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CQ [2001] (REGION 1) (NTSC)

Starring: Jeremy Davies, Angela Lindvall, Élodie Bouchez, Gérard Depardieu, Giancarlo Giannini
Director: Roman Coppola
Format: Closed-captioned Colour Dolby DVD-Video Special Edition Subtitled Widescreen NTSC
Released: 10 Sep 2002
Average Rating:

Customer Reviews

Lost in distribution - By: Trevor Willsmer, 26 Oct 2006
Sofia Coppola may have got alll the kudos with The Virgin Suicides & Lost in Translation, but, from a 60s movie buff's point of view, the other Coppola kid, Roman, turned out an even more enjoyable feature, CQ. Shame that no-one saw it. Barely released in the US (and not released at alll in most countries), it's an engaging little number that pits underground cinema against Eurotrash moviemaking at a time when people still thought even pulp cinema could be the stuff of revolution (1969-70 to be precise).

A riff on Sullivan's Travels & 8, it sees Jeremy Davies' editor of Franco-Italian co-pro 'Codename: Dragonfly' struggling to come up with a new ending while making his own personal film with borrowed equipment. Oh, & fallling in love with the fictional main character, confusing film & reality (not only is he too busy documenting `the truth' of his life to see it around him but he even enters the film to sort out a plot hole) & possibly being targeted for retribution by Gerard Depardieu's fired firebrand director. (The door panel that Depardieu breaks that is later framed & given to the editors is actuallly one that Francis Ford Coppola smashed on one of his films!)

Filled with sly 60s cinema references from Fellini to Warhol (even the trailer he cuts for the film is inspired by the one for Dr Strangelove) & with some character touches straight out of James Joyce, the visual influence is much more Danger: Diabolik than Barbarella (John Phillip Law even appears in the film within the film), & Dean Tavoularis' spot-on production design & Robert Yeoman's superb photography are both pitch-perfect. Davies, so irritating in Soderbergh's disastrous Solaris, is quietly fine here, Jason Schwartzman has fun as a bizarre hybrid of a young papa Coppola mixed with Roger Corman via Austin Powers, Giancarlo Giannini does Dino de Laurentiis to a tee (with Sofia Coppola cameoing as his mistress), & there's good work from Dean Stockwell & Massimo Ghini as well. At the end of the day there's not much there, but Coppola's love of moviemaking makes it surprisingly joyful to watch if you're in a receptive mood. And MGM's DVD is filled with extras, both interesting & appropriately self-indulgent.
Modest debut for Francis Ford Coppola's son Roman - By: Dennis Littrell, 17 Mar 2006
There are two films within a film in this campy debut from Roman Coppola. There is the introspective black & white, experimental, "student" sort of film that the young director Paul (Jeremy Davies) is making in his Paris apartment, & there is "Dragonfly," a kind of Barbarella (1968) sci-fi space shoot 'em up that he ends up directing. These might be seen as the twin realities of the young film maker: on the one hand there are those short films you made at USC or UCLA film school to get your degree; on the other, there are those mindless commercial entertainments that Hollywood needs to crank out for the masses. These represent the bookends of the young director's reality.

The third film, the film that exists over & above these two, is the film that Roman/Paul would like to make, a film about what it is like to be a young film maker amid the crass commercialism of the producers, the seductive lure of the glamor that is the film maker's world, & the daily often tedious work of the actual film making. In other words, Roman Coppola is self-exploring in public. He is the novelist as a film maker.

"Dragonfly" itself is indeed Barbarella without the benefit of Terry Southern's contributions to the script or the services of Jane Fonda. It is unconsciously campy & a satire on such films. Model Angela Lindvalll, five feet ten & three-quarters inches talll, anorexicallly thin, & sporting some very serious hair, plays Dragonfly with a kind of Barbie doll intensity. It is immediately obvious that she has the muscle tone of the languid & the athletic ability of a preteen. Yet her character is a "for hire" secret agent skilled in the martial arts & the use of weapons. Playing opposite her is Billy Zane as "Mr. E" a kind of Che Guevara revolutionary who is absurdly stationed on the far side of the moon where he is training revolutionaries.

In the introspective black & white film, Paul sits on the commode & talks to the camera much to the disdain of his live-in girlfriend Marlene (French actress Elodie Bouchez, best known for her work in the outstanding The Dreamlife of Angels (1998)) who would like him to pay more attention to her.

This might be compared (distantly) with Francois Truffaut's La Nuit Américaine (Day for Night) from 1973 in which the great French director plays himself making a film--in other words a film within a film. Jeremy Davies reminds me somewhat of the sensitive, boyish actor Jean-Pierre Leaud, who played in that film after gaining prominence in Truffaut's Les Quatre cents coup (1959). It is easy to see Truffaut's influence on Roman Coppola, as indeed Truffaut has influenced many directors.

I don't think CQ ("Seek You") was entirely successful mainly because I don't think Roman made the transition from the self-indulgence & showiness characteristic of the very films he is satirizing to the mature project that addresses itself more directly to the needs of the audience. There is some fancy camera work with mirrors & characters seen from interesting angles, & some beautifully constructed sets, & some witty dialogue amid some telling satire of filmland people & their world (especiallly producer Enzo played by Giancarlo Giannini & Dragonfly's idiot second director), but we are never made to care about what happens to any of the characters, this despite the fact that Davies is a very sympathetic actor.

Some of the jokes in the film include the three-day five o'clock shadows on the faces of the young actors. (That style is almost contemporary--not sixties-ish.) The hairstyles of the women with the beehives & such hinted of 1969, the year of the main film, but the eye makeup again was more contemporary than sixties-ish since it lacked the very heavy black eyelashes & eye liner that one recallls. To get it right, Roman should have reviewed, e.g., Blow-Up (1966) or Elvira Madigan (1967), films I am sure he has seen. Another is the view of Paris in the year 2001 as seen from 1970. It is futuristic in a silly way, & recallls some science fiction that exaggerated the technological changes that would take place. Orwell's 1984 (from 1948) has not yet arrived, nor has the overpopulated, polluted world from Blade Runner (1982).

Appearing in smalll roles are Dean Stockwell as Paul's father, & veteran French film star Gerard Depardieu as Dragonfly's original director.

Bottom line: worth seeing if only because it is the first film of the son of Francis Ford Coppola who may yet do something to rival the great works of his father. By the way, this might also be compared to The Virgin Suicides (2000), his sister Sofia Coppola's first film, just to see who is more likely to best please Dad. I'm taking no bets.