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Auge and de Rosnay overlooking Los Angeles

Boobs, Bottles, and Bouchon. Three words sum up the new film, A Cross the Universe, a documentary about French electro-rock producers/remixers Justice’s spring 2008 tour. The film follows duo Gaspard Auge and Xavier de Rosnay as they crowd surf across the country, rock out to stadiums full of adoring fans, step over drunk groupies, and get wasted, city after city. Meanwhile, road manager Bouchon marvels at the lax gun laws in the United States, receiving a handgun through Fedex, he shares wisdom from the concealed firearms handbook, takes Auge and de Rosnay to their first gun range, and gets arrested after putting his gun out on the table to order at a restaurant in middle America.

Shot using a digital camera, the film moves quickly from city to city capturing the highs of performing to the electrified masses to the lows of changing a blown tire at the side of the road and all the madness of touring in-between. Some of the most revealing moments show the musically gifted Auge and de Rosnay as they play around on pianos and other instruments in their downtime. The obvious affection the team shares for one another, including appearances by label owner/manager Pedro Winter and their gospel-singing tour bus driver, an aspiring guinness book entrant for “lowest vocal tone”, keeps this film together and provides an intimate, if somewhat superficial, portrait of life on the road in 2008. Check director Romain Gavras previous collaboration with Justice for their music video for “Stress” after the jump. This film is everything you’d expect from a rock ‘n’ roll tour documentary—boys behaving badly with subtitles.

A Cross the Universe Trailer

STRESS Music Video by Romain Gavras