Totally chaotic and full of rage and love. The plot is hard to follow - like which gangsters belong to which gang and after the first heist who is stealing from whom? Based on the Idiot - in theory. It's remarkable for the influence it has had on The Joker in the Batman films. Great cinematic moments and also exhausting.
9 Reviews
Not sure I fully understood the film, but I still enjoyed it.
brianberta19 February 2022
This was a very unique film and, while I'm not sure I fully understood it, I did find it interesting and I'm glad it was nominated in this thread. Granted, I found its plot very difficult to follow (the film might make more sense with another viewing though) and I didn't feel much of a connection towards any of the characters, but I'm also not sure that plot and character were Zulawski's main concerns. Story wise, this was a very freeform, anything goes film where the technical aspects, visuals, and mood are at the forefront. I'm not sure how much I enjoyed my time with it, but I did appreciate it to a degree and enjoyed a few aspects here and there. As I began watching the film, I noticed that none of the characters acted normal in the traditional sense. They all acted manic and, though I initially found this distracting, I eventually grew accustomed to the film's rhythms. The sudden bursts of violence and the somewhat surreal color scheme were also well-done. Overall, I don't have a lot of insights to offer on this film, but I did respect it and I'll probably check out some more of Zulawski's films in the future. Still need to watch Possession, for instance...
"Everything's chaotic"
chaos-rampant17 February 2016
Warning: Spoilers
This is dedicated to Zulawski who passed away today; I'd like to think that he has found no god waiting and he's finally at peace.
This is pure Dadaist anarchy, a cacophony of deranged pantomime from start to finish. It begins with a gang in Disney masks holding up a bank, firing guns and shooting off bombs of colored smoke, hooting and screaming. They're a chorus in Zulawski's mad theater. They go up to the house of a lecherous politician of some kind where they abuse the tuxedoed company and set free a girl from a life of bought abuse.
The rest is a reveling spree up and down Paris, from lavish apartments and cobble streets to inside a theater. Zulawski always had an eye for exploring architectural spaces and so it is here. Cocktail parties segue in and out of orgiastic noise, almost everyone being indecent at one point or other. The naked body is offered and taken with a sense of dread. Characters flail and spasm as if something from inside the soul contorts, mocking or ruing this life encased in a human body.
Two male characters here are both surrogates for Zulawski. One the gang leader as director who stages the maddening spree around Paris, scoffs at norms, revels in revelry, who can't love the girl except possessively as an ingenue. The other man, picked up on the train, a hapless stooge - ex-pat from the Eastern Bloc no less - who wants to love truly, is sensitive and finds himself tossed about by all this madness, broken in the process of becoming a clown, also a surrogate for Zulawski.
In between them is the girl, gorgeous Sophie Marceau channeling more than a bit of Adjani, who is not sure of anything true and simply throws herself in search. "I live in the flesh, without pleasure" she quips. For near the end, Zulawski reveals the extent of the horror that pushes her from the inside. It happens with a film- within showing her mother's horrifying abuse at the hands of upper- class lechers. It ends with a hazy, mortified shot of Sophie watching through the bushes. The screen is then blow- torched.
The indecency, insofar as it's a genuine reflection of despair, I receive at a distance. It's certainly no affectation for Zulawski, in the way it feels for me in the hands of Gaspar Noe. Smearing it as he does all over the film however, the point threatens to be lost and probably needs to be salvaged. Hedonism here is then both the calloused emptiness of the idle well-to-do (both the cocktail- party and the 16mm film- within end in dehumanized agony) and the atavistic dance of the victims (Sophie and the man) as they struggle to shed the identity that partakes of that world.
Not being able to do it, as when later a countryside reverie with just the two of them in moments of secluded truth is intruded upon, he collapses back to that world for which he has only unmitigated disgust, a world of phony theater and politics (a phony revolutionary is staging The Seagull).
Some of it, as when characters flail and crow for no reason, is too much shouting for this viewer. But what I really wish is that he had been able to see the possibility of truly shedding that self, a life where the body is vessel for breath instead of a bag of skin that clings on you. There is no substitute for the poetry and love that come from respite.
As the most clear statement on Zulawski's love (and cinema) stands the scene near the end where the hapless man sits to be tied to a chair by her and has his face painted, before she throws him on a bed, in a ritualized enactment of how she has been treated by men, feeling herself on his skin. The swap of energy becoming intimacy.
This is all Zulawski's mad theater however, what he's been doing since the very start, there's nothing to outgrow for him. The film is someone who makes his poetry by throwing fine furniture at a fire, cackling as he does. The glow of destruction warms this man's soul, chases away the night. He burnt himself in my imagination once more.
This is pure Dadaist anarchy, a cacophony of deranged pantomime from start to finish. It begins with a gang in Disney masks holding up a bank, firing guns and shooting off bombs of colored smoke, hooting and screaming. They're a chorus in Zulawski's mad theater. They go up to the house of a lecherous politician of some kind where they abuse the tuxedoed company and set free a girl from a life of bought abuse.
The rest is a reveling spree up and down Paris, from lavish apartments and cobble streets to inside a theater. Zulawski always had an eye for exploring architectural spaces and so it is here. Cocktail parties segue in and out of orgiastic noise, almost everyone being indecent at one point or other. The naked body is offered and taken with a sense of dread. Characters flail and spasm as if something from inside the soul contorts, mocking or ruing this life encased in a human body.
