Boy Meets Girl (1984) User Reviews

Confident debut film from a young Leos Carax

[Red-Barracuda · 7/10 · 10 November 2016]

I hadn't even been aware of this film when it was passed my way by a very kind fellow IMDb user. It is the debut feature by Leos Carax, a film he directed when he was only 24 years old. Like most of the other films in the cinéma du look movement, in which Carax was a key member, it's not very story-driven and instead favours strange plot tangents and a cool distance from its characters. The basic narrative tells a story of a depressed young man who meets a suicidal young woman after both of them have just suffered rejections from their respective partners. They enter a relationship of sorts.

It feels like Carax must have been influenced by the early 80's Francis Ford Coppola films One from the Heart (1981) and Rumble Fish (1983); like the former he often told simple romantic-drama stories in highly stylized cinematic ways and like the latter in Boy Meets Girl he has did it using crisp black and white photography. It is a very visual and typically left-of-centre approach that has been taken to the material. Unlike most films based around a romance, it takes an hour before the two title characters actually meet at an off-kilter party populated by eccentric characters. So much of the focus is really on other things with a number of little unusual vignettes making up the whole. Its story of young love and alienated youth isn't really a very uplifting one in fairness and could easily be described as a tragedy. Although it isn't necessarily as involving on an emotional level as it might be due to Carax style which always takes a somewhat removed perspective from his characters. I'm not entirely sure that this is the best approach for story-lines involving romance as these work best when you have more empathy and involvement with the characters in my opinion. But I still have to admire the look and feel of the film though which is pretty interesting for the most part. In addition, despite not having an actual score, there is interesting use of music, with a night-time sequence on the Pont Neuf bridge set to an obscure very early David Bowie track, while at another moment a character unexpectedly puts on the record 'Holiday in Cambodia' by the hard-core punk band the Dead Kennedys. These moments cement the fact that this was a film that resolutely celebrated popular culture. All-in-all, while it is not an entirely engaging experience this is a very confident film for a 24 year old novice film-maker to knock out.

" The problem with loners is that they're never alone."

[morrison-dylan-fan · 8/10 · 3 August 2016]

Shortly after seeing his sparkling film The Lovers on the Bridge,I read an old issue of UK film mag Empire,and spotted a very good review on Artificial Eye's DVD and Blu-Ray edition of Cinéma Du Look leader Leos Carax's debut.

Recently going to a local library sale,I was surprised to find that among "local" items were books and movies from London's Camberwell Library!,which included John Hillaby's very interesting book Journey to the Gods,and the DVD and Blu-Ray editions of Carax's debut,which led to me getting ready to meet the boys and girls.

View on the film:

Shooting his debut in crisp,low-budget black and white,writer/director Leos Carax & cinematographer Jean-Yves Escoffier build a halfway house between the French New Wave (FNW) and the Cinéma du Look movements.

Scorched with a rocking soundtrack brimming with David Bowie and the Dead Kennedys, Carax and Escoffier gloss the movie with the vivid comic-book style framing of Cinéma du Look,which gives the film a boldness,and makes Alex and Mireille look like they are standing out against comic-book panels.

Casting the film in a deliciously dreamy atmosphere, Carax dives into the FNW with velvet stylisation,which Carax wraps round the couple in smoothly delivered extreme -close track shots and dashing, splinted whip-pans gazing into Mireille and Alex's love.

Sticking close to Alex as he tries to shoplift,the screenplay by Carax fragments Alex and Mireille's relationships with a collage nature,that brings Alex and Mireille together in a jig-saw manner,where Carax brilliantly takes one step back with each piece placed,in order to display the "full" picture of Alex and Mireille's romance.

While focusing on the romance,Carax shows a keen eye for quirky side avenues,lit up by a very funny scene of a man playing a "unique" Space Invaders,to Alex and Mireille's shadows being reflected in a hauntingly off-beat final. Linked up with the alluringly expressive Mireille Perrier as Mireille, Denis Lavant gives an excellent performance as Alex,thanks to Lavant cutting Alex with a street smart edge and a heart on his sleeve warmth,as the boy meets the girl.

Carax's first step into the feature film world will stick with you and is one of the most original and freshest looks at the romantic comedy-drama genre.

[bryank-04844 · 8/10 · 11 August 2015]

French director Leos Carax recently made the visually stunning and great film 'Holy Motors'. But his first feature film was back in 1984 and called 'Boy Meets Girl'. It's a bittersweet and lovely story about two broken hearts who find each other in their most weakened state. I would venture a guess that this movie is somewhat autobiographical as the main character is named Alex, which is Carax's actual first name.

