European Film Academy
Critics Award 2006 – Prix FIPRESCI

"Les amants réguliers" by Philippe Garrel:
Correcting Bertolucci
By Andrei Plakhov

A few years ago, recreating the age of student rebellion in The Dreamers, Bernardo Bertolucci invited along Louis Garrel, son of Philippe Garrel, and made him a star. Of the three young actors in the film, he was the only one who knew about 1968 from family legends. Philippe Garrel was on the barricades in the Latin Quarter of Paris, while Bertolucci faced the police in Campo dei Fiori in Rome. At the same time, he was shooting Partner with Pierre Clémenti who went home to Paris every weekend and came back to Rome with fresh news.

In 2001 Garrel took Sauvage innocence to Venice; Bertolucci was there with The Dreamers. The latter's working title was The Innocent, but the Italian director changed it because of his French friend and rival. Garrel had planned to cast his son in the film, but Louis was busy with the Bertolucci project. Now, the right moment has finally arrived: in Les amants réguliers, Garrel gives his own version of the events of May ’68, with Louis as protagonist. The film was shot in 39 days and for a tenth the budget of The Dreamers. Once, when Garrel was shooting a scene with real Paris policemen, one of them turned out to have been in Bertolucci's movie.

Les amants réguliers won two prizes in Venice, including a special award for director of photography William Lubtchansky for his hypnotic black-and-white images. This is a direct polemic with Bertolucci, who seduces the viewer with his sensual colour spectrum: no surprise that, after this film, Louis Garrel was called 'Caravaggio boy'. The plot also takes issue with The Dreamers polemically. Again, almost the entire action takes place in a huge bourgeois apartment abandoned by 'the parents' and occupied by a group of youngsters. Although 'the dreamers' are mostly busy with sexual and psychological games, 'les amants' confront the police, face intense feelings, adolescent breakdowns and mortal challenges.

Poetry — instead of cinema in The Dreamers — becomes the language of love between François (Louis Garrel), who expresses himself through poems, and Lilie (Clotilde Hesme). But love of cinema nevertheless remains an internal theme of the film, which is dedicated to the nouvelle vague and its radical follower, Jean Eustache. There are also hints of the severe, monumental aesthetic of early Miklós Jancsó films.

Structurally, Les amants réguliers consists of three parts. In the first, we witness the long, static, excruciating and hallucinogenic scene 'night of the barricades', where the protagonists use hardly any dialogue and recall the likes of Byron, Robespierre and Serge Gainsbourg, or allegorical figures from the paintings of Delacroix.     

The central part of the film concentrates on the story of the lovers, describing the 'circle of revolutionaries', and their wild 'nights of opium and hashish'. François confronts the authorities not only as a participant in the street riots but also because he escapes military service. There is a lot of talk — about Mao, about Bertolucci's Prima della rivoluzione — and discussions about whether it is possible or not to win happiness for workers without involving the workers themselves. One of the characters, Antoine, who has the heroin, confesses that he does not give a shit about revolution because he is rich. François suffers when his girlfriend sleeps with another man according to the spirit of time (and with the full agreement of François).

The third part is about what happens 'after the revolution'. The heroes of the barricades disperse; Lilie leaves for the US with a rich new friend. And François realises that revolution, love and, indeed, youth are over; only art remains. The dreamers survived May as a dream; the lovers get real experience and become adults, even if this may disappoint those who recognised in the characters of the film icons of those decadent poétes maudits who never grew old. In the first reels of the film, Garrel appeals to the tradition of classicism in the tragedies of Racine — to the conflicts between duty and feeling, between history and personality. The ending is surprisingly realistic, however, like something in a psychological Bildungsroman.

Apart from Louis, the director involved another family member in the project: François' grandfather is played by 80-year-old Maurice Garrel, an experienced theatre and cinema actor. All three, grandfather, father and son, look similar in spite of the age difference: they have the same aquiline Roman nose and deep-set eyes.

Philippe Garrel made his first film when he was 16, and by 20 had earned the reputation of the Nouvelle Vague's Wunderkind and 'younger brother of Godard'. His sophisticated cinematographic stle, with long concentrated frames, is unique. His films are like fake detective stories, where mystery lies, not in the plot but in the style. For instance, two characters in Night Wind (Le vent de la nuit), young and old, quickly forget about their male rivalry (even if the woman in question is Catherine Deneuve) and escape into ideological debate about the lessons of May '68.

Garrel was known as the obscure genius of the underground, being closely connected for the whole decade with Nico, the model and singer from Andy Warhol's factory. In Opium Nights, Nico's soundtrack is so tactile that it almost physically recreates the rhythms and feelings of the sixties. This is yet another alternative to Bertolucci's retro-style, likening the screen to an antique salon. Garrel does not need all this historical artifice and is not afraid that the clothes of his characters look as if they have been bought in the nearest shop.  

Andrei Plakhov
© FIPRESCI 2006

Les amants réguliers (Regular Lovers). A film by Philippe Garrel, France, 2005. Production: Maïa Films, Arte France Cinéma. Director: Philippe Garrel. Script: Philippe Garrel, with the collaboration of Arlette Langmann & Marc Cholodenko. Producer: Gilles Sandoz. Operator: William Lubtchansky. Production Design: Nikos Meletopoulos, Matthieu Menut. Editor: Françoise Collin, Philippe Garrel. With Louis Garrel, Clotilde Hesme, Julien Lucas, Eric Rulliat.

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