Stuff You Gotta Watch: La Brune Et Moi
John Lennon once famously said that French rock is just like English wine: lousy. But if there’s an era that escapes this unflattering comparison, it’s got to be the late ’70s/early ’80s post-punk scene portrayed in La Brune Et Moi.
Of course, it also helps that the French excel at their cinema—even in low-budget productions like this. Featuring underground actor Pierre Clémenti (who you may recognize from Philippe Garrel’s wilderness experiment La Cicatrice Intérieure, starring Nico) and a cast of unknowns recruited directly off the streets of Paris, La Brune Et Moi is a docufiction hybrid that utilizes a fictional background (largely derived from the 1956 classic rock’n’roll film The Girl Can’t Help It) to showcase the crème de la crème of a musical niche usually referred to as Jeunes Gens Modernes (“Modern Young People”). Artists like Taxi Girl, Marquis de Sade, Edith Nylon, Ici Paris, Go Go Pigalles, Artefact, and many others feature.
Often considered a “cursed film” (one of the actors committed suicide shortly after and protagonist Anouschka effectively disappeared after the film premiered), La Brune Et Moi was a failure both in terms of box office and critical reception, but it’s this somber aura that only enhances the film’s anthropological value.
Review by Ana Leorne. Check out the full archive of the Stuff You Gotta Watch column.