French neo-noir at its most stylish, Mauvais Sang (confusingly it also goes by the titles The Night Is Young and the more literally translated Bad Blood) was Leos Carax’s second feature, the enfant terrible of French cinema still only a youthful 26 in 1986 when the film was made.
The majority of his cast are pretty young too. We’re seeing early outings for Denis Lavant (25), Juliette Binoche (22) and a very young Julie Delpy (she’s about 15 here, having debuted the year before for Jean-Luc Godard in Detective).
If you read any plot precis it’ll tell you that the action is set in some version of the future, where a virus is playing havoc with human relations. Have sex with someone you have no feelings for and you’re dead meat.
But the plot is largely immaterial in this film. All you need to know is that Lavant plays Alex, a street punk who becomes involved with seasoned criminal Marc (Michel Piccoli) and falls for his girl, Anna (Binoche), dumping old flame Lise (Delpy) in the process. Ostensibly Alex has been taken on to help steal the deadly virus (or was it the anti-virus vaccine – it really doesn’t matter) held in the laboratory owned by a mysterious American woman, known only as “L’Americaine”, who spends the movie speaking from the back seat of her limousine.
It’s an exercise in gorgeous noir – the Cinéma du Look is strong in this one – with Carax running through the gamut of noirish situations, shooting it all as almost-monochrome apart from one, maximum two, slashes of prime colour (often red, sometimes yellow, occasionally blue) in each frame, with lighting designed to maximise the youthfulness of his young actors. Lavant’s face – naturally pocked – responds well to the treatment. He looks almost angelic.
Cigarettes, cars, unreliable women, the prevalence of night-time and a voiceover all add to the sense that this is an exercise in noir pastiche. But there are typically Caraxian left-field intrusions as well. It is the time of Halley’s Comet and its nearness to the Earth has done something to the weather. It is unnaturally, stiflingly warm. The men – Marc and right hand man Hans (Hans Meyer), as well as Alex – spend most of the film shirtless to try and stay cool.
Carax also borrows some of Blade Runner’s hothouse neo-noir styling and then piles experiment on top. There are innovative sequences reminiscent of a playful Godard, like the fight done silently, with a flickering image adding to the sense of dislocation. But Carax also pulls off some grand, choreographed action sequences to prove he’s not just about stylistic tics – a parachute-jump sequence that’s brilliantly executed and thrilling to watch.
For all the noir trappings and heist-oriented plot, the film feels most itself in the central chunk, when Alex falls badly for Anna and they spend an extended period together, doomed lovers in a romantic world of their own. For a moment the Maguffin of the virus is parked, Marc largely leaves the picture and Binoche and Lavant do a lot of moody staring into each other’s eyes and existential angst – 1980s style – dominates.
Don’t watch it for the story, that way madness lies. In fact as the narrative starts to intrude more and more towards the end – Alex does the job and it goes a bit wrong – the film becomes a whole lot less interesting. Style has to scooch up to let story have its moment.
All style no content is the criticism of the Cinéma du Look French films of this era – Beineix, Besson and Carax were all key players – but in Mauvais Sang that’s not justified. It is all style and the content doesn’t matter very much. But the style is sharp and well judged. And beautiful. In Mauvais Sang the style is the content.
Mauvais Sang aka Bad Blood aka The Night Is Young – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2023
