Mods (Serge Bozon - 2002) DVD RIP

‘In 1965, at the Eurovision contest France Gall sang: “My heart is recorded in my grooves” (Wax Doll, Sound Doll). Mods plays these grooves in repeat mode, to let the echoes resonate, echoes of the eternal adolescent refrain: rage, frustration, fear.’ Serge Bozon’s succinct description of his film is spot on. Like a diamond stylus in contact with a vinyl record groove his characters spin round and round, prisoners of the campus walls. Edouard, a student and inveterate seducer there, is ill. What’s wrong with him? Worried, the school headmistress, looking like a 19th century English governess in her Peter Pan collar, writes to his two inseparable brothers. They come to the campus, disturbed at being pulled out of their own world, and are equally disturbing for the students, ersatz mods casually leaning against the wall, in a pose which recalls those 60s’ single covers. “We are soldiers”, “it’s our job” the brothers keep repeating like a broken record. The 60s are very present in this atemporal film. First, in the title, which refers to the «mod» movement of young working-class teens in the 60s, fans of the Who and the Kinks: as portrayed in Franc Roddam’s Quadrophenia (1979), one of the best cinematic reflections of that era. Rather than use the English music of that time, which Serge Bozon thought made it too datable, he preferred American garage-punk, of which he is an avid collector, and which he uses in the film’s five unexpected and stylised choreographed numbers. Second, Bozon readily admits the nods to Nouvelle Vague auteurs: Godard (the way the dialogue is performed), Truffaut (the chief medical officer looks like Jean-Pierre Léaud), Rivette (the unfathomable plot), Rohmer (the relationships and love intrigues). And this mysterious illness of Edouard’s? Love, revealed to him by a young girl, which might conclude, as in France Gall’s words: “But one day I want to live my songs without fear of boys’ love” —Film Festival Locarno

English subs included.

Format : AVI
Format/Info : Audio Video Interleave
File size : 808 MiB
Duration : 56mn 34s
Overall bit rate : 1 997 Kbps
Writing application : VirtualDubMod 1.5.10.2 (build 2540/release)
Writing library : VirtualDubMod build 2540/release

Video
ID : 0
Format : MPEG-4 Visual
Format profile : Advanced Simple@L5
Format settings, BVOP : 1
Format settings, QPel : No
Format settings, GMC : No warppoints
Format settings, Matrix : Default (MPEG)
Codec ID : XVID
Codec ID/Hint : XviD
Duration : 56mn 34s
Bit rate : 1 795 Kbps
Width : 640 pixels
Height : 384 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 1.667
Frame rate : 25.000 fps
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Progressive
Compression mode : Lossy
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.292
Stream size : 726 MiB (90%)
Writing library : XviD 1.2.1 (UTC 2008-12-04)

Audio
ID : 1
Format : AC-3
Format/Info : Audio Coding 3
Mode extension : CM (complete main)
Format settings, Endianness : Big
Codec ID : 2000
Duration : 56mn 33s
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 192 Kbps
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Channel positions : Front: L R
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz
Bit depth : 16 bits
Compression mode : Lossy
Stream size : 77.7 MiB (10%)
Alignment : Split accross interleaves
Interleave, duration : 40 ms (1.00 video frame)
Interleave, preload duration : 500 ms