ironhorse_iv
This movie by Director Philippe Garrel is really hard to watch. I know this movie got a lot of praise from other critics, but in my opinion, it's not for any regular movie lovers. It's not entertaining enough to get people to watch 3 hours of it. It's so drawn out and so long to watch. It's 183 min for goodness sakes! 3 hours of a lot of boring scenes and few enjoying sequences and this isn't the Director Cut. This is the normal movie. Honestly, in my opinion, they could have cut some of the scenes down a bit. Rewrite it and have fewer scenes. The story takes forever to get started. A group of Parisian students find themselves caught up in the chaotic events of May '68 where students and workers strikes and almost gave France a civil war, or revolution. When the strikes fail, the young man François (Louie Garrel) and his clique of friends, experience the aftermath of the events and grapple with their attempts to understand what has just occurred and move on after it. By having his son play Francois, director Philippe Garrel is using him as a memento mori as a way to relive May 1968, through him. It seems to me, that Philippe wants to relive the Bohemia Nouvelle Vague hippie culture again. I hate the movie for trying to make the police look like fascists and the revolutionaries as pacifist poets. It's truly not like that. May 1968 strikes honestly hurt France economy as some of the protesters were anarchist and Stalinist. If we study Russia's history. Communist is just as bad as capitalism. After the strikes, the young adults choice to make love and art. This is where the movie get kinda boring. They talk while taking drugs. It's like watching two people mumbles and grunts follow with a few lines there and now. The action disappears and we are left with people talking a bit, stare, talking more a bit, stare, and then more talking. Once again, half of the stuff they talk about isn't need in the film. In no way, does it move the plot forward. It felt like a lot of filler scenes as if the Director took a smoke break, and left the camera running. The movie seem to suffer from a lot of audio problems. Some of the scenes where they are talking you can hear the microphone brushing upon something, deep breathing sounds or uneven audio tones. They are quiet one minute and then the other minute. Loud. The scenes are so short, it cuts like crazy. The movie has a fondness for cutting from mid-scene to mid-scene and a few primitive dream sequences notwithstanding. Francois takes part in the French revolutions of 1789 and 1848 in his dreams, but it's no way helps him step up another revolution. It's bothersome to have dream scenes and it goes nowhere. I did like William Lubtchansky's grainy, high-contrast black-and-white cinematography. The movie truly look like a student art film. The movie feels so art house film that I was afraid the movie would end up with words 'Fin'. It's like watching Bernardo Bertolucci 'Dreamers' (2003 film) without the sex and nudity. Instead of bright colors, we get none. The film's subject matter and casting mirrors that of Bertolucci, but this movie lacks any entertaining value. I did laugh at one point, one of Garrel's draft-dodging rebels tries to set fire to the French flag, and we see the whole awkward process. Other than that, I was pretty bored waiting for the film to end. The music help me stay awake. While the movie wants to be Nouvelle Vague, it's no way New Wave. They listen to singers such as Nico, even with the fact, that she didn't hit her peak until the mid 1970's and this was 1968. Most of the music choice sounds pretty classic orchestra to me as if listening to classical music. The piano plays during some of the talking scenes, so I can barely understand or hear them. It's plays throughout the scenes, and then suddenly turns off. It has no fades in or fade out. It's come out of nowhere and exits. It's a bit annoying to have random piano doodles, of the opening chords from "I Am the Walrus.". By far, the greatest part of the movie is where several of his friends are seen dancing to the song "This Time Tomorrow" by The Kinks. It's weird in a way, because the song was not released until 1970, two years after the movie takes place. I'm in love with this scene even though it breaks my heart. Francois's face at as he watches his girlfriend dance says it all. He can't enjoy himself because he knows this moment will pass, his relationship won't last forever. He knows his girlfriend can live without him, he cannot. Some of these people will break up, move away, move on, get left behind, and pass away. That's life. It will happen to everyone. The movie works with the theme of amour fou -French for mad, passionate love or obsessive love and how people deal with it. Friends fall out with each other, and he knew change was happening. Personal gradually replaces the political. Francois watches as his group metamorphoses and, as he falls in love with a young woman and starts to make new commitments, feels himself changing as well. Like I said before, it's a great theme about how life works, but it's takes a lifetime on film to get this far. It's like watching grass grow. Overall: this movie requires a commitment in time and brain power to make it worth seeing. No way is this for movie watchers. This is for people that have no life of their own, and like watching other people lives. At less they should have made a movie about somebody's life who is more adventured. That would be fun.
jasongbeale
The first 60 minutes of 'Regular Lovers' is highly recommended. The first long sequence depicts the street riots in Paris of 1968, and are extremely convincing in the combination of random images and sounds.After such a promising start, it's downhill... For another 2 hours the 'story' dwells on a tedious and passionless relationship between two young artists. Unnecessarily extended shots with no action or dialogue are little more than insipid imitations of Godard's style, without his wit or intelligence. They add nothing to this particular film I'm afraid.I love the nouvelle vague, don't get me wrong, but this film mimics 'avant-garde' techniques to end up with the equivalent of an endless Calvin Klein advertisement - bored and handsome youths lolling about, being decadent and looking so photogenic. It needs much more dynamism and emotion, either in the acting or in the editing. It might have made a tolerable 2 hour film, and perhaps more involving for this audience member.
dromasca
Seeing Les Amants Reguliers calls immediately for comparison with Bertolucci's movie 'The Dreamers', in my opinion the best film made about the 1968 revolt of students in Paris. Actually director Philippe Garrel does not seem to avoid comparing with his much more famous colleague, sharing the principal actor and even including a direct replica eye-in-viewer-eye about an older film of Bertolucci. And yet, LAR is a different film, and an interesting one.The story line seems also familiar. The movie starts with long scenes of the 1968 'emeutes', maybe among the best done until now. The film is made in black-and-white, and the perspective of the static camera on one side or the other of the barricade reminds Eisenstein. Then, as in The Dreamers, the action moves in the Parisian flat where the heroes of the defeated revolt make art, smoke drugs, dream, and fall for one other. There is no direct social comment, no real explanation of the background of the revolt. The movie focuses on the psychology of the characters and on the love story between the main characters. It's like a premonition of the process of transition to the establishment that the generation of the 1968 went through, it's just that not all the participants may adapt or survive.The film is more about the characters than about the events. And it is merely for the style it will be remembered about. The black-and-white cinema is memorable not only in the revolution scenes, but also when looking at the characters evolution. Many sequences are enhanced by a technique that is derived from the silent films movies, with long takes accompanied by a off piano tune. The effect is exquisite. Yet the length of the film is hardly justified, it lasts more than three hours and I doubt that cutting it to only two hours would have been a miss - actually I am convinced it's quite a contrary.Without raising at the depth and subtlety of Bertolucci's movie LAR is another perspective to remember about one of the more important years in the history of France and of the world in the 20th century.
NYCDude
This is clearly a French film. It is about young group of idealist/revolutionary/anarchistic people. It moves very slowly. Long takes. LOng closeups. A minute or more devoted to an attempt to light a pipe full of hash/opium. A long take on how a group overturns a car and burns it. It is a black and white film. The subtitles were white, so about a third of the time they were unreadable. (Why do they do this?) I walked out after about an hour and three quarters when it became clear that this picture was going nowhere, slow. I was not the first to walk out. It was the first time I walked out of a picture in my long lifetime. (Well, maybe the second.)
