DAVID BOWIE – Modern Love | Denis Lavant & Juliette Binoche | Mauvais Sang (Leos Carax, 1986)

One of the most iconic moments in Leos Carax’s cinema, one that fuses Denis Lavant’s raw physicality with the pulse of David Bowie’s “Modern Love.” It happens after Lavant’s character, Alex, is weighed down by tension, fear, and the hopelessness of his circumstances. He steps out into the Paris night, carrying the pressure of the criminal world he’s entangled in, but also his desperate, unspoken feelings for Anna (Juliette Binoche). Suddenly, “Modern Love” bursts out of a nearby radio, and it’s as if the music electrifies him.

He begins to run, almost compulsively, down the dark, deserted street. At first, it’s just running, but then his movement expands into something stranger, halfway between dance and escape. He punches the air, leaps, twists, collapses against walls, and springs forward again. The camera follows him in long takes, capturing the intensity of his body jerking and thrashing in rhythm with the song. It’s exuberant and anguished at once—a kind of physical exorcism.

Juliette Binoche is briefly glimpsed watching him, her face registering both concern and fascination, but the spotlight remains on Lavant’s eruption of motion. The scene condenses what Carax’s cinema often seeks: an expression of life so immediate that words and narrative can’t contain it, only the body can. Bowie’s song—ironically about keeping faith in spite of cynicism—becomes a vehicle for pure, uncontrollable vitality, and Lavant embodies it with a mix of clownish grace and violent energy.