A few years ago, I came across a PAL VHS copy of Leos Carax's debut feature, BOY MEETS GIRL (1984), and now that I've caught up with the rest of his filmography, I regret passing on it...! BAD BLOOD promises to be several things a treatise on a society coming to its first realization of the ravages of a sexually-transmitted disease (read AIDS), a caper movie involving the stealing of a highly-requested anti-"AIDS" serum, etc. but ends up being a romantic love story and a vintage Hollywood pastiche of sorts: Carax admitted in an interview that the film was inspired by the Alan Ladd/Raoul Walsh actioner, SALTY O' ROURKE (1945)! The film has a good mix of veteran (Michel Piccoli and Serge Reggiani) and upcoming talent (Juliette Binoche and Julie Delpy) but the main character is played by Denis Levant; curiously enough, he dies in this one but in Carax's following movie, THE LOVERS OF THE BRIDGE (1991; also with Levant and Binoche), the main character sports the same name of the one Levant plays here and, as a matter of fact, Binoche also makes references to Julien and Marion who also "feature" in LOVERS!! Actually, it appears that Carax's first 3 features are supposed to be taken as a loose trilogy.
While BAD BLOOD isn't a total success, it is occasionally quite inspired: when David Bowie's "Modern Love" blurts out from the radio, Levant goes out dancing in the streets (pun intended) but his exuberant dance routine is soon cut short when Binoche turns off the radio; a completely irrelevant sepia-tinged sequence of a gamine and her little child is set to the strains of Charlie Chaplin's score from THE KID (1921); Piccoli and Reggiani's first meeting in an airfield becomes a pantomime routine akin to Silent slapstick comedies; and, most hilariously, an American thug also after the serum mistakes a fellow diner in a restaurant for Jean Cocteau but when Levant tells him that Cocteau is dead, he deadpans: "No look..he's moving!".
While BAD BLOOD isn't a total success, it is occasionally quite inspired: when David Bowie's "Modern Love" blurts out from the radio, Levant goes out dancing in the streets (pun intended) but his exuberant dance routine is soon cut short when Binoche turns off the radio; a completely irrelevant sepia-tinged sequence of a gamine and her little child is set to the strains of Charlie Chaplin's score from THE KID (1921); Piccoli and Reggiani's first meeting in an airfield becomes a pantomime routine akin to Silent slapstick comedies; and, most hilariously, an American thug also after the serum mistakes a fellow diner in a restaurant for Jean Cocteau but when Levant tells him that Cocteau is dead, he deadpans: "No look..he's moving!".