Rating: NR | Runtime: 41 minutes
Release Date: June 12th, 2024 (France) / December 10th, 2024 (USA)
Studio: Les Films du Losange / Janus Films / Sideshow
Director(s): Leos Carax
Writer(s): Leos Carax

Why didn’t you see it in the dream?

It’s Not Me is the answer to an exhibition that never occurred. An answer to the question, “Where are you at?” Rather than use words, filmmaker Leos Carax uses images. He creates a self-portrait through the sights and sounds of his memory, work, and life. Some of it is familiar. Some of it is new. All of it is Carax—even those bits that aren’t—because it’s all influenced him in some way, shape, or form. David Bowie. Roman Polanski. Nina Simone. Denis Levant. Annette.

The result: a short film fit for a museum. Carax fulfilled the assignment even if the product isn’t being shown where it was meant to live (the Pompidou Museum). The visuals come fast. The narration merges with the soundtrack as captions blink throughout to both describe what’s coming and situate us inside the jumbled references swimming within the auteur’s head. It’s the sort of aesthetic I found taxing in Jean-Luc Godard’s later features (his voice on an answering machine can be heard), but mostly invigorating in short form here.

Does it give you any answers? Raise more questions? All of the above. I think the intent was to give shape to his ideas and influences while paying homage to the artists who inspired and assisted in the art he’s made. And it is evidence that perhaps the reason he’s never used a POV shot (except the one he finally remembers) is because it’s all seen through his own point-of-view. Maybe that sense of “God’s view” has disappeared as cinema evolved, but it remains in practice. It’s not our world that Carax captures. It’s his. We’re merely given permission to pass through.

And regardless of whether you enjoy what that journey looks like in It’s Not Me, definitely stay to the end anyway. Because as the credits state, Annette will be making an appearance then. For Carax fans, the execution of that final moment is worth the previous forty minutes itself.

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A scene from IT’S NOT ME featuring Nastya Golubeva Carax on the piano; courtesy of Sideshow/Janus Films.