Boy Meets Girl

Three nights in Paris. Alex is 22 years old. "Enfant terrible" who wants to leave his mark on everything, on love stories and on works of art, he spends his time following two couples that has been spying on for a long time. In his movements he meets children, old people, teenagers, young men and old boys, ruined girls and beautiful ladies ... a world that seems unreal . Alex is almost always silent, but when he speaks, he talks too much and too quickly. Then he follows his own voice, dangerously. One night, it will up end badly.
f he were to tell his film in a telegram, what would he write?
The film is titled Boy meets girl. I would put: "Boy meets girl, life does not go on".

If you had had four times the money you had, would the film be different from, how it is ? And if you had had a quarter of the money you had?
I think the relationship with the production would have been four times more tense, that I would have been four times more lost, that the actors would have taken it out on me four times more for not having spoken with them. I would have done in super8 inflated to 35 mm, it would have been interesting. I think the rhythm of the film would have been different. I wanted a Mitchell, a big camera I had for my short film, because I liked moving with her and that everything in the film was moving. I find the ArriBL too light, and I think the rhythm is not right. I think that with a super8 you would have to completely review the music of the film. The problem of the super8, for me, is its handling: I have no desire to feel free with a camera, especially in relation to the actors. The idea of being able to put the camera where you want throws me into a panic. The film was shot partly in the studio, and what interested me in the studio surely was not where I could put the camera.


If any of your leading actors were not available, who would you have chosen?
Talking about Mireille Perier I can’t answer as the film exists largely for her. Besides it was the first performance for almost all the actors. I spent a year to find the boy, Denis Lavant, I delayed twice the shooting because I could not find him. In my mind he was someone who wanted to play Alex. For me, finding actors means already being a director. And then dress them, feed them, find their makeup, their music, their light, put their words in their mouths, and then after a non-premeditated attitude, which we realize later, that has spread throughout the period of filming but that is not what is called directing. I think I wouldn’t have been able to make the film without that Alex and that Mireille. I'm impatient to see their next films.

If it were not a movie, what would it be?
It's Boy meets girl, it would be my impetus towards the girls, I think it would be a encounter, a encounter that I can not realize.


If Cannes is a medium, what is its message?
Since I saw a lot of films here, I wondered, imagining that I had made a love movie: "How does love happen in movies?". Love in screenplays and directors’ mind. A bit like the character of my film, the question that puts me in Cannes is: "Is there a love that goes fast, that goes fast but always lasts?"

("Cahiers du Cinéma", August 1984).

Director and screenplay: Léos Carax.
Fotografia (b/n): JeanYves Escoffier.
Music: Jacques Pinaut, David Bowie, Jo Lemaire, Serge Gainsbourg, Dead Kennedys.
Sound: Jean Umanski.
Art director: Serge Marzolff, Jean Bauer.
Editor: Nelly Meunier, Francine Sandberg.
Cast: Denis Lavant, Mireille Perier, Carroll Brooks, Elie Poicard.
Production company: Patricia Moraz, Alain Dahan, Roberte Barrère.