LES AMANTS ReGULIERS
aka REGULAR LOVERS

Year: 2005
UK: Artificial Eye
Cast: Louis Garrel, Clotilde Hesme, Julien Lucas, Mathieu Genet, eric Rulliat, Nicolas Bridet, Raïssa Mariotti, Caroline Deruas-Garrel, Rebecca Convenant, Marie Girardin, Maurice Garrel, Cecile Garcia Fogel, Marc Barbe, Nicolas Maury, Brigitte Sy, Nicolas Chupin, Martine Schambacher
Director: Philippe Garrel
Country: France
Language: French (English subtitles)
UK: 179 mins
UK Certificate: 18 contains hard drug use and brief sexual images
UK Release Date: 21 July 2006
UK Distributor

Synopsis

Paris, 1969. After having taken part in the student uprisings of May '68, a group of youngsters abandon themselves to the fumes of opium. At the centre of the group a doomed love grows between a 20 year-old youth, Francois (Louis Garrel) and a young girl Lilie (Clothilde Hesme), both involved in the revolt.

Philippe Garrel was himself 20 in '68. He was already making poetic films, and had shot two shorts (LES ENFANTS DeSACCORDeS, and DROIT DE VISITE), two feature films (ANeMONE, and MARIE POUR MeMOIRE) and a number of programmes for television, on rock music, girls, and the work of Jean-Luc Godard. Apparently Philippe Garrel filmed with colleagues during the May's events but the film was lost in the processing lab and will never be seen again. Jean-Luc Godard recalls some shots from them, saying "the only ones in which you saw the riot police full face, in dark, austere 35mm, at a time when everyone was using soft-focus 16mm."

Garrel himself says he filmed "allegories, figures posing in front of the barricades like statues. I was trying to show that Paris was cut in two".

LES AMANTS ReGULIERS is itself a film cut in two. First, there's a 'barricade' film' (showing scenes of the May events, filmed as if they were the preliminaries for a party, fearful and seen through a fog of tear gas), followed by a 'barricaded film', tracing the withdrawal from Paris of a group of people who refused to give up, who had had enough of this way of living, choosing to live a free, self-sufficient life in a house in the woods, far from civilization, full of boys, girls and opium.

There are wonderful performances from the entire cast, in particular from Louis Garrel who shows us the full range of emotions from tender and vulnerable to tough and hard.

LES AMANTS ReGULIERS can be seen as Garrel's response to Bertolucci's DREAMERS, a film about '68 in which Louis Garrel was also the central figure.

Filmed in black and white.