Lo specchio del desiderio

La lune dans le caniveau is definitely different in comparison to director Beineix's much more straightforward crime film Diva (1981). It is more like an introverted, dramatic family member. We observe a man who tries to deal with his mistress and his alcoholic brother, and wants revenge for the death of his sister. Is this story very interesting? I wouldn't say so. Most scenes are long and tedious (the film has a two hour runtime). Only real fans of either Beineix or the actors will keep their concentration until the very end.

The pleasure for the viewer lies elsewhere: the stylistic, colorful cinematography. The film has playful use of lights EVERYWHERE. It is visually incredibly detailed for a film from begin 80's, which were usually bleak on purpose. Both films from Beineix, Diva and this one, weren't praised for its renewal. On the contrary: they were equally bashed by the critics. Style over substance, they said. Which, as an argument about film, seems always ridiculous to me. Isn't cinema BY DEFINITION about style? It is not a book on screen, after all. How is a film as 8 1/2 not style over substance?

While I'll think Beineix was quite adventurous with his colorful style, perhaps even ahead of its time, as films have become more style over substance ever since (take for example V for vendetta, Spring Breakers, Ixjana, City of lost children, The strange color of your body's tears). Also quite modern are these out of the ordinary female characters, played wonderfully by Victoria Abril and Natassja Kinski. Depardieu's acting perhaps seems a bit shallow but he is in fact right in tone with the introverted style of the film. This was a period (begin 80's) in which he excelled in playing lead characters (Danton, Le chevre, Le dernier métro, Buffet froid). I rate this film 7/10. Despite the visual feast, I'm just too impatient to enjoy a film at such a slow pace. An one-hour cut would do magic for this film.

Most printed words regarding this film is usually all negative. Criticisms for story and lack of coherence are usually the main issues. The film has has a sad reputation overall, but the atmosphere and cinematography makes up for any shortcomings in the script. The cast-particularly Kinski and Abril really make the film. Depardieu's dedication is serious enough as the lead protagonist. Check the works of Kinski and you'll find no other film of hers giving the aura and beguiling beauty display in The Moon In the Gutter. Regardless,the movie is better than most coming out these days. I would rank it highly with films like "Betty Blue" and the works of Almodovar and Polanski.Hopefully, a proper DVD issue of some kind is imminent.

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.

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!

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."