dir. Leos Carax
France, 1999, 134 mins
August 9, 12:30PM
Institute of Contemporary Arts
Pierre is a successful young author enjoying a life of bourgeois comfort whilst he works on his latest novel. All of this will change upon the arrival of a young woman claiming to be his long-lost sister. Bewitched by her, the two run away to the city where they will be met with desperation, poverty and nihilistic self-destruction as their relationship blooms.
Controversial upon initial release, POLA X is the fifth feature film from acclaimed filmmaker Leos Carax. Seeking a change in tone and style from his previous works, he went about adapting Herman Melville's novel Pierre, or The Ambiguities, situating it in contemporary France against the wider milieu of Europe in the 1990s. Darker and more explicit than earlier works, Pola X failed to gain the same cult reputation as his more broadly acclaimed titles and as such has fallen by the wayside in terms of evaluation, being seen as neither in-step with the initial run nor associated with his resurgence in feature filmmaking 13 years later. As a result, Pola X has languished in obscurity, without even so much as a high definition home entertainment release for now. Fortunately, this screening will be vividly restoring the murky, oblique imagery of this under-appreciated work for the first time in the UK and it's an honour to be showing it as part of TFFF.
- Kit Ramsay
starring —
