Modern Loves: Leos Carax

The nocturnal beauty of a Paris that’s left for the misfits. La Nouvelle Vague absorbed, contested and reshaped. Poetic romanticism heightened with entrancing visuals and audacious style. Leos Carax – a name not born into but created, himself a “creature of cinema” as BFI puts it – begun writing for Cahiers du Cinéma as a teenager in the late 1970s. His literacy of the medium and deep cinephilia is reflected in his first three features – films of ‘amour fou’ loosely known as the Alex Trilogy – where the the titular character (embodied by the magnetic Denis Lavant) is the director’s on-screen alter ego immersed in the possibility of youth, seeking authentic connection with the world and others. Carax has said publicly that he makes “private films.” We introduce you to the private world of this singular filmmaker who challenges the form of the modern film with every new work, first through his debut trio of features, then with his latest one, the cinematic anti-biopic It’s Not Me.