Boy Meets Girl – Carlotta Films (Blu-ray)

Theatrical Release Date: France, 1984
Director: Leos Carax
Writer: Leos Carax
Cast: Denis Lavant, Mireille Perrier, Carroll Brooks, Maïté Nahyr, Elie Poicard, Christian Cloarec

Release Date: November 18th, 2014
Approximate Running Time: 104 Minutes 4 Seconds
Aspect Ratio: 1.66:1 Widescreen / 1080 Progressive / MPEG-4 AVC
Rating: NR
Sound: DTS-HD Mono French
Subtitles: English
Region Coding: Region Free
Retail Price: $29.95

"Paris by night. Alex, 22, wants to become a filmmaker. He is fascinated by first times and his girlfriend, Florence, has just left him for his his best friend, Thomas. First break-up, first attempted murder: Alex tries to strangle Thomas, but gives up and wanders the streets. That evening Mireille, a girl from provincial France who has come up to Paris to make commercials, is left by her boyfriend. Alex witnesses this separation. These two tormented souls run into each other at a party." - synopsis provided by the distributor

Video: 5/5

Here’s the information provided about this release's transfer, "Mastered in high definition."

Boy Meets Girl comes on a 50 GB dual layer Blu-ray.

Disc Size: 32.1 GB

Feature: 27.5 GB

Reportedly, the source for this transfer is the same source that Artificial Eye used for their 2014. That said, the source looks excellent. Image clarity, contrast, black levels, and compression are solid, and the image always looks organic.

Audio: 5/5

This release comes with one audio option, a DTS-HD mono mix in French with removable English subtitles. The audio sounds excellent. Dialog comes through clearly, everything sounds balanced, the score sounds robust, and ambient sounds are well-presented.

Extras:

Extras for this release include a 2014 reissue theatrical trailer (1 minute 59 seconds, Dolby Digital mono French with removable English subtitles), Denis Lavant’s Screen Test (8 minutes 8 seconds, Dolby Digital mono French with removable English subtitles), a collection of raw footage from the kitchen sequence titled On Set: In the Kitchen (17 minutes 31 seconds, Dolby Digital mono French with removable English subtitles), and a slipcover (limited to the first pressing).

Summary:

An aspiring filmmaker named Alex looks for someone to fill the void created by his girlfriend, who left him for his best friend. After a chance meeting, he meets a woman named Mireille with suicidal tendencies who is going through her own relationship crisis. Will they be able to find in each other the things they need to be happy, or will their time together be short-lived?

Boys Meets Girl was the feature film debut of Leos Carax (Mauvais Sang, The Lovers on the Bridge), who, along with Luc Besson (Subway, Nikita) and Jean-Jacques Beineix (Diva, Betty Blue), were all part of Cinéma du Look, a French film movement of the 1980s. Two key collaborators on Boy Meets Girls include actor Denis Lavant, who has appeared in four of Leo Carax’s five feature films, and cinematographer Jean-Yves Escoffier, who worked with Leo Carax on his first three films. Content-wise, Boy Meets Girl is a film that proudly wears its cinematic influences on its sleeve, most notably silent cinema and Jean-Luc Godard.

A trio of heavy confrontational moments set the narrative in motion, the first involving a woman with her child in their car, and she has just called her significant other to inform him that she is leaving him. The rejection does not end there, as she further informs him that she has taken all of his poems and paintings and is going to throw these items into the river. The other main confrontation involves the protagonist, Alex, who has just learned that his girlfriend has left him for his best friend, and Alex nearly kills said friend during their confrontation. The third confrontation and the most distant of these three involves a woman named Mireille, whom Alex falls in love with later on in the film. Her breakup is coming via an intercom, which she uses to talk to her boyfriend, who is standing outside of where they live. And unknown to him, the man who is going to replace him, Alex, is standing behind him, observing the events as they unfold.

There are a series of sequences where the protagonist, Alex, becomes an observer as he watches how other couples interact and hears the sounds of his neighbors making love. Unfortunately for him, they remind him of the woman he has just lost, and in one last attempt to woo her back, she steals records for her, and he leaves them with a note that he slid under her apartment door. And when this last ditch attempt to regain what he had lost fails, he then continues his search as an observer, which eventually leads him to a party where destiny brings him together with Mireille, the woman whose voice she had heard before but had yet to see face-to-face.

Though the words can often be sparse in Boys Meets Girls, the emotions are always put front and center for the viewer to fully appreciate the state that each character is in at any given moment. In place of words, Boys Meets Girls effortlessly uses body language and facial expressions to convey the message it is trying to get across. And to further enhance this waterfall of emotions that are displayed in every frame of Boys Meets Girl is its exquisite use of black and white cinematography. And nowhere is Boys Meets Girls' use of black and white more potent than in its tragic finale.

When it comes to performances, the weight of Boys Meets Girl sits on the shoulders of its two leads, Denis Lavant in the role of Alex and Mireille Perrier in the role of Mireille. These two actors give emotionally charged performances that are convincing, and they have an undeniable chemistry. The most memorable scene is when they finally have their first face-to-face conversion in the kitchen at a party they both are attending.

Though love is a universal theme that has served as the basis of countless feature films, far too many of these films are bogged down by the obligatory cinematic happy ending. Thankfully, not everyone walks to the beat of that all-too-familiar drummer, and there exist films like Boy Meets Girl that go against the grain with their depiction of the many sides of love. Ultimately, Boy Meets Girl is an exceptional melodrama that lingers on in your mind long after its poignant climax.

Boy Meets Girl is an excellent release from Carlotta Films that comes with a solid audio/video presentation and a pair of behind-the-scenes extras, highly recommended.

Written by Michael Den Boer