La lune dans le caniveau

One plausible reason why French critics failed to appreciate the beauty of this film might have something to do with it being a "mood" based film. It must be stated with caution that films with a certain 'mood' take their own time to settle in the minds of viewers. This is one reason why some critics must have failed to interpret "Moon in the gutter" in the right spirit. Jean Jacques Beineix and his screen writing collaborator Olivier Mergault must be congratulated for their realistic depiction of the milieu from which this film's seedy characters come. They give an air of authenticity to an area where one can easily find all types of low lives who do not hesitate a bit to waste their time over petty fights. It is rather a sad feeling to read a lot of negative comments about French director Jean Jacques Beineix's film "Moon in the gutter". The reason for not liking this film could be many as there is no universal agreement about audiences and their tastes. However, it must be remembered that all filmmakers have the right to portray their visions on the big screen in the manner which suits them the best. From this yardstick, nobody has the right to censure Monsieur Beineix for his film which has also been hailed by many critics outside France as a masterpiece.

It's a pity we were unable to watch the complete version of the movie, that lasts nearly 5 hours. It might give us a complete story that is too short here. Maybe one day Beineix will release it on dvd...

Jean-Jacques Beineix recently stated (transl.) "An auteur does not speak the truth" and here, within this enormously powerful film, he but flirts with reality, while most of the director's creative fires feed upon his singular employment of colour and set design. The style of Beineix, as a cinematic architect, may be designated as Rococo with, as he avers, a preeminence of (transl.) "atmosphere over narrative", fostering an element of whimsy, greatly enhanced by his recognition of a symbolic authority resting upon commercial advertising and its adjuncts. A studied development of exaggerated imagination marks the film, each frame being carefully composed for a production that originally extended to over four and one half hours, in the face of Beineix' assertion that he abhors filmic structuring. This organizational factor, at least in part, stems from an obligatory reflex of the director as recognition of the film's source, a novel by David Goodis, wherein the action occurs primarily at and about dockside Philadelphia, transferred here to an undesignated Marseille, and with the novelist's prototypical women intact, one, Loretta (Nastassia Kinski), angelic and carnally unattainable, ("you are pure" declaims Gerard Depardieu to her), the second, Bella (Victoria Abril) triumphantly lusty and possessed of will such as the work's protagonist, Gerard Delmas (Depardieu) apparently does not have. Delmas is compulsively drawn to the site of his sister's gruesome death by her own hand following her sexual violation, hoping to discover keys to what prompted her suicide, to the identity of her assailant, and to a rationale behind his own obsession. Thus is formed a basis for a plot, such as it may be, yet style is properly victor over substance with this undervalued and enigmatic piece that is nearly all filmed in studio, the greatest portion lighted by arcs and photo floods, with scoring contributed in elegant and operatically motival fashion by Gabriel Yared, and paced throughout, as Beineix describes it, with (transl.) "slow gestures forming the choreography."

Poor Gerard who has to put up with a dead sister, a crazy brother, a drunkard father, an overweight loud step-mother, a nympho of a lover and a beautiful wealthy woman. It all adds up to trash art by the master of high quality cinema, Jean-Jacques Beineix!

One would imagine that any film staring Depardieu, Kinski and Abril would be worth watching for their performances alone... but not in this case. The pace of the story was slow, and its premise was instantly forgettable. NOT recommended.