Part of the Weekend Stays In and Watches DVDs

Justice and Soulwax have a lot in common. Both have released tour
documentaries this month: Soulwax’s Part of the Weekend Never
Dies and Justice’s A Cross the Universe.

Both are world-touring, stadium-sized acts that straddle the (now
tedious) line between rock and electro. Both play each other’s songs
live, remix each other, and perform at the same parties. And both run
in similar, overlapping circles—the director of Justice’s film
(So Me) animated the intro to Soulwax’s (which is directed by Saam
Farahmand of that “girls making out with each other” Simian Mobile
Disco music video); Justice make an appearance in Soulwax’s doc (in
which they cop to having sampled Soulwax’s drum sounds for many of the
tracks on their record). But stay in on some slow, dead winter weekend
when there are no parties to go to, watch both these films, and you
will observe a world of difference.

For one thing, while both films are pretty standard “behind the
scenes” tour documentaries, A Cross the Universe consists solely
of such footage, while Part of the Weekend benefits from the
inclusion of interviews with James Murphy, Nancy Whang, and Tiga, all
of whom are smart and funny and provide essential context for the
Belgian band.

Part of the Weekend (named for a Soulwax lyric) follows the
group around the world on their Radio Soulwax tour, which includes DJ
sets from 2 Many DJs and performances from Soulwax Nite Versions (the
confusing taxonomy of this tour is all sorted out in the first few
minutes). A Cross the Universe (a play on the name of the recent
Beatles musical as well as a reference to Justice’s reverence for the
cross) follows the French duo and friends across only North America.
The contrast is startling: While Soulwax come across as natural
jet-setters, whether visiting friends in New York or appearing amiably
on an oversexed Latin American television show, Justice seem equal
parts enamored of and entirely out of water in America, eating giant
cheeseburgers, trying to order “what-air” instead of soda at the
drive-through, posing with Hooters waitresses, shopping for
multimillion-dollar beachfront properties in L.A., and ultimately
brushing up against the law due to one of their entourage’s obsession
with and possession of easily obtained American firearms.

As much as both films are documents of these groups’ shows, they’re
also essentially advertisements, and in this regard, Soulwax’s is the
far more effective film. Their shows, club nights, and parties appear
full of beautiful, well-heeled, and, aside from a little drug-addled
babbling (naturally set to the tune of Soulwax’s “E Talking”),
well-behaved
revelers. Given your tolerance for high-rolling
hipster waifs with foreign accents, this is the kind of elite yet
populist party you want to be at. Justice’s shows, on the other hand,
look like Nazi youth rallies, only violent (particularly frightening is
one slow-mo shot of a shirtless, buff, blond dude hulking the fuck out
in the front row of one concert), and their fans are portrayed as
screaming, drunk, idiotic d-bags. Advertisement fail.

Another contrast is that while both Justice and Soulwax split their
performing between “DJ” and “rock” incarnations—Soulwax via the
aforementioned aliases, Justice by simply DJing after some shows
(although no such DJ sets are shown here)—Soulwax’s rock show is
the real deal. The band—on live drums, bass, keyboards, and
vocals—simply tear through the “remixed” (nite) versions
of their songs as well as covers of their friends’ songs (including
Justice’s “Waters of Nazareth”). Justice’s show, on the other hand, is
something more like a pantomime, with the duo backed by nonfunctioning
prop amplifier stacks and surrounded by (again, purely ornamental)
blinking “synth” racks. At the heart of the operation are only a couple
CD players and a mixer.

Not that A Cross the Universe is entirely without merit. The
scene in which Justice’s Xavier De Rosnay sings “Under the Bridge” to a

bemused-looking Anthony Kiedis is worth watching, as are the
scenes with Justice’s tour-bus driver, a sincerely religious man named
Roger who’s honing his baritone in an attempt to win the world record
for lowest
vocal note ever (I would not be surprised to learn
“Roger” was actually Christopher Guest with an expensive fake
face).

The most revealing scene in the film, though, might be one in which
De Rosnay plays a melody at a piano with his hands obscured by the
camera angle; when he takes his hands off the piano to pick up his cell
phone, the melody keeps playing. Watching Part of the Weekend,
you get some impression of Soulwax as people; watching A Cross the
Universe, all you get are Justice’s mostly silent,
cigarette-smoking faces, their leather and denim facades, and the
nagging tension of wondering what about them is “real” and what is
“fake.” Or maybe it’s just that Soulwax seem, you know, nice, while
Justice seem like (real? fake? who cares?) assholes.