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Film Review by John Demetry "Dazzling! Fascinating!" That describes CQ - yet it's also so much more. First-time filmmaker and son of Francis (The Godfather) Ford, Roman Coppola sums up the aspirations of two generations in the image of snowflakes falling on the moon.
An image distant, tentative, gorgeous, and unreal - it makes an idea concrete. Its emotional piquancy resonates from the snow globe of Orson Welles' Citizen Kane to the space-age wonder, shag-carpet futurama of Roger Vadim's Barbarella; and from father to son. The train-set joy in filmmaking that Coppola shares with Welles is not solipsistic. It is consonant with one generation discovering - and sharing - the dreams of the prior. The hope and idealism of the 1960s is easily condescended to. No wonder: the distance between the current cynical postmodern age and that era - or the idea of that era - is as great as that from the earth to the moon. Coppola goes the distance. Jeremy Davies plays Paul, a film editor and 2nd unit director who gets thrust into the position of director on a Barbarella-style swingin' sci-fi cheapie called Dragonfly. Charged with the duty of providing an ending for the film, Paul comes up against a creative block. He walks onto the moon soundstage - searching the faux-lunar terrain for inspiration. He enters Dragonfly's spacecraft where he meets a va-va-voom fantasy of Dragonfly (Angela Lindvall, also as Valentine, who plays Dragonfly in the movie-within-the-movie. Follow?).
Dragonfly asks: "What are you doing on the moon?" Paul responds: "I don't know. I think I'm lost." Paul is lost because he can't find the way to reconcile his confusions about love (his desire for Valentine, his rocky relationship with Elodie Bouchez's Marlene) and art (as personal expression, as expression of the tumultuous times). Coppola's game of lost-and-found is fun, but more than just a game. With this sequence, he finds the lost ideal of Federico Fellini's movie-movie fantasias 8˝ and Roma. The combination of nostalgia and personal confusion is a confession as aching and momentous as the music of David Gedge's band, Cinerama. Coppola shares Gedge's pop fetishism and libidinal obsessions. The sequence caps off with the Gedge-like image of Dragonfly resting Paul's head on her bosom to comfort him. The moon and the earth, the past and the present, the imagination and the physical: that's the Gedge-Coppola philosophy made concrete. Now, understand: the entirety of CQ is this dreamy, this heady. You couldn't make a wish for a more beguiling bliss-bliss, bling-bling 91 minutes. It helps to have Davies as the star. This actor is always searching, always soulful. (A search that ends when Marlene leaves Paul. Davies cries in front of a mirror. He looks away.) Paul embarks on a similar search with the tools of the trade. With his camera at home, he works on a movie-brutalist diary documentary. On the Steembeck at Cine-Luxe studios, he explores the Dragonfly footage for some clue on how to make it work, on how it relates to his undefined understanding of the world. (He works as sensually on the Steembeck as his camera on Marlene's nude body.) There's a profound parallel between an overhead shot of a cup of "strong French coffee" in Paul's home movie with a food-coloring-in-a-fish-tank vision of the universe. A reference to the coffee cup/Milky Way in Jean-Luc Godard's "Two or three things I know about her. . .", Coppola revels in the poetic potential of film scale and space and in the achieved poetics of a master. Who doesn't share Coppola's awe?
Stockwell describes "these feelings of worry and loss" in a dream about identical sons and his own history of infidelity. Paul's/Davies'/Coppola's imaginative recognition bridges a generation gap. This is a feeling that must be put on film. (Now, dismay at how few filmmakers still think that way!) "You need to connect things so they make us feel something," advises a Fantasy Critic to Paul. Coppola does that by making personal - confessional - poetry out of his regard/fetish for the films of a collective past. Even a pop film like Barbarella/ Dragonfly could express the buzz of the sexual revolution. ("Free to make love all day. Everyday.") Editor Leslie Jones' montage - less a spoof than a loving critique - of Dragonfly rolling in a bed of money (illustrated with JFK) is a perfect balance of innocence and exploitation. Coppola's art goes to the heart beating beneath the buzz.
Still struggling to come up with an ending, Paul escapes a New Years party to take a leak. The beefcake villain of Dragonfly, Billy Zane as the Castro-like Mr. E, busts into the bathroom to convince Paul to offer him more screen time. The star's male lover comes in demanding Zane's attention. Paul is visibly uncomfortable. The hetero perspective of CQ actually marks an advance - because it's specific, individual. Coppola goes beyond the sexual revolution to further the sexual evolution of the cinema. As the jokey song by Mellow from the Dragonfly soundtrack goes: "How can you resist me until your lips have kissed it?" The title - CQ = "seek you" - is Coppola's artistic mantra. The invite is irresistible. |
