L'amour braque

Libidniks

One of the most maudit of that shadowy classification films maudits, Żuławski's 1985 feature L'amour braque [Love's at the Steering Wheel, or Love's in Control, etc.] is something like four movies in one; it doesn't play the cross-cut narratives structure, — blends rather from one evolution of the cast to the next. A gang of hoodlums roll into town to undertake a bank robbery disguised as vintage Disney characters, and chaos ensues as the sexual feelings for Sophie Marceau (never more beautiful, except maybe in Maurice Pialat's supreme masterpiece Police of the same year) test the tensile libidics of her admirers. On to the next evolution of the plot, and so forth. (Is this not storytelling, a variation on which exists as we've known it traditionally?)

Back to the bank robbery — an evocation of Żuławski's hero Godard; as with the Delerue score from Contempt reused in L'important c'est d'aimer, here the Master's film First Name Carmen of two years prior lends itself to the scenario, the mise-en-scène, and a general examination of the crudeness of a capitalist society.

The physicality of the cast goes ‘over the top,’ to put it mildly, in a reconciliation (or split?) between French theatrical tradition of mugging / pulling faces, and the heavy influence in the years following of the mark left by the influence of NYC's Living Theater. One shot of note finds the Folies Bergère looming over the frame.

A film to be cherished or hated, — and hatred has no place in the fault-line societies of 1985 nor 2024. •

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Other writing at Cinemasparagus on the films of Andrzej Żuławski:

L'important c'est d'aimer [1975]

L'amour braque [1985]

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