Boy Meets Girl Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.0
Audio		5.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		4.0

Boy Meets Girl Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Dr. Svet Atanasov October 22, 2014

Leos Carax's directorial debut "Boy Meets Girl" (1984) arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of Carlotta Films U.S. The supplemental features on the disc include a new trailer for the recent restoration of the film, video introduction by Denis Lavant and raw footage from the shooting of the film. In French, with optional English subtitles for the main feature. Region-Free.

Alex and Mireille

The great Denis Lavant is Alex, an aspiring young filmmaker whose girlfriend has ditched him for his best friend. Now he desperately wants to fall in love again, but he has less than a day before he must pack his bags and go to the Army.

Unsure if he should feel depressed or liberated, Alex wanders the street of Paris and observes the happy couples. When possible, he comes close to them and tries to absorb bits of their positive energy, the magic that keeps the lovers together. Some find his curiosity charming, but others are immediately annoyed by it.

In a cheap café, Alex pays the bill of a beautiful girl who smiles at him and quickly disappears into the night. Then he crashes a party organized by a pretentious but friendly socialite. At the party Alex meets Mireille (Mireille Perrier, For Sale, Love Without Pity), a beautiful but sad model who has also been ditched by her lover. Mireille quickly steals Alex’s heart -- she is beautiful, intelligent and unpredictable, exactly the type of girl Alex has been looking for.

Leos Carax’s directorial debut, Boy Meets Girl, is as much about Alex and Mireille as it is about the City of Lights and its timeless allure. It is shot in black and white and oozes the special atmosphere that is present in many of the best Nouvelle Vague films. (A great example is Paris vu par, a collection of six short films directed by six major Nouvelle Vague directors, in which various colorful characters meet in unusual ways and have memorable experiences while the camera unapologetically looks for beauty in the busy French capital).

In Boy Meets Girl there is plenty of the surreal humor that is frequently present in Jean-Luc Godard’s early films as well. For example, Lavant’s character isn’t as aggressive as the ones Jean-Paul Belmondo immortalized, but he is just as impulsive and willing to take risks that present him with bizarre dilemmas that are very similar to the ones Belmondo’s characters faced.

Lavant’s facial expressions are not as striking as they are in Carax’s later films -- in The Night is Young and especially in Lovers on the Bridge, where he plays a reckless alcoholic who suddenly discovers true love -- but there is a familiar purity in the way he moves and looks into the camera. Perrier is believable as the disillusioned model, but there are a few sequences where it is clear that she tries to look as brittle, innocent, and sweet as Anna Karina did in the early ‘60s.

The film does not have a prominent music score, but different music clips are used in a variety of unique ways to enhance the film’s frequently quite surreal atmosphere. The clips are from popular songs by Serge Gainsbourg, David Bowie, Dead Kennedys, Jacques Pinault, and Jo Lemaire.

In 1984, Boy Meets Girl had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival. Director Carax won Award of the Youth (French Film).

Boy Meets Girl Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.66:1, encoded with MPEG-4 AVC and granted a 1080p transfer, Leos Carax's Boy Meets Girl arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of Carlotta Films U.S.

The release uses as a foundation the same recent 2K restoration of Boy Meets Girl which British distributors Artificial Eye accessed when they prepared their Blu-ray release for the UK market. However, the high-definition transfers these releases use are not identical. The film appears slightly darker here, though this appears to be a minor encoding discrepancy rather than a specific tonal adjustment. Detail and clarity are lovely. Contrast levels also remain stable throughout the entire film. There are no traces of problematic degraining corrections. The same minor grain fluctuations I mentioned in our review of the Artificial Eye release are still present here, but the encoding is actually marginally better and they could be quite difficult to spot. Overall image stability is outstanding. Finally, there are no large debris, cuts, damage marks, stains, or warps to report. All in all, this is a wonderful organic presentation of Boy Meets Girl which is guaranteed to please fans of Leos Carax's work. (Note: This is a Region-Free Blu-ray release. Therefore, you will be able to play it on your PS3 or SA regardless of your geographical location).

Boy Meets Girl Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

There is only one standard audio track on this Blu-ray release: French DTS-HD Master Audio 1.0. For the record, Carlotta Films U.S. have provided optional English subtitles for the main feature.

The film does not have a prominent soundtrack, but various sounds and noises have important roles. The lossless track handles all of them very well. (See the sequence where Alex goes out for a walk with his cassette player -- 00.28.09). The dialog is crisp, stable, clean, and exceptionally easy to follow. There are no pops, cracks, audio dropouts, or digital distortions to report in this review. The English translation is excellent.

Boy Meets Girl Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• 2014 Trailer - new trailer for the recent 2K restoration of Boy Meets Girl. In French, with optional English subtitles. (2 min, 1080p).

• Denis Lavant's Screen Test - in this video introduction/screen test, Denis Lavant discusses the character he plays in Boy Meets Girl and the film's unusual atmosphere and rhythm. The introduction also appears on the old the R2 DVD release of the film. In French, with imposed English subtitles. (9 min, 1080p).

• On Set: "In the Kitchen' - presented here is raw footage from the shooting of the kitchen sequence where Alex offers Mireille a cup of tea and tells her about his dreams. In French, with imposed English subtitles. (18 min, 1080p).

Boy Meets Girl Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

I have seen the first three Blu-ray releases from Carlotta Films U.S. (Sidewalk Stories, Boy Meets Girl, and Mauvais Sang) and I truly believe that people should be very excited that the boutique label has entered the U.S. market. Indeed, the quality of the presentations is every bit as impressive as that of the various French releases that have reached my desk. These local releases are also equally elegant. Consider adding all three releases to your collections, folks. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.