“I wanted to leave an uncensored record of 1968,” says veteran French director Philippe Garrel on the sole extra (dust-dry Venice press conference) supporting his throwback to the New Wave. And boy, is it uncompromising. Over three hours, this talky tale of a would-be firebrand, poet and opium addict (Louis Garrel, the director’s son) crawls by. The cinematography is fiercely monochrome and the era’s riots occur off-camera or as hallucinatory memories. It’s less portrait of a poet as a revolutionary, more hazy sketch of a bygone era, forsaking the fruitiness of Bertolucci’s The Dreamers for severity. As a reverie on idealism lost to hot air, though, it feels true. Slug an espresso and tough it out.
Read the full Les Amants Reguliers review
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