Fetishizing the style and cultural schlock of the 1960s -- will we do it forever? Perhaps.
"CQ" is Roman Coppola's debut as a writer and director -- and yes, he's the offspring of Francis Ford Coppola, who executive-produced here and is no doubt pleased with his son's reverential exploration of cinephilia, sixtiesphilia, Francophilia, and, curiously, a delightful romp into "Barbarella"-philia. Take away the hammy irony, and you are left with "CQ's" serious story of the collision between arty intentions and the making of a low-budget spy movie. "CQ" regards the era with brooding respect, and perhaps a real longing for something quite gone.
Jeremy Davies and Angela Lindvall star in "CQ."
(Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer)
|
|
Jeremy Davies stars as Paul Ballard, an American living in Paris in late 1969, working as a lowly editor on a futuristic sexpionage flick called "Dragonfly."
In the background, two micro-revolutions are afoot: There are student uprisings on the streets, concurrent with the French New Wave cinema scene (Jean-Luc Godard, Francois Truffaut, blah blah). Paul longs to create a vérité masterpiece of his own life. In amateur black and white, he glumly narrates his angst from the toilet, or captures light coming in on the windowsill, or pans across the room to Marlene, his bossy stewardess girlfriend (the pitch-perfect Elodie Bouchez), who demands to know what, exactly, he hopes to say with his movie:
"I want to capture what's real and honest," Paul tells her.
"What if eet's boring?" she retorts, and oh, does she ever have a point. Even though it's 50 minutes shorter than the new "Star Wars" movie, "CQ" is drowning in a propensity toward the mundane, and so eet ees -- how you say? -- "le drag." Davies (more memorable as the incestuous son in "Spanking the Monkey") is almost too good at conveying Paul's meandering, nameless ennui -- treading even into parody territory of films about filmmakers. It's a cinéaste in-joke gone too far.
Luckily, much of "CQ" dwells on Paul's day job, where he tries to splice together the incomprehensible footage of "Dragonfly." (The title derives from a coded message the agent deciphers.)
The B-movie within "CQ" has a colorful, vintage awfulness. Angela Lindvall stars as Valentine, the actress playing secret agent Dragonfly, who lives in a futuristic bubble atop the Eiffel Tower. (The fictive year is 2001.) She is contacted by her superiors -- on two-way television, natch -- and ordered to go to the moon (her apartment is also a rocket ship) to steal an "ultimate weapon" from a rebellious faction of communist guerrillas. (Note: guerrillas, not gorillas.) See this movie if you love plastic furniture, or shag carpet, or go-go-booted notions of gizmo; it's a visual treat.
Things quickly go wrong on the set of "Dragonfly": In a dust-up of spittle and la difference creative, the bombastic, de Laurentiian producer fires his passionate director (Gerard Depardieu), who has steered the movie toward the vaguely political -- the sexy government agent falls in love with the Che Guevara-type head revolutionary.
A second hotshot director is brought in (played by Jason Schwartzman, who is doomed, it seems, to have been brilliant only in "Rushmore" and awful in all else), and he is soon waylaid in a burst of ascotted wackery.
It's then up to Paul to take the director's chair, finish the bad movie and make the producer rich. The sci-fi images begin to tangle with his autobiographical documentary, and the pressure almost does him in. Infatuated with his lead actress, he begins to hallucinate between his imagined life and the problem of how to end the movie.
Coppola does manage to weave all this stylish cleverness into something we peripherally care about. "CQ's" best moments, however, are in its loving fidelity to the mood and feel of the Euro '60s and laughable, lovable pretensions: A New Year's Eve party in Rome verges on the Felliniesque; the girlfriend's stewardess outfit and pillbox hat are just right; a certain sexiness underlines even the dullest tangents, bouncing along to the all-too-essential groovy soundtrack. It is implied that even bad movies can impart larger artistic truths, which makes it quite clear that this all transpired in some other era. Bad movies now are just bad. ("CQ" is somewhere in that great in-between.)
CQ (R, 92 minutes) – Contains brief nudity and adult situations. At area theaters.
