CQ (DVD)
Written and Directed by: Roman Coppola
Starring: Jeremy Davies, Angela Lindvall, Jason Schwartzman, Billy Zane, Gerard Depardieu

Roman Coppola, being the son of Francis Ford and brother of Sofia, has quite an impressive gene pool to draw from. There is no doubting the fact that his directorial debut CQ had a lot of potential, but I can’t help but feel disappointed by the final product.

Jeremy Davies plays an aspiring filmmaker named Paul who gets a big break directing a 60’s spy film called Codename Dragonfly. He starts to become obsessed with the project, and finds himself slowly drawn into the world of the film itself, where he falls in love with the beautiful superspy named Dragonfly. It certainly sounds like a cool concept, but unfortunately the movie never really seems to go anywhere, and there are a lot of loose ends that never get fully explored.

Coppola spends an excessive amount of time focusing on actual scenes from the Codename Dragonfly movie, which aren’t treated in a humourous or particularly exciting manner, and drag on longer than necessary. (Even with these scenes, the movie seems a little short with a running time of about 88 minutes.) The rest of the movie just seems to have an air of vagueness and pretentiousness about it (although maybe that is partly due to the artsy black-and-white clips of Paul’s personal film project and the French accents of all the characters).

The music, provided by a French band called Mellow, was hit and miss. At times it provided the perfect loungey, contemplative atmosphere, but other times it just sounded like a cheap knockoff of 60’s spy-surf… the Dragonfly theme sounded particularly fake.

There was some cool camera work used in CQ, and lots of beautiful European scenery. I am hard pressed to find fault with the visuals in the movie, but the credit for this should probably go to cinematographer Robert Yeoman. One of the movie’s only redeeming points was an over-the-top performance by Coppola’s cousin Jason Schwartzman as a big shot director.

In the end, I found it frustrating and ironic that Coppola could not follow the advice that his main character Paul is given in the movie: “You need to connect things so that they make us feel something”. As a movie, CQ never really seems to hit its stride. I was expecting a bit more from the Coppola name, but perhaps Roman just has some maturing to do before he can adequately uphold his family’s reputation.

The DVD has a lot of special features that do pick up the slack for the movie however. Extras include 4 behind-the-scenes documentaries by family and friends (including sister Sofia and mother Eleanor), live footage of Mellow performing songs from the movie soundtrack, full scenes from the Codename Dragonfly movie, and an audio commentary with Coppola and Robert Yeoman. — Sean