Abel Ferrara's (legit) debut feature is as good and wickedly funny a portrait of artistic frustration as you'll ever see, also fitting snugly in the New York Drives You Homicidal subgenre, between Taxi Driver and American Psycho.
Few films depict squalor as well as this, and one can't help but feel Ferrara's uncomfortably close to the flame at times here. He (under the alias "Jimmy Laine") also gives a remarkably effective lead performance and Carolyn Marz is particularly striking as…
I've seen this three times now, and love it more each time. Truffaut and Leaud are like a well-oiled machine here, with the actor perfectly embodying Truffaut's idealistic and immature, clumsy and curious alter-ego as he stumbles in and out of jobs, falls in love too easily and inches toward adulthood.
Another perfect exemplar of Truffaut's novelistic approach to screenwriting, where every character in Antoine Doinel's orbit feels rich and full and capable of spinning off into a movie of their own.
Plus the detective stuff is rad.
Initially interesting but increasingly meandering doc-xperiment feels ickier and less ethical as it wears on. What's more, its attack on assumed audience bloodlust is aimed in a way as to fundamentally misunderstand art's role in helping us make some semblance of sense of the senseless.
Strikingly shot, strongly acted, but endless, near-comically absurd survival/revenge drama feels puffed up on its own faux-significance.
