Mauvais sang
Leos Carax
1986 | 116 min | Colour | 35mm

"Carax miraculously and effortlessly blends several genres in this tale of impetuous youth and forbidden love: part love story, part film noir, part AIDS allegory. The plot, involving middle-aged gangsters, young lovers and a stolen virus, exists primarily to grant Carax the opportunity to create an unending string of arresting images. Not to be missed is the spectacular sequence in which Denis Lavant launches himself down a city street to the strains of David Bowie’s "Modern Love," a feat matched by the spectacular fashion in which Carax’s camera keeps pace with the hurtling youth. As Carax himself has pointed out, Bad Blood reveals that the filmmaker’s approach to cinema is rooted not in the Nouvelle Vague but in the silent cinema (which was also an important source for so much New Wave filmmaking), specifically, as Jonathan Rosenbaum puts it, "its melancholy, its innocence, its poetics of close-up, gesture and the mysteries of personality." " – Harvard Film Archive

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Part of our season on Leos Carax