola X, "and am grateful for films that break free of the dismal bonds of formula to cartwheel into overwrought passionate excess."

Carax (1960) is an acquired taste, and his films are not for everyone. With Boy Meets Girl (1984), Mauvais Sang (1986), The Lovers on the Bridge (1991), Pola X (2000), and Process (2005), the French film director established a cult following with his poetic film style and depictions of tortured love. Loosely based on Herman Melville's 1852 novel, Pierre: or, The Ambiguities, but set in contemporary France, Pola X tells the controversial (as in incestuous) story of Pierre (Guillaume Depardieu--Gerard Depardieu's son), a young, successful writer, who lives with his domineering mother (Catherine Deneuve). They refer to each other as "my brother" and "my sister." Although he is about to marry his lovely blond cousin, Lucie (Delphine Chuillot), it is another dark-haired woman who haunts Pierre's dreams. When he eventually meets the mysterious woman named Isabelle (Yekaterina Golubeva), she claims to be his long-lost sister. Whereas Lucie is traditional and cultured, Isabelle is streetwise and feral. "All my life I have waited for something that would push me beyond all this," Pierre says, referring to his privileged life. Then, in a series of reckless gestures he hopes will lead him to "the truth," Pierre falls in love with his sister, breaks off his engagement with Lucie, and moves to Paris with Isabelle. When Lucie eventually comes to live with them, Pierre's life spirals downward into despair. Like my favorite Carax film, Lovers on a Bridge, Pola X is more than a movie. It's an experience. Recommended.

G. Merritt