03/09/2005

Faithful to his place as incorruptible inheritor of the Nouvelle Vague, the French filmmaker Philippe Garrel delivered this morning with Les Amants réguliers [+see also:
trailer
interview: Philippe Garrel
film profile], projected in official competition, a demonstration without concession of his cinematic ideals. Black and white, single takes, turn-over following the script’s chronology, fixed shots with no time limit applied, in a work of 178 minutes which will please the buffs and petrify the impatient viewer. Placing the bar very high with his sculpted framing and his clear-obscure photography from the marvellous famous director of photography William Lubtchansky, Les Amants réguliers succeeds in imposing on the spectators its slowed rhythm while harmonising the temporal distortion fitting the drugs taken by the protagonists. As always with Garrel, who has made more than 20 longs features, the piece evokes idealism, art, the attraction of revolution and the consequences of a refusal of social order. Interpreted with sobriety by Louis Garrel (Dreamers [+see also:
trailer
interview: Bernardo Bertolucci
film profile]), the son of the filmmaker, alongside Clotilde Hesme and a seductive Mathieu Genet, Les Amants réguliers marks a return to the origins of his position as eternal hardline rebel: the events of May 1968.

In four parts, the film begins with "Les Espérances de feu", the flight of a young poet François (Louis Garrel) who refused military service, and his engagement on the barricades burning through the night and cat and mouse chases with the CRS which finish on the Paris rooftops. The next part deals with "Les espoirs fusillés" and the life of a sort of commune in an apartment, a world lost in opium, and free love, drowning in the Bohemian disillusion of failed revolution. The third chapter called "Les éclats d’inamertume" sees the break up of the group due to the departure of the rich owner (Mathieu Genet). François will also see the departure of the wife he loves (Clotilde Hesme). An epilogue, "Le sommeil des justes", ties up the story with the death of the poet whose illusions survive only in the imagination. The screenplay written by the director and his habitual co-writers Marc Chodolenko and Arlette Langmann, succeeds in creating a space for each character and offers a very realistic vision of the activists of 68 and their mental turmoil. However, the "Garrel touch" which won him a Silver Lion at Venice (J’entends plus la guitare – 1991) gives the entire work a style which determinedly refuses to seduce the public easily and which has divided the international press.

Produced by Gilles Sandoz for Maïa Films and by Pierre Chevalier for Arte France, Les Amants réguliers is sold internationally by Films Distribution and will be released on the French screens on the 26th October (Distribution : Ad Vitam).

(Translated from French)