The Moon in the Gutter (1983)

Better Late Then Never

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

The second feature from the director of 'Diva' was met with enough ridicule to suggest a settling of old scores, but unfortunately the film deserved every insult it inspired. No one can say Jean-Jacques Beineix wasn't asking for trouble, and the end result of his efforts to create a heavily stylized, romantic mood piece is an unforgivably empty and pretentious melodrama so laughably bad it might almost be a parody of modern European art-schlock cinema. The ubiquitous Gerard Depardieu plays a burly stevedore who wanders the docks of a nameless city, brooding over the unknown assailant who killed his sister; soon he begins brooding over sultry Nastassia Kinski instead, and they elope. Or do they? Every tantalizing hint of a plot disappears (usually within a scene or two) behind a welter of self-indulgent gestures, none of which could possibly make any sense to anyone except the writer-director. At best the film might be dismissed as a failed experiment; more accurately, it's a near masterpiece of unintended awfulness.

The director & co-screenplay writer Jean Jacques Beineix must of thought he was the French personification of the director of Heaven's Gate, which we know or should know was an overlong indulgent movie.La Lune Dans Le Caniveau (The Moon is in the Gutter) is of the same cloth,pretty at times to look at but mostly grim needless artless & uninteresting. A better translated title would be The Moon is in the Sewer. it is that dreary & boring.Now this does have a very well known cast of 1983 & still are known today. Gerard Depardieu was 35 when this was made & he sure was very handsome & sexy. Victoria Abril was very young,sexy and very beautiful.The same goes for Nastassia Kinski.These three fine talents do NOT rise above the base script.This is a very long 138 minute film, I have heard that the director (like Cimino) had a much longer movie. The film may have been a good movie at about 80 minutes.Ratings: *1/2 (out of 4) 42 points(out of 100)IMDB 3 (out of 10)

When I read the jacket on the videotape, it sounded like an interesting story. A guy's sister is raped and he can't get over it and continues looking for her assailant. However, that really isn't what the movie was about. While it is true she is raped and he talks about finding her attacker, so much of the movie just seems banal and pointless. Along the way, we are shown a variety of naked women and images that MIGHT be true (or a dream or who knows),...but none of it really adds up to anything. While some might find it surreal and artsy, I just found it boring and a real drag. It's a shame, too, as the movie stars Gerard Depardieu--his talents are pretty much wasted, as anyone could have sleep-walked through the movie as they had his character do.

Warning: some minor spoilers ahead!This movie is high cinematic art, but it requires a fine sensibility to enjoy. Beineix creates a dreamworld, with the sublime and frightening emotions of dreams, and that characteristic dreamlike fluctuation of the plot, where you can expect anything in the next moment, good or bad. And indeed, it ends up in a nightmare, and you wake up asking yourself why was it a nightmare, why did all of it happen the way it did, and ultimately, what is the purpose of life and the meaning of existence.All the actors, in my opinion, did an excellent job, quite aware, I guess, of the lofty artistic goals Beineix tries to achieve. All the roles are perfectly believable, because they are not reduced to simpletons as Hollywood often does, but are provided with all the contrasting emotions, weaknesses and strenghts, virtues and vice of real human beings.This movie won't be appreciated by everybody, because it wasn't intended for everybody, just as Mahler's symphonies are not appreciated by everybody. Fortunately, there are the pleasant tunes of Strauss to satisfy the public at large.