A response to Bernardo Bertolucci’s crass, sentimental The Dreamers (2003), Philippe Garrel’s tremendous Les amants réguliers could be called After the Revolution—or, After the Hoped-for Revolution.
Louis Garrel plays François Dervieux, a 20-year-old poet who joins comrades (one of whom is a Léaud-lookalike), some of them Communists, others anarchists, in violent street activism in 1968 Paris. Factory strikes fold into “the movement,” which disintegrates, provoking François to muse (I do not know whom he is quoting), “Can we make the revolution for the working class despite the working class?” It appears that labor wants more money only.
In shimmering black and white (William Lubtchansky is his inspired cinematographer), Garrel* takes to the nighttime streets not just for car burnings and confrontations with the police but also for walks shared by François and Lilie (Clotilde Hesme, wonderful), the essence of youthful romance. (Lilie is a sculptor; another character, a painter.) Garrel’s style could be described as consisting of snatches of real time. Long, fluid takes in the dark, outdoors or in, create a delicate dreaminess that Garrel punctuates with snippets of François’s actual dreams. Garrel loves to suspend time, to hold the hopefulness of the sixties in his mind, but he also cuts to shots of intricate activity to provide surprising outbursts of in-the-momentness.
The romance of François and Lilie—although lovers, they aren’t ever shown making love—reflects on François’s revolutionary idealism. It, too, dissolves—not for want of love on either soul’s part but for what Lilie regards as practical necessity. Left with neither a new France nor the love of his life, François dies dreaming in his sleep.
For some of us of the sixties, life at best has struggled in the shadow of the French Revolution that was not to be.
* Prix Louis Delluc; best director, Venice and Lumière Awards; international critics’ prize, European Film Awards
REGULAR LOVERS (Philippe Garrel, 2005)
March 8, 2008A response to Bernardo Bertolucci’s crass, sentimental The Dreamers (2003), Philippe Garrel’s tremendous Les amants réguliers could be called After the Revolution—or, After the Hoped-for Revolution.
Louis Garrel plays François Dervieux, a 20-year-old poet who joins comrades (one of whom is a Léaud-lookalike), some of them Communists, others anarchists, in violent street activism in 1968 Paris. Factory strikes fold into “the movement,” which disintegrates, provoking François to muse (I do not know whom he is quoting), “Can we make the revolution for the working class despite the working class?” It appears that labor wants more money only.
In shimmering black and white (William Lubtchansky is his inspired cinematographer), Garrel* takes to the nighttime streets not just for car burnings and confrontations with the police but also for walks shared by François and Lilie (Clotilde Hesme, wonderful), the essence of youthful romance. (Lilie is a sculptor; another character, a painter.) Garrel’s style could be described as consisting of snatches of real time. Long, fluid takes in the dark, outdoors or in, create a delicate dreaminess that Garrel punctuates with snippets of François’s actual dreams. Garrel loves to suspend time, to hold the hopefulness of the sixties in his mind, but he also cuts to shots of intricate activity to provide surprising outbursts of in-the-momentness.
The romance of François and Lilie—although lovers, they aren’t ever shown making love—reflects on François’s revolutionary idealism. It, too, dissolves—not for want of love on either soul’s part but for what Lilie regards as practical necessity. Left with neither a new France nor the love of his life, François dies dreaming in his sleep.
For some of us of the sixties, life at best has struggled in the shadow of the French Revolution that was not to be.
* Prix Louis Delluc; best director, Venice and Lumière Awards; international critics’ prize, European Film Awards
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