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Pola X

1999, Movie, NR, 134 mins

Pola X: Review

POLA X
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"Pola" is an anagram of Pierre, ou les Ambiguities, the French title of the strange Herman Melville novel on which this equally strange film is based. The "X" might as well refer to its graphic sex scenes, which seem de rigeur in current French cinema. Director Leos Carax shifts Melville's setting from the gloomy Massachusetts mountains to France's gloriously golden chateaux, where young Pierre (Guillaume Depardieu), a successful novelist and son of a now-deceased diplomat, lives a life of luxury with his youthful mother, Marie (Catherine Deneuve). Pierre intends to marry the lovely Lucie (Delphine Chuillot), but on the night he plans to propose, he comes face to face with a mysterious, dark-haired woman (Katerina Golubeva) — a vagabond, apparently, and a foreigner — who's been following him for several weeks. She tells him her name is Isabelle and that she's his half sister, abandoned in some foreign country to be raised by strangers. Pierre is devastated by the truth about his venerable father, and radically reprioritizes his life: He renounces Lucie, his mother and his family's wealth, and dedicates himself to Isabelle. Together, they move into a derelict Paris factory, where Pierre vows to write only the ugly truth about the world. Carax sticks close to his source, taking the story right where Melville was certainly headed, but couldn't make explicit: an incestuous (and surprisingly hardcore) union between siblings. But where Melville found metaphysics, Carax sees a metaphor for French foreign policy: A deadbeat dad whose abandoned brood has come home to roost. As in his the epic sonnet LOVERS OF THE BRIDGE, Carax mixes the harsh realism of Paris street life with an almost surreal stylishness. With their hollowed eyes, sunken cheeks and deathlike pallor, Pierre and Isabelle look like supermodels, slinking about Paris in long coats and well-cut rags. Through Carax's eyes, even squalor looks fabulous. leave a comment --Ken Fox
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