CQ (2001)
Directed by Roman Coppola
A young filmmaker in 1960s Paris juggles directing a cheesy sci-fi debacle, directing his own personal art film, coping with his crumbling relationship with his girlfriend, and a new-found infatuation with the sci-fi film's starlet.
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Jeremy Davies, however, brings some greasy-haired wistfulness to his performance as Paul, an American naïf in 1969 Paris editing the godawful Barbarella-esque Dragonfly, a sci-fi cheapie about a gorgeous secret agent (lanky and coy Angela Lindvall) in the year 2000.
The framing story is the nouvelle vagueâstyle tale of a young American filmmaker (Jeremy Davies, in his most down-to-earth performance) whoâs in 1969 Paris working on two radically different films: a black-and-white diary of his own daily life, including his relationship with a stewardess (played by Elodie Bouchez with a nod to Anna Karina), and a silly Barbarella-style sci-fi pic about youth rebellion whose star (model Angela Lindvall) has him under her spell.
At the center of CQ is Paul Ballard (Jeremy Davies) an aspiring young filmmaker living in Paris in 1969, where he is simultaneously working as an editor on Dragonfly a lavish, Barbarella-esque sci-fi movie while agonizing privately over the form and content of a far more personal 16mm project he is shooting in the confines of the apartment he shares with his French girlfriend Marlene (Elodie Bouchez, so good in The Dreamlife Of Angels ).
Jeremy Davies (in his first starring role since “Spanking the Monkey�) stars as an aspiring filmmaker living in Paris in 1969 and working as a film editor on a BARBARELLA-like sci-fi film, which is set in 2001--and that’s funny on many different levels.
An ambivalent aspiring filmmaker (Jeremy Davies) seeking inspiration in 1969 Paris, he's torn between his desire to make a conceptual, black-and-white New Wave art film and his day job editing a studio's cheesy, sexploitive "Barbarella"-like B-movie.
The real-world cast is rounded out by Dean Stockwell as Paul's myopic dad (yes, I "saw" the point about vision), and there's even a cameo by Barbarella star John Phillip Law.
The difference between art and commerce, of course, is hardly clear or stable or even very substantial, and if Paul doesn't see this, you can't help but do so, as CQ references all kinds of previous history and art, from the aforementioned Barbarella to Danger: Diabolik to Jim McBride's brilliant deconstruction of vérité's essential pretentiousness and impossibility, David Holzman's Diary.
She sanely suggests his footage of her sleeping (which suggests Godard's "Breathless") might be boring and frets over his emotional distance.
With Gérard Depardieu, Giancarlo Giannini, and Jason Schwartzman in funny bit roles, CQ summons up some of the exuberance, the play, and the self-importance of the auteur era, evoking films from Godard�s Alphaville to Antonioni�s Zabriskie Point, and its ingenuous energy at times overcomes its derivativeness.
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With Gérard Depardieu, Giancarlo Giannini, and Jason Schwartzman in funny bit roles, CQ summons up some of the exuberance, the play, and the self-importance of the auteur era, evoking films from Godard�s Alphaville to Antonioni�s Zabriskie Point, and its ingenuous energy at times overcomes its derivativeness.
As a film about filmmaking, it even rivals “Le Mépris” (Godard has had a clear influence on Coppola's use of color) and Truffaut's “Day For Night” (with which it shares a similar joie de vivre).
So Andrezej is booted off the picture, and briefly replaced by Felix DeMarco (Jason Schwartzman), a brassy young American film brat who looks a little like William Friedkin (The French Connection, The Exorcist) during his '70s heyday, and whose latest movie resembles Roman Polanski's 1967 horror spoof, The Fearless Vampire Killers.
Paul attends a New Year's Party in Rome with Enzo (and his mistress, played by Roman's sister, director Sofia Coppola) right out of Fellini's "La Dolce Vita."
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When Davies' character is given the high-stress chance to step in and direct the end of the movie, CQ suddenly appears to be about nothing so much as Roman Coppola puckishly rechanneling his father's anxiety over how to finish ''Apocalypse Now.''
But he certainly had the father some guy named Francis Ford Coppola who made the "Godfather" movies, "The Conversation" and "Apocalypse Now."
If I were a struggling young filmmaker, Iâd doubtless resent the Big Daddy connections that allowed Roman Coppolaâs first film to cast the likes of Gérard Depardieu and Giancarlo Giannini, boast a production design by Dean Tavoularis (who did, among others, Apocalypse Now), and, Iâm told, go back for a radical re-edit after it fared badly at Cannes.
But it's also good-natured and fun, the Austin Powers silliness of the era shines through, and Coppola family art director Dean Tavoularis ("Apocalypse Now," "The Godfather" trilogy) makes the film -- and its kitschy film-within-the-film -- look consistently terrific.
The film-within-the-film is a Barbarella-esque spy story where a corporation hires Dragonfly to take out dangerous rebels (mirroring the student rioters), led by Mr. E. (Billy Zane, "Titanic," going for Che Guevara) on the dark side of the moon.
Billy Zane brings his Titanic arrogance to the role of Dragonfly's free-love revolutionary.
I for one laughed at every second of the Billy Zane performance; after TITANIC he’ll obviously never be taken seriously as an actor again, but he’s perfect in such a tongue-in-cheek role.