It's Not Me

Love poem, restless dream, troubled history, alchemist’s scrapbook — Leos Carax’s It’s Not Me is pure cinema as it dances through its dense 42 minutes.

Whether one looks at it as a summation statement from an artist taking stock of their life and work at the end of their career or as another one of the brief cinematic diversions that he has taken on in between his feature projects, “It’s Not Me” is a reminder that Leos Carax is one of the most fascinating and formally interesting filmmakers working in the world today.

Beyond the archness and cynicism, there are some profound, self-reflective insights about what it means to make moving images in the 21st century.

C’est Pas Moi amuses – and discomfits.

The auteur seems to be squeezing everything he can into a personal manifesto in which cinema, history and real life become interchangeable, and in which he tries to situate his output within film’s larger trajectory.

With its short runtime and heady mix of styles, scenes, and ruminations, it’s still a fascinating refraction of one of the most interesting filmmakers working today.

he fatal flaw of “It’s Not Me” is that it looks backward rather than forward, embodying films that have already been made, rather than those yet to be dreamed.