Despite its modern gloss, "Pola X" feels rooted in those epic old 19th century novels with their mega melodramatic stories by writers such as Hugo, Zola, Hardy, The Brontës or, as in this case, Herman Melville. The setting for his "Pierre; or, The Ambiguities" was changed for the film from mid 19th Century America to modern day France.
Pierre (Guillaume Depardieu), who is writing a second novel after his wildly successful first one, lives with his widowed mother (Catherine Deneuve) in a chateau in Normandy. However their relationship is more like brother and sister. There is a whiff of incest in the air, and as we discover, Pierre likes to keep it all in the family. Pierre is engaged to the beautiful, fragile Lucie (Delphine Chuillot) who lives in a nearby chateau, but he is troubled by a reoccurring dream of a dark-haired woman.
Before he is to be married, he encounters the woman who tells him she is his half-sister, Isabelle (Yekaterina Golubeva), born to their diplomat father in Eastern Europe. Pierre who seems pretty unsettled anyway takes off to Paris with Isabelle. They end up as lovers living in an artist's commune in a converted warehouse (an old church, The Apostles, in Melville's novel).
However his life and fame catch up with him, the distraught Lucie even comes to hang out with him and Isabelle. Finally Pierre becomes totally unhinged and we get an ending that is pretty extreme although not as extreme as the one in old Herman's novel where all three protagonists, Pierre, Lucie and Isabelle commit suicide together, outdoing the ending of just about all the novels of his contemporaries.
Of course director and co-writer Leos Carax has overlayed Melville's jottings with his own worldview with the beauty of the countryside contrasted with some depressing impressions of modern day Paris.
The film has a couple of haunting scenes, especially the death of a little refugee girl, but also has scenes that seem interminable. There is also a bit of sex that old Herman forgot to include.
This particular updating of 19th century scribing to a modern day film feels off-kilter, but not easily forgotten. The untimely deaths of Guillaume and Yekaterina also add a sense of sadness to the film.
Pierre (Guillaume Depardieu), who is writing a second novel after his wildly successful first one, lives with his widowed mother (Catherine Deneuve) in a chateau in Normandy. However their relationship is more like brother and sister. There is a whiff of incest in the air, and as we discover, Pierre likes to keep it all in the family. Pierre is engaged to the beautiful, fragile Lucie (Delphine Chuillot) who lives in a nearby chateau, but he is troubled by a reoccurring dream of a dark-haired woman.
Before he is to be married, he encounters the woman who tells him she is his half-sister, Isabelle (Yekaterina Golubeva), born to their diplomat father in Eastern Europe. Pierre who seems pretty unsettled anyway takes off to Paris with Isabelle. They end up as lovers living in an artist's commune in a converted warehouse (an old church, The Apostles, in Melville's novel).
However his life and fame catch up with him, the distraught Lucie even comes to hang out with him and Isabelle. Finally Pierre becomes totally unhinged and we get an ending that is pretty extreme although not as extreme as the one in old Herman's novel where all three protagonists, Pierre, Lucie and Isabelle commit suicide together, outdoing the ending of just about all the novels of his contemporaries.
Of course director and co-writer Leos Carax has overlayed Melville's jottings with his own worldview with the beauty of the countryside contrasted with some depressing impressions of modern day Paris.
The film has a couple of haunting scenes, especially the death of a little refugee girl, but also has scenes that seem interminable. There is also a bit of sex that old Herman forgot to include.
This particular updating of 19th century scribing to a modern day film feels off-kilter, but not easily forgotten. The untimely deaths of Guillaume and Yekaterina also add a sense of sadness to the film.