CQ is a silly, self-indulgent film about a silly, self-indulgent filmmaker.
It's a curiosity piece, partly because of its whimsical content, partly because it was written and directed by Roman Coppola, son of Francis Ford Coppola.
Coppola the Younger is making his directorial debut here. The film even made it into the Cannes Film Festival of 2000, when Coppola the Elder was there with his Redux version of Apocalypse Now. So the family screened and partied together.
In the cold, hard light of a year later, CQ is problematic. Roman Coppola has several times called his debut "a big love letter to filmmaking." CQ isn't bad enough to mark it "Return to Sender" but the romance is tenuous, at best.
The protagonist of the piece, which is set in 1969 in Paris, is a budding American filmmaker (Jeremy Davies). In his spare time, Davies is working on a personal, black-and-white, cinema verite film that is composed of fragments of his life with his frustrated French girlfriend.
Because Davies is unexpressive, uncooperative and even asexual, their relationship is a shambles. He tells his camera more about himself than he tells her, although none of it is interesting.
Meanwhile, he is working as a film editor on a big, stupid, sci-fi movie called Dragonfly, which is being shot by a deranged leftist (Gerard Depardieu looking gargantuan and sounding nuts).
Depardieu is fired from the movie when he tries to turn this sexist genre picture into a propaganda piece for Communist revolutionaries. Davies eventually takes over, becomes obsessed with the bombshell leading lady (Angela Lindvall) and then struggles between his love of obscure artsy fartsy filmmaking and his desire to bed down the leading lady and to turn Dragonfly into a hit.
Coppola tosses in a grab-bag of movie references into his two films-within-the-film -- from Roger Vadim's space sex romp Barbarella to Federico Fellini's classic 8-1/2, which is the story of a filmmaker facing an artistic crisis.
That's all well and good but CQ -- which is a cryptic Morse Code reference -- is a rambling, unfocused romp with a low IQ.
Worse still is that Coppola gives us an anti-hero who is such a vapid wimp that you don't give a toss if his French girlfriend leaves, if he has sex with Lindvall or if he ever finishes either his artsy film or the extravagant Dragonfly. Davies, like his character and his haircut, simply looks dazed and confused on screen.
More interesting are some of the support players, such as Elodie Bouchez as the girlfriend, Giancarlo Giannini as a fatuous film producer, Billy Zane as a gay fop who plays the Che Guevara-like rebel in Dragonfly, and Jason Schwartzman (Coppola's cousin) as a flamboyant filmmaker who invokes the spirit of Austin Powers.
But support players rarely can save a film. CQ suffers. And Roman Coppola's debut is just for the really curious.
(This film is rated AA)
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