Rafael "Parker!!" Jovine’s review published on Letterboxd:
My vocabulary is neither large enough nor my imagination is sufficiently vast to adequately describe this bizarre work by Leos Carax and the Sparks Brothers. Hence it is very much on the style of the two creatives, but at the same time I could not help but acknowledge the influence of Demy especially in the stunning way Carax is able to convey so many emotions, some of which seem to contradict one another, and at the same time they seem to feed off of one another, all of this through singing.
Adam Driver is undoubtedly the star of this film. It never occurred to me that I needed to see the actor lose his sanity and go bonkers, yelling gibberish and flirting with comedians like Bo Burnham, winning him at his own game. He gets to be funny, he gets to be weird, and at the same time he gets to show off his dramatic skills.
Last but not least, the cinematography is superb. It is particularly in the second half of the film that the film really starts to pick up and becomes this masterpiece of surrealism that has nothing to envy to Jorodowsky or Bunuel. Moreover, the music also improves exponentially, where you will notice that there is a structure to it, and as a fan of orchestral music, I fell in love with the arrangements and the score as a whole. I've been listening to Baby Aria (First Performance) on repeat, the haunting vocals just crawls into my skin and just like in that scene, takes me high into a journey of extasis.
All in all, despite the fact that the film starts off chaotic and is definitely not for everyone, those who are able to embrace it and everything it has to offer us will be rewarded with arguably the greatest movie of the decade.
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I Shot Jesse James
tick, tick.... BOOM!
Annette