Alex (Denis Lavant, a regular in Carax's films), is a prospective filmmaker whose girlfriend recently broke his heart to date his best friend. Alex spends his time walking the streets, looking at other happy couples, listening to music, and coming up with movie titles that he hasn't made yet. He meets a beautiful woman named Mireille (Mireille Perrier), or he hears her voice on an apartment intercom, breaking up with her boyfriend.

It takes almost an hour for literally "boy to meet girl' here. But that's the plan and genius of Carax as he wants to keep his two characters from getting to close to their audience. Mireille is a model who is witty, smart, fun, yet a little bit chaotic, which is right up Alex's alley. And the two hit it off, but are still in a somber state from their recent heartbreak. There is a long conversation between the two new friends, as they discuss life and love.

Carax has perfectly crafted these characters as to not allow us to develop a relationship with them as tragedy hovers overhead in the distance. Denis Lavant is excellent here as Alex. His emotional range and charm is limitless as he plays Alex with ease and realism. And Perrier turns in solid work her as well. There is no score in the film, but Carax uses some excellent music to tell the emotional story his character's are telling and feeling very well, including music from David Bowie and The Dead Kennedys.

'Boy Meets Girl' is excellent film, both beautiful and tragic about two people who just want to be loved. And the black and white cityscape of Paris is gorgeous as the city plays just as much a character in the film as the two main actors do. Carax's first step into the feature film world will stick with you and is one of the most original and freshest looks at the romantic comedy-drama genre.

A striking ode to the bitter ironies of unrequited love, and alienated Parisian youth.

[ThreeSadTigers · 8 January 2008]

Leos Carax made a name for himself in the early-to-mid nineteen-eighties; emerging from the short-lived "cinema du look" movement with a pair of quirky and melancholic romantic fantasy films, Boy Meets Girl (1984) and Mauvais Sang (1986), before taking his central themes of unrequited love and alienated Parisian youth to the next conceivable level with the film Les Amants Du Pont-Neuf (1991). That particular film was supposed to be the one that would finally introduce Carax to a wider cinematic audience; finding the filmmaker refining his usual themes and structural preoccupations with a larger budget and much in the way of creative freedom. Sadly, things didn't go quite to plan; the eventual film - a wildly uneven though often quite captivating blend of romantic folly and violent social realism - went massively over-budget and over-schedule before finally limping out with a limited release almost half a decade later.

As with the other filmmakers at the forefront of the cinema du look movement - Luc Besson and Jean Jacques Beineix - Carax's work is high on style and short on plot; often seeming like a collection of random scenes, linked by one or two reoccurring characters, that accumulate over the course of the film's duration to create a kind of whole. His approach to film-making is very much akin to Hong Kong filmmaker Wong Kar-Wai, in the sense that the film is created from a brief outline and then improvised in the same way that a sculptor or a painter will work, often impressionistically, until a form begins to take shape. Carax however doesn't quite have the narrative scope or the sense of control of someone like Wong, or indeed, the grand duke of improvisational cinema Mike Leigh; with many of his scenes feeling formless and disconnected while his characters remain vague and curiously unsympathetic throughout. These are the major flaws we encounter with Carax's work, and those who are unable to look past the loose structures and wandering approach to narrative will no doubt find much of the director's first two films completely unwatchable - which is a real shame, as despite this, they're both striking and unconventional examples of the cinema du look movement at its most disarming; mixing elements of the Nouvelle Vague with film noir, silent comedy, existentialism and references to early 80's pop culture.

Boy Meets Girl (1984), Carax's first film, typifies this approach; taking the very essence of Jean-Paul Satre's La Nausée and filtering it through the lens of an early Jean-Luc Godard, to create a film that is both playful and romantic, but also lonely and entirely downbeat. The film was made when Carax was twenty-four years old and is very much the kind of film that a gloomy twenty-something loner would make; with its striking black and white cinematography, stylised performances, continual allusions to lost love and alienation and numerous scenes in which our hero wanders the streets as French pop and David Bowie filter in from near-by windows and onto the soundtrack. The film would announce Carax as the infant-terrible of the new French film scene, with his lead actor Denis Lavant becoming a sort of alter-ego type figure; re-appearing as different characters (but with the same name) in Boy Meets Girl, Mauvais Sang and Les Amants Du Pont-Neuf. He's also aided greatly by cinematographer Jean Yves Escoffier, whose use of long tracking shots, imaginative compositions and expressionistic lighting makes Boy Meets Girl one of the most visually stunning films of the 1980's; probably falling somewhere behind Lars von Trier's The Element of Crime and Coppola's One From the Heart. The problems with the film are mostly in the distance we have from the characters; never really getting the chance to know or care for them in a way that would be more beneficial to that ironically bleak and entirely unexpected climax.

