Novo

Novo-360P

Novo-480P

A clever and stylish, erotic French drama. Concerns a man who can't remember anything that happens past one hour. Subsequently some interesting scenarios pop up! It's sort of a lightweight movie but with some rather pleasant vibes. Coffee time!

Jean-Pierre Limosin, director of "Novo", has directed other titles such as "Faux Fuyants", "Gardien de la nuit", "L'autre nuit", "Carmen", "Young Yakuza", and "Tokyo Eyes" which was shown at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival. He is known most for his dramas and his documentaries. "Novo" is one of his very erotic dramas. To me, there is too much sex and not enough plot. There is so much sex that after watching it when I was asked what it was about, my only response was "sex." I would like this film better if the sex were more implied instead of being explicit, and if there were more dialogue between the characters. Despite all of the sex, this movie does explore some interest ideas. One of these is the healing power of love. Throughout the film, the main character Graham can only remember things for a few minutes. But after meeting his lover Irene, his memory span starts growing. He still cannot remember his wife, but that is because his wife never truly loved him. We know this because she starts cheating on Graham with his best friend after Graham loses his memory. We know that Irene's love is real, though, because she sticks with Graham despite his memory problems. Another idea in the movie is actually explicitly stated by the character Irene. At the end of the movie, she says, "Love is about forgetting time, yet remembering it can end at any time." This is most evidenced in Graham. Once he meets Irene and falls in love with her, he shows his love by trying desperately to remember her name and writing notes in his journal about the time they spend together. If something were to happen to his notes or if he lost contact with her, he could completely forget her and their love would be over. To me, this movie is definitely a French movie because of two things. The first and most obvious thing is how open this movie is about showing sex and naked bodies on screen without holding back. This reflects that in the French culture, people are much more open about their bodies and who sees them. In America, for the most part people are more private about their sexuality and nakedness. The second thing that makes this a French movie for me is how infrequently the characters are at work. In American movies, the characters are constantly at work, more so than at home. This reflects that French truly are at work less than Americans and that they have more vacation time than Americans. That is something I wish America would adopt.

I have heard that Novo was compared to Memento for the simple fact they both rely on main characters suffering from short-term memory loss. Well, that's like comparing The Silence of the Lambs and Friday the 13th as both involved a character that killed multiple people. They couldn't be further apart in ideas. Novo deals with a copier man at a company who does have short term memory loss. He is consistently followed by another gentleman and his boss likes to have sex with him in the office. In comes a temp who also gets involved with him and may/may not use him for sex. Needless to say, he has a lot of on-screen sex. Wait, there's more. There's a boy who runs into the troubled amnesia male and it's obvious there's more to this boy just bumping into him. And there's a notebook the man keeps to try and remember important clues. I admit I am not one for foreign-made films. I don't mind reading the subtitles, but I do mind that sometimes that takes away from one of my favorite aspects of a film: great dialogue. Since they have to translate, or I wouldn't be able to understand for the most part, I truly believe they simplify what the characters have to say. This movie was no exception; the dialogue was just, well, blah. As for the story, it was interesting enough to keep me around for 98 minutes. Weird, yes, but then again I don't live in France, so I am not as familiar with their likes/dislike or lifestyles. (Such as, I guess it's acceptable for a father to lie with and frolic in the buff with his son on the beach – that must be a cultural thing.) Thankfully it wasn't two+ hours of time invested in watching this man regain his past and progressively move forward to his cure. For, when the "secret" is learned, I was like, really? Well, okay then. I can only recommend for somewhat decent acting, good looking folks and soft-* sexual situations (like every 2-4 minutes,) however if you're not into that sort of scene, I would wholeheartedly skip this slow moving and memory-regaining film.

I think this is messy and out of focus. It tries to be too many things, and it fails to successfully achieve any of those. This wanted to be love story told through a different angle. It wanted to play with memory as a creator of reality, or something able to define a certain reality. It wanted to establish ambiguity over motivations and over who is controlling, who is bending the reality of what we see. It wanted to use sex, and sexually moved characters (above all females) as a cinematic glue to all this I can think of various films for each of the "wannabe" i mentioned that manage to be more successful in their objectives than this one. I don't know one film that does well in mixing all this. And if i come to find one, i don't think it will be made by the authors of this one. At least not for what i saw here. 'Memento' played with the notions and the effects of short term memory, and memory loss much deeper. Here, we find the memory losses as the device to allow our character to become who his puppeteers want him to be. It is what it takes for him to be a puppet, to be unstable, to cast some doubt on who he is, what he wants. Noriega played the equivalent role in 'Abre los ojos', which was much more effective. I think for this purposes, 'Clean Slate' was a much better exploration of this!... Here we have links establish to monitoring our amnesic, the martial arts, the photos sessions, the block notes. But none of that is really used. The ending comes to unfold as a common romantic situation of gathering and decision on which woman the protagonist will elect (which you know who it is miles away from the ending). So it ends as the love story the film also wanted to be. The 'woman who loves the man accepting him for what he is' plot. It's ordinary, but it is given a new clothing, in order to look new. But if you stop and think, there's absolutely nothing worth mentioning about this story. If you want renewed fresh ways to join a love environment and the creation of alternative realities, try Medem. In 'Los amantes...', in 'Lucia y el sexo', in 'La ardilla roja'. He can do that. By coincidence (or not), here we even have Medem's Lucia (Paz Vega) as the wife of the sick protagonist who, in his moments of memory recovery comes to speak Spanish... Than we have the attempts to play with the forces controlling what we see. We know almost always as much as the main character. And practically every character (except the boy and the woman who loves the protagonist) have ambiguous intentions (apart from the fact that we take our time to understand where everybody fits, that's a good thing). We are given successions of facts we can't judge correctly. But than we come to understand that the film is moving nowhere, and what we see is what we get. No twist, no revelation, what it seems to be happening is really happening. It's not that we have to be deceived, but there should be some intention behind the idea of casting ambiguity in every corner of the stone. See 'Oldboy', if you want master work working these concepts. My opinion: 2/5 this is messy, but it has some interesting concepts, if you start imagining where this could go. http://www.7eyes.wordpress.com

