Here’s a very welcome surprise before the end of the year: Leos Carax’s stunning cine-memoir It’s Not Me is getting a release this December. Sideshow and Janus Films announced today that the Cannes and NYFF selection will hit theaters in NY and LA as well as arrive on the Criterion Channel and VOD platforms on December 10.
Here’s the synopsis: “French cinema firebrand Leos Carax has spent 40 years making galvanizing movies that float in the beautifully perplexing nether space between reality and artifice, from Boy Meets Girl and The Lovers on the Bridge to Holy Motors and the recent musical Annette. In his new film, he lovingly evokes the aesthetics of Jean-Luc Godard, paying aptly cheeky respect to the late New Wave master, his own career, and cinema itself, rummaging through a century of movies to situate his work within a continuum of the medium. Rather than self-aggrandize, he uses this diaristic format for an iconoclastic and impudent inquiry into power, politics, and image-making that is at once wry and playful, oblique and deeply personal.”
Savina Petkova said in her review, “It’s Not Me boasts an eclectic visual style, fully embracing various ratios, formats, and stock conditions that come with the original materials used to assemble a cine-essay. The Carax works used are, of course, restored and pristine, and so are many other French films evoked by a frame or two; what is left unsaid are the levels of access such a big name has, and how little his team needs to worry about clearing copyright (unlike the mortal film essayists). This new project is a reflection on 40 years of directing––since the Cannes Critics Week premiere of Boy Meets Girl in 1984––that manages to keep a sober tone and eschew nostalgia (largely). There is also some new footage shot specifically for the purpose, the camerawork of course entrusted to Caroline Champetier (Holy Motors, Annette), as well as some personal archive bits where Carax records his young daughter on Pont Neuf.”
See the trailer and poster below, along with Carax’s NYFF conversation with Annie Baker.