Two male characters here are both surrogates for Zulawski. One the gang leader as director who stages the maddening spree around Paris, scoffs at norms, revels in revelry, who can't love the girl except possessively as an ingenue. The other man, picked up on the train, a hapless stooge - ex-pat from the Eastern Bloc no less - who wants to love truly, is sensitive and finds himself tossed about by all this madness, broken in the process of becoming a clown, also a surrogate for Zulawski.
In between them is the girl, gorgeous Sophie Marceau channeling more than a bit of Adjani, who is not sure of anything true and simply throws herself in search. "I live in the flesh, without pleasure" she quips. For near the end, Zulawski reveals the extent of the horror that pushes her from the inside. It happens with a film- within showing her mother's horrifying abuse at the hands of upper- class lechers. It ends with a hazy, mortified shot of Sophie watching through the bushes. The screen is then blow- torched.
The indecency, insofar as it's a genuine reflection of despair, I receive at a distance. It's certainly no affectation for Zulawski, in the way it feels for me in the hands of Gaspar Noe. Smearing it as he does all over the film however, the point threatens to be lost and probably needs to be salvaged. Hedonism here is then both the calloused emptiness of the idle well-to-do (both the cocktail- party and the 16mm film- within end in dehumanized agony) and the atavistic dance of the victims (Sophie and the man) as they struggle to shed the identity that partakes of that world.
Not being able to do it, as when later a countryside reverie with just the two of them in moments of secluded truth is intruded upon, he collapses back to that world for which he has only unmitigated disgust, a world of phony theater and politics (a phony revolutionary is staging The Seagull).
Some of it, as when characters flail and crow for no reason, is too much shouting for this viewer. But what I really wish is that he had been able to see the possibility of truly shedding that self, a life where the body is vessel for breath instead of a bag of skin that clings on you. There is no substitute for the poetry and love that come from respite.
As the most clear statement on Zulawski's love (and cinema) stands the scene near the end where the hapless man sits to be tied to a chair by her and has his face painted, before she throws him on a bed, in a ritualized enactment of how she has been treated by men, feeling herself on his skin. The swap of energy becoming intimacy.
This is all Zulawski's mad theater however, what he's been doing since the very start, there's nothing to outgrow for him. The film is someone who makes his poetry by throwing fine furniture at a fire, cackling as he does. The glow of destruction warms this man's soul, chases away the night. He burnt himself in my imagination once more.
Not for everyone
Dave_douell29 October 2018
The plot is really very simple but the dialogue is completely nonsensical!! It's as if every character has had a stroke and can't put together a simple sentence. You could almost get as much out of the movie if you muted it all the way through. The style reminds me of "A Clockwork Orange" with the hyperactive characters, only more difficult to understand the dialogue. I had to add this movie to my collection solely for the incredible Sophie Marceau. As usual we get to see plenty of skin from one of the most beautiful and sexy women ever on film. She is truly a work of art in my opinion, every flawless inch!
Dostoyevsky is my favorite author, but I'm not too sure he would want to be credited with this film.
Eclipse of Reason
Thorsten_B12 November 2007
Indescribable. Zulawskis rendition of Dostojewski steps over the borders. This is surreal theater from it's most outside, most avant-garde, and yes, it's most autonomous perspective. The viewer is entertained, no doubt; and everything he sees is staged for his entertainment; but never is there a doubt that this is a form art that lives beyond the category of entertainment. To prove that such an art is possible, Zulawski makes his actors transform into lifeless figures that recite paradox phrases; and with that, he makes them the vulnerable animals that people really are, behind their masks. If you look at the dark sides, you can also find innocence, but you won't find reason or rationality only sheer emotion, usually struggling with one's minds rational side, but the latter is entirely lost here. Still, the protagonists find ways to give their lives a philosophical fundament, and they spent the whole of the film arguing about them, thereby feeling pain, enduring humiliation, reaching for freedom. Harshly uncompromising, ever unforgettable.
Totally insane
lodioct1 August 2003
Tcheky Karyo- modern day demented soul. He should do more French films.
FilmCriticLalitRao15 June 2007
Calling this film insane would be insulting the medium of cinema. No film can be deemed insane because the actual truth is that the real lunatics are all those human beings who are insane enough to call films insane. L'Amour braque is a hard to crack puzzle in the garb of an unintelligible film. It is a film which necessitates multiple viewing sessions in order to fathom its complexity. Of course, it is violent although there are various allusions to Dostoyevsky (people please remember Raskolnikov) All the credit for this film's hard to understand nature goes to an unusual down to earth Polish filmmaker based in Paris. Monsieur Andrzej Zulawski is a prolific filmmaker who often casts his girl friend Sophie Marceau in his films. She is a radiating beauty in this film too. There is more than meets the eye in the performance by Tcheky Karyo. L'Amour braque is a high commendable superior visual experience of honesty, richness and professionalism.
Insane and brilliant
radman1615 August 2003
Yes, the movie is insane indeed. If you can get your hands on a copy, which is hard to find, you will be rewarded with witnessing a cinematic style that is unmatched in its manic intensity. Acting, camera work, editing, will leave you spinning. Violent, loud, orgasmic, insane. A good introduction to Zulawski's fascinating body of work.
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