MOON IN THE GUTTER, THE

Jean-Jacques Beineix's phenomenal success with his first feature “Diva” (1980) created an almost feverish anticipation among the critics and public for an encore – the exaggerated expectations could only result in a controversial response to his second film THE MOON IN THE GUTTER. MOON is a must-see if only to discover whether one's voice will be shouting with the pros or cons about this very unconventional film. Beineix felt challenged by Andre Malraux's statement that “Cinema, unlike literature, hasn't yet depicted the subconscious, the inner world,” and through colors, images and symbols MOON experiments with the language of signs “to make the subconscious materialize on the screen.” “In a port nowhere in particular, in a dead end in the dockside area, a man came nightly to escape his memories. . .” opens the narration describing the central character, a stevedore (Gerard Depardieu) who stares at the moonlit reflection of his sister's blood in the gutter. Anguished over being raped she cut her throat, and it becomes her brother's obsession to hunt down the rapist. The stevedore's life is full of black humor and despair until he seeks salvation through Loretta (Nastassja Kinski), a dream woman in a red Ferrari, rich and full of promise for a better world. “Beineix shares something of the early Godard's sheer, sensuous pleasure in the act of filmmaking, and this shines exhilaratingly through his incredible images, mostly beautiful, occasionally bathic, but always reaching passionately for a moment of cinema.” – Sight & Sound