What's clear here is that by talking about (and filming) others, Carax means to better understand and define himself: it's been his life's practice, after all. He was, visibly, born into that generation that understood the Holocaust as more than just the Internet meme it's become: here, he juxtaposes the image of Hitler with those of latter-day tyrants (a real rogues' gallery: Putin, Xi, Trump, Netanyahu). A return to those lamentable images of dead migrant children washed up on European shores indicates a functioning conscience; the prevailing facility with multilayered sound and vision tells us something of Carax's artistic sensibility (and virtuosity). He cops to a more troubled relationship with the opposite sex, even while a few choice clips of the young Binoche in 1986's Mauvais sang demonstrate that few have filmed them so adoringly. The loaded name of Roman Polanski comes up in passing, though Carax is keen to point out that while he too is a director, he is not a monster. He is, instead, a man stalked by death, just like everybody else: in a touching closing sequence, Carax channels the spirits of former collaborators David Bowie, Guillaume Depardieu (son of, well, you know) and the director's erstwhile partner Katia Golubeva, all of which have long since flown. And a man who, for better or worse, has spent his days looking for beauty, and looking to find ways to enshrine beauty. (Stay tuned through the closing credits - with their not inconsiderable, Carax-approved bibliography and watchlists - for one of the great movie comebacks of recent times, a very special sequence that elevates the whole within touching distance of the essential.) The caveat is that It's Not Me can only ever be a snapshot; whether a Leos Carax highlights reel or a selfie taken by a less than willing subject, the film is but a flicker, and it would take 24 of them - frames or features - to get a fuller picture. Yet there's a kind of truth mixed up in there, as ever. Like so many of his films, Carax remains indefinable, elusive, perhaps indescribable even by himself. And unlike Godard: he's still here.
It's Not Me is currently streaming via MUBI.
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