Andrzej Zulawski’s L’Amour Braque is the story of a hideously bloody vendetta, of bonds of friendship between two men from opposite backgrounds and of love within an eternal triangle. Intended as homage to Dostoyevsky and loosely based on his novel The Idiot, L’Amour Braque is a mad love-triangle: Léo (The Prince Of Idiots), Mary (The Virgin Whore), and Mickey (The Immoral Gangster). Zulawski’s postmodern existentialist adaptation is presented with an intense sense of visual style suggestive of the hyper-realistic and chaotic world of Bande-Dessinée.
Abundant with images that persist and last in memory, from start to finish the screen is filled with outbursts of energy and eruptions of emotional violence where “notions of ‘performance as madness’ are choreographed into a perverse, bloody ballet”. L’Amour Braque displays craftwork of originality and imagination in which “moments of brilliance happen under the watchful eye of a knowing master.” —Mondo Vision
Andrzej Zulawski was born on the territory of what was then the U.S.S.R. in a Polish family with remarkable traditions in arts and literature. After World War II, his father’s diplomatic career brought the family to France (1945-1949), Czechoslovakia (1949-1952), and finally to Poland. He studied film direction at IDHEC in Paris (1957-1959) and philosophy at both Warsaw University (1961) and Université de Paris (1962-1964).
First, he assisted the famous Polish director Andrzej Wajda during the filming of Samson (1961), Popioly (1966), and the Warsaw episode of L’Amour à Vingt Ans (1962). In 1967, Zulawski directed two short films, Piesn Triumfujacej Milosci and Pavoncello, for Polish TV.
His feature debut, Trzecia Czesc Nocy (1971), as well as those previous films were co-scripted by his father, poet Miroslaw Zulawski. The picture was well received at the Venice Film Festival and awarded as the Best Debut in its homeland, but had only limited release due to Polish censorship… read more
Noone could ever accuse Zulawski of being slow. This is a crazed film even by his standards with people acting like their on speed and/or possessed in every scene.
Imagine a film populated by characters acting like Nicholas Cage at his bat-shit craziest
I'm surprised anybody survived the 80's. Man oh man Zulawski himself described the film as epileptic it's an out of control mad house but within it I believe you can find some of the most interpersonal moments in all his work for example when all they hear is war, Sophie Marceau's prancing around as a little girl in between and during some of her fits (Zulawski apparently started relations with her when she was 16) Matricide and an oedipus complex, maybe going to far ( but if you've seen Diabel). In this more than all the others the characters all speak his language and since at the time it was a language rabid with personal madness and cocaine well I guess I believe just some of it was a homage to Dostoyevskiy.
A discussion with director for his first US retrospective.
Hysterical Excess: Discovering Andrzej Żuławski is the first complete retrospective in the US.
