Pola X review

Eight years after Les Amants Du Pont Neuf, French director Leos Carax returns with Pola X, a bizarre adaptation of Herman Melville's Gothic novel Pierre, Or The Ambiguities.

Pierre (Depardieu) is a successful young writer, who enjoys a carefree existence in Normandy with his adoring mother (Deneuve) and beautiful fiancée (Chuillot). But his life is turned upside down by the appearance of Isabelle (Golubeva), who claims to be his long-lost, illegitimate sister.

Carax has always been stronger on visual atmosphere than narrative coherence, and Pola X is no exception. He establishes a mood of intriguing mysteriousness, yet thereafter Carax's treatment of the material becomes increasingly overblown and self-indulgent.