MOON IN THE GUTTER Movie Review

La Lune dans le Caniveau

In a ramshackle harbor town, a stevedore (Gérard Depardieu) searches the docks for the person who killed his sister many years before. Supposedly the screenplay for Moon in the Gutter was based on a novel by American crime writer David Goodis; if that's true, how did Goodis make a living? Not having read the novel on which the film is based, something tells me that it was messed with more than a little by director Jean-Jacques Beineix, whose Diva was a smash hit in the U.S. Moon in the Gutter makes little—if any—literal sense. You can't follow it, and when you can, you don't want to. This isn't really a movie—it's a wallow. A wallow in “style,” in trendiness, in pretentious lighting and cinematographic effects. It's everything but characters, a story, and a movie—the things we came to see. It's appallingly awful.

NEXT STOP … Diva, The Long Voyage Home, Shoot the Piano Player

1983 (R) 109m/C IT FR Gerard Depardieu, Nastassia Kinski, Victoria Abril, Vittorio Mezzogiorno, Dominique Pinon; D: Jean-Jacques Beineix; W: Jean-Jacques Beineix; C: Philippe Rousselot; M: Gabriel Yared. Cesar Awards ‘84: Best Art Direction/Set Decoration. VHS COL