The basic plot of the film is loose and meandering; more a moody tone poem centring on a young man cast adrift, lonely and lost within the dark maze of a shimmering late night Paris. After having just split with his lover, the young man, Alex (Denis Lavant), wanders the streets desperate and depressed, eventually happening upon a party hosted by a rich American socialite that he decides to crash. There he meets a fellow lost soul who has also just left split from her lover, and the two begin a complex relationship that grants them a temporary reprieve from the cruelties of everyday existence. This covers at least 30% of the film's actual running time, with Carax padding things out further with lots of beautifully shot sequences of Alex brooding over his lost love and the emptiness of his young life, as well as additional vignettes seemingly unconnected to the central characters at hand that attempt to visually underpin the ideas of loss and love at the heart of the film itself.

These sequences include an opening prologue in which a young mother parks her car by the side of the river and then, over the phone, tells her boyfriend that she is not only in the process of leaving him, but also plans on throwing his unpublished poems into the water. Another memorable sequence finds Alex wandering the streets, as Bowie's 'When I Live My Dream' plays on the soundtrack, and coldly observing a young couple kissing on the bridge, oblivious to his presence. After watching them for a short while, Alex throws a handful of loose change at their feet as if rewarding a street musician for a competent performance. This sequence is a key moment here, as it underpins both the film and Carax's feelings on love and its importance to everything that fits around it. There's also a charming scene in which Mireille (Mireille Perrier), the girl that Alex will later fall in love with, practices a tap dance routine in her one-room apartment, tapping (no pun!) into Carax's combined love for early silent cinema (specifically Chaplin) and Godard's Bande à part.

A film whose - very poetic - staging does not manage to hide the emptiness and the total neutrality of its action.

[athys · 7/10 · 16 November 2021]

A film whose - very poetic - staging does not manage to hide the emptiness and the total neutrality of its action.

Aesthetically, Boy meets Girl, as a Leos Carax's very first film, has a lot of personnality, and this well-mastered daring is pleasing to see. The contrast of black and white is very well managed, along with the lighting of the film, we could see here a tribute to the expressionism era .

The photography is very well organized, the decorations, the compositions on the screen again testify to a certain stylistic audacity. Nevertheless, it flounders. This love story half-lived, or lived weakly, interspersed with impromptu lyrical outbursts in the dialogues hardly convinces. It does not work by its lack of fluidity, of coherence. The film itself breaks up between poetic softness and clumsy ardor, badly executed or badly played. The rambling of the young hero Alex is indeed the only constant line of the film, whose romance is difficult to discern, in a flood of poetic wanderings that end up plumbing the film. While Boy Meets Girl attracts lovers of poetry with its aesthetic, it puts off by its inconsistency and by the emptiness of its scenario.

Lots of style on display

[gbill-74877 · 6/10 · 9 November 2023]

Beautifully shot, but tediously slow. Even with all the references to French New Wave filmmaking from a couple of decades before, the story didn't hold my interest, and the characters were hard to care for. There was not enough effort put into developing them beyond damaged, emotionally fragile people. Carax instead labored over other scenes, like the three full minutes spent with the young man playing pinball near the end, at a point where I was already hoping the remaining run time would pass quickly.

The cinematography is undeniable, however, and there is a certain lonely mood captured here that may resonate, if you can put up with a story that moves in fits and starts. Can love, like a phoenix, rise out of the ashes of former relationships for these two people, we wonder when they talk at length in the kitchen while a party carries on outside, maybe the film's most interesting scene. It had its moments, but isn't one I'd recommend.

"First Come Words, No Emotions"

[loganx-2 · 9/10 · 18 October 2009]

I had never heard of Leos Carax until his Merde segment in last years Tokyo, and his was easily the stand-out the film's three stories. It wasn't my favorite of the shorts, but it was the most unique, and the most iconic. "The Lovers on the Bridge" was the first of his full length features I've seen, a virtuoso romantic film that uses image and music to communicate an exuberant young love that overflows into the poetic. Though he's classified as a neo-nouvelle vogue, his films owe as much to silent cinema as the 60's experimental narratives. His movies are closer to Jean Vigo in "L'atlante", Jean Cocteau, and Guy Maddin, than Godard and Truffaut.

