BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM drowns himself in Regular Lovers, Philippe Garrel’s vast, giddy, richly contextual time capsule of sixties French youth and the fleeting promise of revolution.


PARIS 1968 seems to be a touchstone for European cinema. Some of the great films built up to it (Weekend, Before the Revolution); some of the great films deal with its aftermath (La Maman et la Putain). Unlike American retellings of the late 60s, there often appears to be a real lack of nostalgia and rose-tintedness when looking back. This may be due to the personal involvement of the filmmakers involved – people like Eustache, Godard, and Bertolucci for example, were heavily involved. Regular Lovers (Les amants réguliers) is a remembrance of such events from Philippe Garrel, a highly underrated French auteur.

Garrel himself was heavily involved in the 1968 student riots which took place in Paris. He was the major figurehead of the Zanzibar group, a band of young revolutionary filmmakers who fought on the barricades in Paris, and then withdrew to Africa while making some politically charged and revolutionary work. The films reputedly were more revolutionary than the New Wave movement which spawned their love of film with 100% improvised films shot at express pace. So it’s Garrel’s turn to cast his critical eye on what took place close to forty years ago.

Regular Lovers feels like a giant hangover. No doubt this will put off audiences who can’t handle slow moving and murky films – but this film is helped by thinking and putting it all into context. The first hour deals with the revolution – a young man (played by Garrel’s son Louis Garrel, who was the French male lead in The Dreamers, Bertolucci’s romantic recollection of events) participates in the riots and falls in love with a sculptor, Lilie. The riots in particular feel like a giddy drunken night out – the magnificent black and white cinematography by William Lubtchansky plays sharply on contrast and darkness. The emphasis on silence and waiting creates a sense of confusion (the anticipation of a revolution that never really eventuates, which can be referred back to Bertolucci and Stendhal). The remaining two hours, where Louis’ relationship plays out to its natural conclusion, leaves the sensation of a hangover – stillness, placidity, a languid pace where things seem uncertain and you never really know what happened the night before.

It is clear those who love French cinema will be able to pinpoint the film’s references. La Maman et la Putain (Eustache’s bitter retelling of the failures of ‘68) is directly quoted as a scene (and is stylistically and thematically very similar), while Godardian interruption techniques are used by Lilie to inform the audience about Bertolucci’s Before the Revolution. The relationship is filmed alongside Paris in a way that it looks like a bitter version of Jean Vigo’s masterpiece L’Atalante. But Regular Lovers is much more than direct quotations – it’s a director acknowledging his own place in film history in amongst the failure of idealism and a revolution that never materialises.