Critic Reviews

With “It’s Not Me,” Carax confronts the aberration of celebrity (even art-house celebrity) by means of a cinematic self-creation that’s both a matter of sincere reticence and an audaciously assertive work of art.

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.

C’est Pas Moi amuses – and discomfits.

While Carax’s cinema may not be to everyone’s taste, this primer on both his philosophy and his aesthetic is as effective as anything he’s ever directed. Brilliant in its concision, even the most jarring of elements never overstay their welcome, making this perhaps the purest and most honest chapter in his entire filmography.

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

Despite the simple question at the film’s core, Carax is unsurprisingly more interested in assembling compelling images and sounds than offering a sincere look inside the man crafting them. He orbits vulnerability like a moth swirling around a streetlamp, getting ever closer and occasionally touching it before instantly recoiling.

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.

Carax allows his audience to see a process––assertive statement to hesitation to defeat. The true vulnerability of the essayistic form lies in showing attempts and failures, not only successes.

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.