SCALARAMA: Zulawski’s L’Amour braque

Doors 7:30pm

Tickets £6:50 on the door / £5 advance (click here)

After the successful bank robbery Micky hopes to take back his girlfriend Mary who has been taken from him by the brothers Venin. On the way to Paris he meets one Leon, a neurotic and dreamer, whom he and his associates consider an idiot. Leon can hardly understand what Micky is up to but he follows him everywhere and soon falls in love with Mary. This strange love triangle resolves in a tragic ending.

The business of physical expressing those thoughts and feelings which we sometimes struggle to put into words is at the heart of Zulawski’s cinema. It is the essence of Isabelle Adjani’s infamous subway freakout in the director’s most famous film, Possession. However, never is it more clear than in Zulawski’s most misunderstood film, L’Amour braque. Transposing Dostoevsky’s The Idiot from nineteenth century Saint Petersburg to twentieth century Paris - Zulawski’s most frenzied film charts the consequences of a holy innocent cut loose in a cruel, cynical world. Sophie Marceau, here in her first adult role, plays Marie, a beautiful but damaged young prostitute torn between the all-consuming passion of a brutal hoodlum (Tchéky Karyo) and the kindness of a penniless Hungarian emigre (Francis Huster), who is quite possibly insane... - Daniel Bird

Part of SCALARAMA