French director, hailed as a prodigy in the 1980s. With his tortured personality, instant success through his first feature, Boy Meets Girl (1984), and regular use of alter ego actor Denis Lavant, Carax has been seen as the carrier of the New Wave inheritance. Boy Meets Girl, shot in black and white on location in Paris, combined New Wave romanticism with post-modernism (especially in the use of music). Mauvais Sang / The Night is Young (1986) added overt references to Jean-Luc Godard with the use of primary colours and a Juliette Binoche made to look like Anna Karina. The extravagant (in all senses) Les Amants du Pont-Neuf (1991), starring Lavant and Binoche, is a sumptuous and romantic tribute to Paris, amour fou and Binoche. Carax figures controversially in debates over the cinéma du look, his cine-literacy and "neo-baroque" mise-en-scène earning criticism for a beautiful but supposedly "empty" cinema, but also passionate admiration.