Starlight Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		4.5
Audio		3.5
Extras		0.0
Overall		2.5

Starlight Blu-ray Movie Review

Three (engagement?) ring circus.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman June 24, 2017

There’s a famous adage (or at least a Disney aphorism) stating “let your conscience be your guide”, but you might think twice if your conscience looked like Iggy Pop. Pop does in fact play a character named Conscience in this often peculiar film, a “maybe, maybe not” spectral figure who initially appears as an almost hallucinatory vision in a puddle of water to circus clown Elliot (Denis Lavant). The confluence of a circus and conscience may actually have a bit of unexpected resonance for some viewers given the recent demise of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. How do you feel about the end of this long, if ultimately controversial, tradition? Kind of interestingly (at least to me), my social media feed was full of some rather potent “discussions” (yeah, right) about the folding of the circus due to the fact that for whatever reason a couple of my friends actually were professional clowns, including one who actually worked for Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey and was understandably very upset about the circus’ dissolution. Other friends of mine were outraged at the circus’ ostensible cruelty toward animals, though my clown friends (as in actual clowns) insisted the animals, while obviously captive, were all very well cared for. The small time circus at the center of the frankly bizarre film Starlight perhaps thankfully don’t have any animal acts, so that kind of conscience pang isn’t necessary from either a viewing or plot content standpoint, but there is plenty of roiling emotion, nonetheless. The circus troupe in this particular instance is actually more like a gypsy caravan, and there is indeed a “gypsy” in the group, an old style fortune teller (replete with crystal ball) named Zohra (Béatrice Dalle). This “mini” circus is camped out on the evocative looking sand dunes of the North Sea, and they’re not exactly playing to even Something Wicked This Way Comes sized crowds. That may be at least one reason why the interpersonal relationships between the performers have assumed such soap operatic heights (or depths, depending on how you tend to look at such things), and a lot of Starlight’s actual plot mechanics play out in the context of interlocking love triangles.

Starlight’s original French title is L'étoile du jour, which frankly translates more like “star of the day” or “daystar” (if you’re feeling religious), though neither title really captures the weird imagery and kind of dreamlike feel of much of the film. Things begin in a mundane enough fashion, with some backstage drama involving circus magician Zéphyr (Bruzno Putzulu) and Zohra. There’s a peculiar disconnect between the florid, overheated exchanges between the two focal characters and the more shtick laden background characters, which include several clowns (including a character named Flix, played by actor Hervé Chenais, who has no lower arms). Characters aren’t so much introduced in this film as basically thrust into the audience’s view, and that includes circus owner Heroy (Tchéky Karyo), whose martinet and otherwise abusive qualities may bring to mind Anthony Quinn’s memorable Zampanò in Fellini’s masterpiece La strada.

While neither writer and director Sophie Blondy’s screenplay nor her presentational style are exactly straightforward, it soon enough becomes evident that existing couples in the circus may not exactly be happy campers (an appropriate description, given the fact they’re all living on the beach in trailers). Zohra is pining after Elliot, including trying to cast love spells on him, while Elliot is involved with ballerina Angèle (Natacha Régnier). Meanwhile, Angèle is being pined after by Heroy, while Zéphyr seems to have a thing for Zohra. It’s the stuff of low level television fare, but it’s played here as Art House Chic, especially once Iggy Pop shows up in interstitial sequences as Elliot’s conscience.

Starlight ends up being a viewing experience that is almost startlingly long on mood, but which has actually fairly little content supporting the often arresting visuals. When the first hallucinatory element involving Conscience quite suddenly intrudes on the simmering interrelationships, it’s like David Lynch suddenly took over from Douglas Sirk, and the film just kind of kicks into an alternative universe (probably both figuratively and literally) from which it never successfully escapes. That said, the sequences with Conscience have a visceral quality that some of the torrid love elements never achieve, which may be at least one indication that from an overall emotional level, Starlight never quite hits its target. That said, there’s an almost inevitably tragic ambience that plays out in the film that finally makes it clear why some clowns have tears painted on their faces.

Starlight Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Starlight is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of MVD Visual and Cleopatra Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. As alluded to above, this is highly stylized visual presentation, and even a brief parsing of the screenshots accompanying this review will show how Blondy and cinematographer Nathalie Durand play with elements like color and black and white, often skewing the color segments toward weirdly desaturated levels and offering tweaked contrast and brightness in both color and monochromatic sequences. This, coupled with the often hazy or downright abstract images of Elliot with his Conscience can mean that detail levels are not always exceptional, though when things calm down, presentationally speaking, they're typically quite good in both color and black and white sequences. A couple of segues into and out of black and white moments flirted briefly with banding, but otherwise this is a solid transfer of a quite distinctive looking film.

Starlight Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Starlight has one audio track, a French language Dolby Digital 5.1 mix (with forced English subtitles) that does provide good surround activity (a lot of the film takes place outside, where ambient environmental noises are frequently utilized), but not much "oomph" in the low end. The film has a large supply of source cues (much of the film actually plays without long stretches of dialogue), and those also reside comfortably in the side and rear channels, if again not always incredibly forcefully. What sporadic dialogue there is is offered cleanly and with good prioritization.

Starlight Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

There are no supplements included on the disc. The main menu (see screenshot 20) offers only Play and Chapter options. There aren't even any setup options, so only the lossy Dolby Digital audio track is available and the English subtitles are forced.

Starlight Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

I could frankly see this getting everything from 0.5 stars to at least 4.0 stars from different viewers equipped with their own review template, since my hunch is those who like "arty" films with often outré visuals may forgive this film's relative lack of narrative momentum, while those who prefer films driven by strong plot mechanics will probably find the film's stylistic flourishes intolerable. I come down somewhere in the middle on Starlight, appreciating its really unique visual style, but wondering where the story supporting it is. While audiophiles will wish for a lossless track, I doubt few videophiles will find much to complain about in terms of the video presentation on this disc.