Les Amants réguliers (2005)

May 1968. The streets of Paris are ablaze as students and riot police unwittingly re-enact the famous barricade scene from Les Misèrables. One of these students is François Dervieux, a 20 year-old student, idealist and aspiring poet, who, along with his opium-smoking friends, has taken up the revolutionary cause. At a party, he meets Lilie, a young sculptor who seems to share his ideals and with whom he falls madly in love…

Winner of the Prix Louis Delluc in 2005, Les Amants réguliers is director Philippe Garrel's interpretation of the turbulent events of May 1968, informed by his own hands on experiences of the time. Adopting the cinematic style of the great French New Wave directors (notably Jean Eustache, Jean-Luc Godard and Jacques Rivette), Garrel succeeds in transporting us back to the late 1960s, to a period of immense social and political upheaval, and also one of great artistic release. The film's two principal actors - Louis Garrel (the director's talented son, who won the Most Promising Actor César in 2006 for his performance in this film) and Clotilde Hesme bear more than a passing resemblance to two of the most prominent icons of la Nouvelle Vague, Jean-Pierre Léaud and Anna Karina. Meanwhile, William Lubtchansky's lush black-and-white cinematography creates the illusion that the film is a genuine product of the era in which it is set.

As a genuine homage to the French New Wave and for its strikingly authentic depiction of the 1968 riots, the film does have a great deal going for it. However, Les Amants réguliers does tend to look more like an over-affectionate pastiche than an original work of cinema, and the inspired touch of Garrel's earlier films, notably his masterpiece J'entends plus la guitare (1991) is lacking. Whilst Les Amants réguliers perfectly reproduces the style and form of a great French auteur piece from the 1960s, it doesn't quite possess the vitality and raw poetry that made such films so unforgettable. So, whereas, for example, Jean Eustache's four-hour long La Maman et la putain (1973) is an absorbing work that is powerfully expressive of the existential preoccupations of young people living through uncertain times, Les Amants réguliers. at just under three hours, feels somehow lacking in deeper meaning and merely skates across the surface of very deep waters.

Philippe Garrel's appropriation of some of the more familiar New Wave techniques - such as Jean-Juc Godard's device of actors talking to camera in an improvised manner - creates an instant nostalgia hit for Nouvelle Vague junkies but as often as not these look like slavish imitation for its own sake. Most disappointingly, whilst the film amply conveys the mood of the era in which it is set, it doesn't really shed much of an insight into how those who participated in the May 1968 riots felt. The director's earlier film Le Révélateur (1968) is eminently more successful in this respect.

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Next Philippe Garrel film:
La Frontière de l'aube (2008)

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