\u201cMe, I\u2019ve never been in love. Only sick.\u201d<\/em> That bit of dialogue, which comes early in Andzrej Zulawski\u2019s histrionic crime-thriller-cum-romance L\u2019Amour Braque<\/em> (released 40 years ago this month), sums up not only this film, but every film in the Polish director\u2019s oeuvre. To be in love in a Zulawski movie is to take ill both physically and mentally. Characters flail about almost every dizzying frame (Zulawski\u2019s loyal cinematographers and camera operators sure had their work cut out for them), dancing, screaming, shaking, convulsing, crashing, collapsing, writhing, and beating themselves bloody.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n American cinephiles have only recently begun to rediscover Zulawski\u2019s films<\/a>, with most of the attention lavished on his 1981 domestic horror drama Possession<\/em><\/a>. Unfortunately and infuriatingly, that has fallen victim to meme culture, thanks in no small part to the extremity of its performances. So it may come as a surprise to those who only know Possession <\/em>that, compared to L\u2019Amour Braque<\/em>, that movie plays like a Tarkovsky drama. If the lead actors in Possession <\/em>begin level 7 intensity and quickly work their way up to 10, every single member of L\u2019Amour Braque\u2019s<\/em> cast is hitting 11 from the get-go. <\/p>\n\n\n\n This makes for exhausting viewing, and if you\u2019re someone who can\u2019t do loud and frantic, you probably won\u2019t make it past the five-minute mark. But it\u2019s an aesthetic choice that is entirely suited to the material. L\u2019Amour Braque<\/em>\u2014which has been translated into English as Limpet Love<\/em>, Mad Love<\/em>, and, most appropo considering the main character brays and howls like a canine several times throughout, The Love of a Mad Dog<\/em>\u2014is a loose adaptation of Fyodor Dostoevski\u2019s classic (yet flawed) novel The Idiot<\/em>, as filtered through the eye-popping visual and pulpy drama of French comic books (aka, bande dessin\u00e9es<\/em>). <\/p>\n\n\n\n Following a daring and ridiculous bank robbery in which the heist crew sport knock-off Disney character masks and toss around brightly colored smoke bombs (no one has ever confirmed that this was an influence on Point Break<\/em> or The Dark Knight<\/em>, but it seems highly likely), young upstart hooligan Mickey (Tcheky Karyo) hops a train to Paris, where he meets and quickly befriends simple-minded Hungarian refugee Leon (Francis Huster). Their bond is based mostly on their sharing jailbird fathers; Mickey\u2019s dad was once a major player in the Parisian underworld until he was betrayed by the current bosses (a sibling foursome known as the Venom Brothers, who dabble in everything from prostitution and drugs to international terrorism and corporate takeovers), while Leon\u2019s father was a political prisoner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mickey seeks to dethrone the Venoms and become the new top dog in Paris. But even more than power or vengeance, he seeks the love of Marie (Sophie Marceau, the future Mrs. Zulawski in the first of their four feature collaborations), the current moll of one of the Venoms, who is on her own quest for revenge against them for the horrific murder of her mother years ago. When Marie meets Mickey and Leon, she falls for both of them simultaneously, and thus kicks off the threeway romance (one of many through Zulawski\u2019s filmography) that will inevitably lead to their doom. An early mention of \u201ca dagger wrapped in silk\u201d plays not as foreshadowing, but promise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n From the premise alone, you might be expecting a balletic work of \u2018heroic bloodshed\u2019 akin to the works of John Woo. And while this film certainly shares a lot in common with those, it feels worlds apart from them. Any plot exposition is delivered alongside a barrage of heady, existentialist dialog (courtesy of co-screenwriter Etienne Roda-Gil, best known as a popular surrealist songwriter) that mixes literary, philosophical, and political dimensions with reckless abandon. The characters here are nightmare versions of Jean-Luc Godard\u2019s \u201cchildren of Marx and Coca-Cola.\u201d As they are blowing each other away with machine guns, lighting everything around them on fire with flamethrowers, and tossing around grenades, they\u2019ll rattle off lines from and about Che Guevara and Fred Astaire, Mikhail Bakunin and Mickey Mouse, Maurice Thorez and Woody Allen. <\/p>\n\n\n\n That combination of high and low culture, combined with its visual overload\u2014bold splashes of pastels and neon, noirish cityscape backdrops, and flashy suits that look straight out of Miami Vice<\/em>\u2014situate the film within one of the major cinematic movements of its time and place: Cinema Du Look. This movement emphasized the kind of hyperreal style and spectacle you\u2019d find in Marvel comic books and MtV music videos. The most famous examples are French: Jean-Jacques Beineix\u2019s Diva <\/em>(1981) and Betty Blue<\/em> (1986), Leo Carax\u2019s Mauvais Sang<\/em> (1984), and Luc Besson\u2019s Subway <\/em>(1985), but the influence was seen in American productions from the time, including Francis Ford Coppola\u2019s Rumble Fish<\/em> (1983), Tim Burton\u2019s Batman <\/em>(1989), and Warren Beatty\u2019s Dick Tracey (1990). L\u2019Amour Braque\u2019s<\/em> fingerprints can be especially felt in the latter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As with Dostoevsky\u2019s novel, there is also Biblical allegory, with the innocent \u2018Prince of Idiots\u2019 Leon standing as a purely human version of Christ, while \u201clost girl\u201d Marie is obviously modeled after Mary Magdalene (even as she is styled like silent movie star Louise Brooks). However, it is not God who holds sway here (\u201cIf God had made us, he\u2019d have made us different,\u201d says Leon), but love, in all of its awful, awesome, destructive force. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In the end, the true Holy Trinity is a love triangle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “L\u2019Amour Braque<\/i>” is streaming on Kanopy<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s the difference?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/LAmour-Braque2-1024x770.jpg\")
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