In Boy Meets Girl Carax's 1984 debut he uses black and white and the heavy reliance on visual representation to display emotional states. He combines the exaggerated worlds of Maddin, but based in a reality that never seems quite stable like Cocteau, but by virtue of its expressions it becomes more accessible, emotional, and engaging like Vigo's movies.

The story of Boy Meets Girl is simple, and similar to Carax's two following films which comprise this "Young lovers" trilogy. A boy named Alex played by Denis Lavant (who plays a character named Alex in Carax's next two movies), has just been dumped by his girlfriend who has fallen in love with his best friend. In the first scene he nearly kills his friend on a boardwalk but stops short of murder. He walks around reminded of her by sounds of his neighbors having sex, and daydreams of his girlfriend and best friend getting intimate. He steals records for her and leaves them at his friend's apartment, but avoids contacting either of them directly. He wanders around and finds his way to a party, where he meets a suicidal young woman, and the film becomes part "Breathless" and part "Limelight".

Later he is advised by an old man with sign language to "speak up for yourself...young people today It's like they forgot how to talk." The old man gives an anecdote about working in the days of silent film, and how an actor timid off stage became a confident "lion" when in front of the camera. Heres where the movie tips its hand, but the overt reference to silent film is a crucial scene, since it overlaps the style of the film (silent and expressionist), with the content (a lovelorn young man trying to work up the courage to say and do the things he really wants to). Though Alex is pensive at first and a torrent of romantic words tumbling out of him by the end, he is the shy actor who becomes a lion thanks to the films magnification of his inward feelings which aren't easy to nail down from moment to moment, aside from a desire to fall in love.

There is a scene in the film where Alex retreats from the party into a room where the guests have stashed their children and babies, all crying in a chorus that fills that room, until he turns on a tape of a children's show making them fall silent. Unexpectedly due a glitch the TV ends up playing a secret bathroom camera which reveals the hostess sobbing to herself into her wig about someone she misses. Even as Carax is self-reflexive and self deprecating of the very kind of angst ridden coming of age tale he is trying to tell (the room full of whining infants), he's mature enough to see through the initial irony to the lovelorn in everything the film crosses. Even the rich old, bell of the ball has a brother she misses. In another scene an ex astronaut stares at the moon he once walked on in his youth while sipping a cocktail in silence.

Though indebted to films before talkies, Carax is a master of music, knowing when to pipe in the Dead Kennedy's "Holiday in Cambodia", or an early David Bowie song, the sounds of a man playing piano, or of a girl softly humming.

In Boy Meets Girl, when someone gets their heart broken we see blood pour from their shirt, when a couple kiss on the sidewalk they spin 360 degrees as if attached to a carousel, when Alex enters a party an feels out of place, its because the most interesting people in the world really are in attendance; like the famous author who can't speak because of a bullet lodged in his brain, or the miss universe of 1950 standing just across from the astronaut. This film is the missing link between Jean Piere Jenuet, Michel Gondry, and Wes Anderson, whose stylistic flourishes and quirky tales of whimsy, all have a parallel with different visuals, musical, and emotional cues in these Carax movies.

Every line of dialog, every piece of music and every effect and edit in this movie resonated with me on some emotional level, some I lack words to articulate. There are many tales of a boy meeting a girl, but rather than just explore the banal details of any particular event this movie captures the ecstatic truth of adolescent passion and disappointment. The other movies you want to watch can wait. See this first. If I were to make films, I would want them to be like this, in fact I wish all films were like this, where the ephemeral becomes larger than life, and life itself becomes a dream.

Unbearable fragility and beauty of being

[tururru · 10/10 · 15 April 2017]

The first film by Leos Carax - piercing, sincere. Carax is only 23 years old - a young genius - a genius in depicting the nuances of youthful depression and the loneliness of human existence. The heroine is like a touching Pierrot. Like a fragile crystal flower. And the general impression is the unbearable fragility and beauty of being.

Decadence Expression

[MK_Movie_Reviews · 4/10 · 17 November 2021]

There are so many same titles of this movie, so it was hard to find this one. This is a black and white movie. All movies of Leos Carax contain beautiful images of decadence. The way of expressing the emptiness of the young generation is one of a kind. Their conversations are always poetic so it hard to understand, same as usual. A variety of music stood out in this movie.