A disturbing film, this, climaxing, as it does, with an intensely intimate reunion between a naked man and his young son, but in its confused structure it contains a poetically imagined visual exploration of the innocence of an idealised amnesiac. The plot follows two threads, the weaker of which is the gradual revelation of Graham/Pablo's condition. Wound through this, though, is a beautiful description of his condition, and his meandering path towards a partial awakening, driven by his affair with Irene. The affair is the strong thread, while the specifics of the plot are carried by a seemingly tacked on collection of characters: Graham's best friend, who can reveal the cause of his condition in a clunking flashback, his manipulative boss and his comic book mad scientist psychologist: all of whom have an interest in keeping him lost and dependent. The failure of the film lies in the conflict between the two threads. One is visual, meandering and sublime, while the other is structured like an inept thriller, all expository dialogue and unresolved patterns of symbolism. Nevertheless, I enjoyed Novo. It keeps flirting with the abyss of taboo and shying away into something beautiful, as in the quarry, with the double bassist and the two women, when a setup for a scene of cheap * becomes a segment of peace and rejuvenation. I still don't get the tooth, though. Odd, clunky and a narrative failure, but with an almost redeeming beauty.

Anterograde amnesia, the inability to form new memories, is a popular plot device. It allows storytellers to repeatedly explore the protagonist's plight, without all the extra suspension of disbelief that comes with using a time loop instead. It's almost always caused by vitamin B1 deficiency from repeatedly getting blackout drunk or anorexic/bulimic extreme fasting. But being self-inflicted would make the protagonist unsympathetic, so the storytellers contrive it to be caused by trauma. Examples: Clean Slate (1994), Memento (2000), Novo (2002), 50 First Dates (2004), etc. Those are not spoilers, because the condition is revealed at the start of the films, usually even in the advertising! Novo is one of the better anterograde amnesia films. It has a point to make, comparing love and lust in the light of shared memories. Odd none of the others showed up in its "More like this" list, don't you think?

Jean-Pierre Limosin shows he has an eye for the style he is trying to capture in "Novo". Not having seen anything directed by him before, we were sold in watching it because of the cast that was put together for the film. The movie was co-written by Mr. Limosin and Chris Honore, who has written a few interesting screen plays for the French cinema. The crisp cinematography of Julien Hirsch and the editing of Cristina Otero give the picture a glossy finish. The film is told in a non linear fashion. That will be probably disorient a lot of viewers since the creators don't bother to make clear what afflicts Graham, although it's apparent he is suffering from some form of amnesia. The explicitness of what Mr. Limosin has put in the film is another distracting element that is obviously done for the age group it targets. Eduardo Noriega makes the best he can with his Graham. Anna Mouglalis bares her soul and all for us to appreciate the beauty of her body. Nathalie Richard has good moments as Sabina. On the other hand, interesting talents such as Julie Gayet, Eric Caravaca and most notably, the gorgeous Paz Vega, are ignored because they are given nothing to play with. "Novo" as another commentator has put it, has a soft-* feeling that might have been all well and good according what Mr. Limosin conceived it to look like. Other viewers should be warned that the sex one sees is the kind of "in your face" variety and it might offend.

a disconcerting production, full of charm for an art flick that tries to envision the relation between love (and lust) and memories. This is the strength of the film (a universal theme about which there is much to say) and its weakness because the director has not followed his ideas to its logical conclusions. One cannot help thinking that this film could have been really excellent if the narration were less syncopated. The similarities with memento are obvious but the loss of memory here seems to be more an excuse than a "raison d'être" because the love story between Graham and Irène gives rise to numerous interesting themes (the happy-go-lucky Amnesiac opposed to his passionate lover, the naive Amnesiac opposed to people who take advantage of him, the carefree wandering life and the freedom of love when you are free of your memories, etc....) without fully exploiting them. Nevertheless the charm of the film lies in the way the camera is in love with Graham (the Spanish actor Eduardo Noriega)and thus continually spies on his sensual body with a certain sense of decency. The beautiful Spanish actor is really the epicenter of the film and gives an undisputed sensual color. The French actress Anna Mouglalis is also perfect in her role. Nudity does not aim at being a provocation, sensuality and pleasure seem to be devoid of any guilt (beware because it might put off some viewers) in this film. to sum up : a smart and sensual attempt to deal with the theme of amnesia with casualness and thoughtlessness