CQ is one of my favorite movies of all time. The Coppola family undoubtedly has some unbelievable film-making talent from patriarch Francis Ford to daughter Sofia to her brother Roman. This is Roman Coppola's first and only feature, though he has been second unit director on his sister's films as well as a handful of Wes Anderson films!Here, what Coppola crafted is nothing short of a love letter to 1960s filmmaking, specifically the low-budget, camp, European sci-fi films. Coppola's film follows Paul (Jeremy Davies) an American living in Paris in the late 60s (a time period and place I would trade almost anything to have lived in!) as a film editor. After the young star director Felix Di Marco (Jason Schwartzman) is injured in a car accident, Paul's name is put forward to move into the director's seat. He accepts, a little apprehensively, and begins work on "Dragonfly," trying to put together the pieces of the half-shot film while juggling the demands of his producer, the needs of his French girlfriend, and his own confused personal documentary film.
It is great homage to both film and the 1960s, Paris (though filmed largely in Belgium) is full of young beautiful people, Citroens DS's, and fantastically thick accents, all set to the funky throwback tracks of Mellow's almost impossibly hard to find soundtrack. Coppola nailed the aesthetics of everything, from the film-within-the-film "Codename: Dragonfly", from Agent Dragonfly's outfits, to her car, her hideout, spaceship, her nemeses, everything! There are also great little performances from Schwartzman, Gerard Depardieu, Billy Zane, Giancarlo Giannini, and model Angela Lindvall as Dragonfly herself.
The film is also full of references to 1960s films like Barbarella and Danger: Diabolik, as well as to Roman's own father Francis Ford and Stanley Kubrick. If any of this piques your interest, I suggest you seek out this film! I guarantee you won't be disappointed!
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