Worth the time.

[moviesknight · 8/10 · 26 February 2022]

Wonderful. Beautifully dealt the sensitivity of the people sucking up into the voids of their own desires and not having a loving life. Start is a bit dull but then the middle and final act are perfectly executed. Bit sad towards that end but so is life. Good visuals and use of lighting. Lot to think about after the movie ends.

Leos Carax's premiere prime

[ruby_fff · 8 October 2000]

Leos Carax made his own stamp of filmic storytelling in Black and White with fascinating use of light and framing of imagery. Can't forget the frame with the 4-pane window shadow in a room with sparse furniture - so simply captured that the mood and tone is instantly felt. It's practically a piece of art just looking at that frame in that moment in time: before Alex opens the door coming in, and once again when he leaves us to this arresting image on screen.

Carax's style of telling his dramatic stories does border on melodramatic touches. This 1984 "Boy Meets Girl", his first feature film, showed us his poignant understanding of the younger set in love. The emotional entanglements and angst - struggling to be loved by the one you want the love from and disappointment awaits. Such a common premise is dealt in an uncommon insightful depiction, with graphically framed imageries. The ending demonstrates his use of subtle yet telling visual approach, letting the audience know what's really going on without words uttered. Come to think of it, that's how he ended his films - the strength of soundless or non-dialog scenes tells it all impressively.

It's certainly not your usual teen angst movie - Carax's films are not simple by any means. Emotional layers, love in conflict and flight are ever present. Regular street scenes and night shots by the river with lighted bridge afar are his common backdrops. Discourses on love and relationships you will find. If you like to go steps further and really plunge into French conversations of love, sex, and relationships, try Jean Eustache's 1973 "The Mother and the Whore" (La Maman et la putain; NFE = not for everyone), also shot in B/W. Let Jean-Pierre Leaud's Alexandre lead you through the 3 hrs. 30 mins. verbal journey, with Bernadette Lafont as Marie "la maman", and Francoise Lebrun as Veronika "la putain".

Masterpiece in every sense of the word

[martinpersson97 · 10/10 · 24 February 2023]

This is without a doubt one of the best films of all time.

Through a rather limited and modest budget, this acclaimed director and great cast manages to create true art. It is very subtle and allegorical, and the cinematography is astonishing. The acting, editing and the writing is wonderful in this film, and it's a very unique piece of filmmaking.

Overall, without a doubt one of the great films and one to be watched for anyone who enjoys an artistic experience. It is somewhat unconventionally told, but not to the degree that I would consider it hard to comprehend for the casual viewer. Give it a watch.

France's Orson Welles makes his visually classy debut

[JuguAbraham · 8/10 · 29 May 2020]

Visual treat as almost all Carax films. What a debut!

The protagonist Alex (Denis Lavant) rarely smiles. He does not drink or smoke. and makes films or wants to make them. The girl Mirielle (Mirielle Perrier) is extraordinarily attractive, if you discount her bad teeth in the film. The film has a sequence about a mute silent film crew member who jokes about what deaf people saw in silent films by lipreading that escaped normal people. The film has a brief shot tipping Carax's hat to Welles' "Citizen Kane." Both made their debut films at the same age of 24. Both wrote their original scripts

Denis Lavant has repeatedly worked for Carax, Mirielle Perrier again in Carax's Mauvais Sang.

The use of David Bowie's song "When I live my dream" (sung by Bowie). is a fascinating touch.

The visuals and the use of music and silences are a trademark of Carax. Lavant wears checked jacket and holds a scarf of of his previous love with the same design. When he is with Mirielle, the jacket is off andhis striped shirt matches the stripes of Mirielle's clothes.

Strong first feature from a great filmmaker

[che-29 · 2 November 1999]

'Boy Meets Girl ' was Leos Carax's first movie, and is remarkably mature for a first film!! Leos went on to tell a similar story in his next films. One of the great things about this film is that it reminds me of the glory days of the French New Wave, because it's fresh and has a new way of telling us something we may have heard before.The best thing is that the film has several great visual sequences that prove Carax has the ability to express things visually that alot of directors could only accomplish by using words. It's hard to track this one down, but if you get a chance make sure you see it. Then see the rest of Leos Carax's movies, one of the most visionary directors at work in the contemporary film scene.