Les Amants réguliers | Review

Director and son team recompose fiery times of 68.

Still part of a national dialogue especially with the recent Paris suburb youth revolts, the May ’68 Paris student insurgency has served as a political and ideological outline for many French films, this most recent example forgoes a simplistic or romantic approach in favor for a temporal explanation of how disenfranchisement was then followed by abandon. Unless one is particularly passionate about long takes, little dialogue and remnants of French auteur cinema then Les Amants Réguliers unfavorably repel non-addicts.

Shot in glorious black and white with an aesthetic treatment that makes the film easily look half a century old, most likely the inspiration to tackle such a film came not from recent car burning in the outskirts of Paris, but instead from Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Dreamers. Having his own actor son cast in the Italian filmmaker’s film indeed planted the seed for another film from a totally different perspective.

Void of artificiality, Philippe Garrel’s (a veteran filmmaker who outside of France remains a virtual unknown) interpretation of events are carefully manuscripted and played out through his own flesh and blood. Far from the bourgeoisie character he played in Bertolucci’s example, Louis Garrel plays a poet whose existence plays in and out of the shadows of the conflict and is shouldered by a future conspirator and member of the opposite sex.

Garrel’s three-hour essay finds the moments in the timeline of events where the last of the bricks and stones were thrown thus becoming a curious exposé about throwing objects and then finding objects or subjects of interest. Almost segmented into three parts (the before, the after and the present) Garrel succeeds in capturing the dissolution of the time without issuing a commentary. Piano-key score that occasionally protrudes the essay and William Lubtchandsky hauntingly photography reminds us of the series of Godard films that today’s youth catch on a monthly basis in Paris’ Cinematheque Francaise.

Rewarded at last year’s Venice film festival for best Screenplay and best cinematography, Les Amants Réguliers is only rewarding to those who venture into it with an attention span that is longer than a standard television commercial. For art-house neophytes only.

Viewed in the French langauge.

Rating 2.5 stars