Pola X

When Melville's "Pierre; or The Ambiguities" hit bookstores in 1852, his first publication since "Moby Dick" a year earlier, the public response was similar to that found among the IMDB reviews of "POLA X". Newspapers even published headlines like: "Melville Insane!" which, of course, he wasn't. But, when one compares the writing styles found in "Moby Dick" and "Pierre," one finds in the latter a sharp departure from the simple and often declamatory style found in the former. Clearly, he was mimicking the overly florid style of the now-forgotten Victorian Romances that were easily outselling his immortal "Moby Dick." He was not content, however, to turn out the sort of product that his publishers wanted, and that surely would have sold. His version of a Victorian romance was a twisted, cynical one, perhaps, but brilliant in its synthesis. The alternate title: "The ambiguities" is quite appropriate. As Pierre searches for, and thinks he finds, truth, we become more and more uncertain what and whom to believe. As he searches for happiness, he becomes more and more miserable.

"POLA X" is a fascinating adaptation of this novel, set in modern or nearly modern France. Though, in some ways, it leaves little to the imagination, and shows us graphically the incestuous relations that Melville could only hint at, the ambiguities which make the novel and its message so alluring are perfectly in tact. The questions it raises are ones that few films have thought to ask, yet the answers are left to the viewer.

I recommend a reading of the novel, which is much shorter than "Moby Dick," before seeing this movie. I hope more people discover this tantalizing film.

Imagine the 2,500 seat Lumiere Theatre at Cannes dead silent. No one breathed as the incestuous sex scene began.

Understandably, half of the audience applauded as others booed the close of this film. The innovations in sound are remarkable, and locations stunning, but the crawling pace of a youthful cult leader's slow descent and eventual destruction of everyone near to him is arduous business. Thankfully it is broken up by strange twists of circumstance which justify those tortured looks from monolithic Deneuve and Depardeiu. It's just a bit of a shame that such traditional shock elements (an exploding head, a beautifully choreographed motorcycle accident) are precisely what the audience lives for to lift the weight of the rest of the picture. Carax's reply to the press between long drags on a cigarette, "What explicit imagery?" told me the rest of the story.

Based on Herman Melville's story. Director Carax, who can be mesmerising when he is good, makes this film unbelievably trashy. Stay away.

And surprise, surprise--for some unfathomable reason Carax deviates from Melville's ending where there are three suicides instead of one as chosen by Carax in the film.

Even then it is a disaster of a film--Catherine Deneuve's time on the screen is the only saving grace.

I had just returned from France and was craving a French film to take the edge off the end of a vacation. However, Pola X was the most disjointed and pretentious film I've seen in years. It felt like a bad parody of the genre -- bleak, stilted dialogue; freaky feral-women; and oh the agonizingly beautiful angst of it all. The X in the title apparently refers to the 10th rewrite of the script. One wishes he'd had the insight to take it to 11.

As the previous commentator said, Leos Carax's style did change, although I do not know why. I wouldn't say he has become a German romantic, because I still think Pierre, the protagonist is a man searching for an aesthetic truth within a self-destructing world. He is a newly disillusioned man, who goes through a psychological adventure bitter at the hypocrisy of his old life, striving to strike and lash at the world with the bitter truth he has acquired. Although one could see this as a clear-cut razor sharp character, I find I cannot help but see him as a poet-like figure, in a Paris as stark as it really is, but this isn't new because his depiction of Paris in his last film was far from idealistic..