Mauvais sang

Wonderful performances by Denis Lavant (best performance as mute prisoner in "The Night of the Kings"), Juliette Binoche (best performance is in "Certified Copy") and Julie Delpy (best performance "Three colors-White"). Carax is to be credited for casting all three and getting great performances when all of them were relatively unknown. Lavant has worked with Carax on his films (in "Boy meets girl" and in "Lovers on the Bridge", where his characters are called Alex!; and in "Holy Motors")

Lavant's character is called Chatterbox. While character avers he was a silent child and survived 15 months of his served prison term by being silent. Yet, he is the most talkative character in the film, who is very knowledgeable about art and artists, correcting a "heavy" that Jean Cocteau is not alive but dead (Carax was possibly influenced by Cocteau). The film's script has several such nuggets.

Though the film has a weird tale, the strength is first of all in the use of color--clothes, exterior walls, furniture--transforming each scene into a painting.

The second awesome sequence is Denis Lavant's athletic dance in the empty street keeping to the beat of David Bowie's song "Modern Love," which is supposed to reflect the weird theme of the film of loveless sex. Carax' choice of Prokofieff's and Britten's music is creditable.

Carax worked with cinematographer Jean-Yves Escoffier until his death in 2003. Another good decision made by Carax for whom visuals, music and actors matter.

You have amazing scenes here. The energetic and nail biting heist scene, the sky-diving scene, and of course, the scene in which Chatterbox runs down the street to "Modern Love" by David Bowie. How shamelessly Noah Baumbauch stole this scene for Frances Ha, which compared to Mauvais Sang is a sophomore year, film school project. This is a master class in filmmaking. However, it's conversation scenes lag on for far too long, don't amount to much, and extend the run time of the film. It didn't need to be two hours.

Having seen only his incredibly intense 1999 film, Pola X, I didn't exactly know what to expect with Bad Blood. The film is as a whole not as effective as the later film, but it serves to solidify Leos Carax in my mind as a truly great director. I love both films, and this one is definitely flawed, but the poetry which comes through onto the screen is absolutely incredible. Alex running down the street to Bowie, the motorcycle getaway, and the amazingly passionate and beautiful final scenes will remain with me for a while... the film is exquisitely wild and reckless and is truly innovative in the way it's put together. Even as I write this, shot after shot and scene after scene resurface in my mind, all of them worthy of mention, and all of them gorgeous and shattering in their own way. Carax is a deserving heir to the thrones erected by the new wave. Bad Blood is the work of a master, whether the film itself is a masterpiece or not... The characters are wonderfully crafted with very nice performances by everyone, it's very watchable and very human poetry of the highest calibre. See it, see a Leos Carax film, any of his films - I'm going to track down Boy Meets Girl and Lovers on the Bridge as soon as I can.

Mauvais Sang made me feel cooler just for watching it-like I'd chain-smoked a Gauloises in a neon-lit alley while reciting poetry to nobody in particular. It's moody, stylish, and occasionally baffling, but there's real heart pulsing beneath all that noir-drenched angst. I loved Juliette Binoche smouldering on screen, and Julie Delpy has that effortlessly aloof charm that just works. And Dennis Lavant-my god, the man dances. That scene? Electric. I honestly think it should be a law: Lavant must dance in every film. Not just the ones he's in-every film. The plot wobbles here and there, but the vibes? Impeccable.

I think music used throughout this reveals quite a bit of the cinematic exercise.

• Prokofiev's Roméo and Juliette, so a ballet, a cinematic opera on forbidden love between youth that aches to dream. Love that cannot be consummated in the ugly day of light and has to take to dreams, liebestod, Tristan and Isolde.

• Limelight tied into this, that precious bit of Chaplin beneath the big old sappy narratives that was purely evocative body, that was in essence a dance between innocence and star-crossed fate.

• David Bowie, 'Modern Love' aptly enough, so the rush of purely energetic instrumentation, dazzling camera beats, irony, New Wave atonality, in this case the song randomly caught on radio and meant to guide feelings, a dadaist gesture. Denis Lavant leaps across the frame with his wiry seething-petite frame that reminds a bit of the old silent comedians, he's a real pleasure to watch just move.

In something like Beau Travail also with Lavant and operatic, space is arranged bodily, the whole thing is cinematic and flows. Not so here. The guy responsible for this wants to be a little like Godard, so we have the interminable recitations, the poetry, the deliberately crude crime plot where you only need a gun and a girl, always Godard's weaker spots.

This too bad. Because there are visual moments here that left me practically giddy, for example love as a matter of leaping from a plane, a matter of joint flight and tenderly balancing mid-air.

Instead we get a patchy, stuttery ride that only now and then blossoms into some internal scenery.

The opportunity missed is that the eye dances but is not fully consumed with its musical capacity. Nouvelle Vague ruins this by proxy. I like to think that Wong Kar Wai saw this and immediately knew which parts worked.