CQ (2001) – Dir: Roman Coppola (The Darjeeling Limited, Moonrise Kingdom)

This is a forgettable film, despite having all the elements of an intelligent, satisfying art film. It’s about filmmaking. It takes a shot at scifi (so-called genre films) but it isn’t funny, so I wouldn’t call it satire. Gerard Depardieu and Billy Zane are featured fairly prominently in this film, but their performances are ineffective due to the overall lack of expression in the story as a whole.

The movie combines daydreams, dreams and movie scenes on the one side with footage from our protagonist Paul’s personal film and the real life plot, on the other. The structure and effect of this combination works, but doesn’t feel particularly impressive.

Paul (Jeremy Davies) is a film editor, he wants to be an indie filmmaker. He gets work on a bad scifi film, but the people who he works with recognise that he contributes a lot to the film. He comes up with some of the better production design ideas. There are complications: the misunderstood genius director (Depardieu) doesn’t know how to end the film; his replacement pikes on the studio. Paul’s name is floated as the new director.

This is the story of a small, young man among the grunts in the film crew, so not particularly high in the filmmaking hierarchy. It's true that editors these days get a significant amount of respect for the work they contribute to a film. However film editors are seen as today, this man, Paul is treated as ineffectual and irrelevant. His attitude is laid-back, kind, cautious and careful. He’s a nice guy, and this doesn’t change when he’s elevated to director – which is important, because power corrupts good men.

Even he doesn’t know how to end the film. But he begins to work on it and all along the way feels that his work is the most important thing to him. His girlfriend is beautiful, French and understands him completely – three things which together should make him grateful to be with her. But she doesn’t seem to appreciate his art, so he is almost ready to leave her, when he meets the actress – the star of the bad film that he has a job on, Code-named Dragonfly (Angela Lindvall.)

Then the film is attacked by Depardieu/genius ex-director, Andrezej – film reel with the new footage on is stolen and cut to pieces, and then another reel is stolen and there is a chase to retrieve it.

I don’t think this is a pretentious film, I think it’s interesting. The concept is intriguing. The speculation is intellectual. Unfortunately, the art is lacking; the expression is almost non-existent and the story is boring and not engaging.

Roman Coppola wrote and directed this piece. He has interesting ideas. As much as Wes Anderson annoys me, he makes interesting films as well. I think Roman Coppola should make more movies without Wes, he has his own style and he can grow into it, he can do better.

If this film had been a comedy, I might have appreciated it more, it would have been a fairly simple process to make it intelligently and consistently funny. What I would really have liked, would be to see the film express something, mean something. Tell a story with some kind of effective result, say something and say it loud.

They say respect your audience and make us care about the characters. I say fuck the audience; give me a good piece of work with an intelligent, creative, innovative and effective story – beautifully told. Express something, an idea or emotion and be thorough, eloquent and artful. But don’t do what they expect, don’t formulate mechanically, don’t give the audience what they want. This isn’t about them; it’s about you and your film.

2.5 stars