Regular Lovers (2005) User Reviews

Let's breathe the forgotten atmosphere of the Nouvelle Vague!

[Aquilant · 8/10 · 14 September 2005]

Philippe Garrel makes us breathe the forgotten atmosphere of the Nouvelle Vague, almost lost among the vestiges of its ancient splendor but ready to rise again from its ashes if recalled from the past. They who are a little acquainted with the director's subjects, on the other hand, may know very well how he's obsessed by a lingering sense of loss as far as fickleness of reality is concerned. "Les amants réguliers", therefore, show us the parallel stories of an "amour fou" and of a tempted revolution gone to ruin under the direction of young French students.

The first part of the story is about the dramatic events of May '68 in France evoked in a series of astonishing plan-sequences, a sort of cinema verité style, that place the student insurrection in anything but an enviable light against a pitch-black background.

There's much that can be said about the peculiarities of black-and-white photography used to describe the battle between students and police, where the high contrasts confer an unrealistic atmosphere to the sequences and darkness closes in upon the excited bodies wrapping them in mystery. The images, completely deprived of words, show the real consistence of the myth, made of crude violence, more and more emphasized by the exasperated reality of the movie shootings. The individual doesn't count anything at all here: he tends to disappear in the mass. What really matters in these fight scenes are the significance of the mass-suggestion, the blind fury of the juvenile assault, sinister eulogies of the power of the mob, even if conceived like separate entities apart from any kind of emotion, with the cold and distant look of an entomologist intent to catalog his insect collection.

The second part of the story is described in a quieter and most intimate way. Stands out on the horizon the distressing portrait of a self-centered generation in search of its lost time, completely disenchanted about the individual values of men, inclined to rotate on its own axis between opium fumes and making a funeral oration in the praise of its recent defeat.

"Les amants réguliers" seems to evoke from time to time the shadow of the great Robert Bresson, revised and corrected by Garrel's particular sensibility without drifting away from the main argument, trying to expand overall perspectives on the subject of human disillusions that though painful may bring us to the truth. In my opinion, trying to penetrate deeply into the substrate of the story, if a man lets himself go and play things by ear, he probably will find that he can bring out the dark side of his self with dire and irretrievable consequences.

1968 without Bertolucci

[dromasca · 7/10 · 4 August 2007]

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.

Be patient, this film pays off!

[markjhodge · 8/10 · 14 January 2007]

The reason I am reviewing this is that the previous review, was written by someone who walked out of this film, not even half way through. Unfortunately for him, he missed out on a film of tremendous beauty. Agreed the film was very slow to start, in fact the friend I was with fell asleep briefly,I woke him before his snoring disturbed the rest of the audience. Thankfully the film developed from there into a story of love, drugs and what it was like to be young and free in the experimental 60s. Fantastic performances from the two leads and a great look to the film that gave it a real authentic feel. Be patient, like many great films its well worth the wait, and is certainly a film that I will look forward to revisiting! 8/10

A true French masterpiece!

[lallet · 10/10 · 18 March 2006]

This film is probably the best new French film I've seen in this century so far. There have been some great ones including Noe's Irreversible, Green's Le Pont des Arts and Hadzihalilovic's Innocencebut none of them come close to Les Amants Reguliers' timeless glory.

The movie is a description of the events of May 68 and what followed in the wake of it and furthermore it is and update of, and a homage to, the Nouvelle Vague-movies of those days. Concerning the depiction of the riots in Paris the movie is meticulously accurate (I'm only 19 and I wasn't there myself but you know what I mean)and the almost real-time and very long riot scenes set the stage perfectly for the aftermath of the events in the streets of Paris. The riots are not glorified or beautifully photographed like the ones in Bertolucci's The Dreamers (to which the movie is comparable in many ways) instead they are filmed in grimy black and white shots courtesy of the excellent William Lubtchansky. The love story that is the movie's main concern after the riots in 68 is filmed in stunning and far less blurred shots and manages to evoke true feelings of love and adolescent confusion in the midst of the otherwise politically concerned and seemingly cold environment.

This film is a beautiful love story and it radiates through it that the director wants to depict his own experiences of those mythical late 60's which makes the film all the more compelling. But the film is also a homage to the whole Nouvelle Vague canon. Much of the dialogue evokes early Truffaut, and the length and non-action and plot less structure is reminiscent of Eustache or Rivette. There are even Godard-like verfremdung-effects with the persons looking directly into the camera and even addressing Bernardo Bertolucci directly. This film is no doubt an answer song to Bertolucci's The Dreamers and it is also a Nouvelle Vague homage but still it stands by itself as a beautiful and radiant love story.

Bottom line: This movie is incredible and if you love French cinema you shouldn't sleep on it. It may be the finest french film since Eustache's La Mamain et la Putain.

Not for the regular movie lovers.

[ironhorse_iv · 6/10 · 17 May 2013]

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.

Best French movie of the year !!

[annaelle-simonet · 10/10 · 20 December 2005]

This is the best French movie of the year ! I saw it twice and I found it great both times. I didn't think it boring at all even though it is very long (3 hours). I'm seventeen so I obviously didn't get to live the events of may 1968 that marked an extremely important turn in French history, but it doesn't really matter since I still really enjoyed the film. It's actually quite universal : people of my parents' age can identify to the characters and so can people my age. Garrel seems to perfectly understand young people, the way they think and the complications of love as well as the loss of illusions concerning the possibility of changing the world. Maybe that's because the character played by Louis Garrel (his son)is actually meant to represent Philippe Garrel himself. Well anyway, great movie, no action (have to be honest on that point) but so strong feelings that you can't possibly stay indifferent to it. If you're looking for a relaxing Sunday-evening movie, don't waste your time on this, you'll be disappointed. But if you like cinema, you'll like Les Amants Réguliers which is a bewitching movie close to those made in the 50's and 60's by the Nouvelle Vague artists.

Cinema as art.

[naluvara · 10/10 · 16 October 2006]

This is a very long movie, indeed. But it is quite beautiful, and a good example to show why cinema can be considered art. A story easily told cannot be expected in Les Amants Réguliers, but every scene, every silence here tells much more than a hundred dialogs. Touching, different, perfect in its pictures and soundtrack, showing why the close brought by the cinema as one of its main features became the greatest innovation in any dramatic representation. Someone who is used to that kind of movies where everything is told, and action takes place all the time, will find this tiring. But it is worth watching, to find out other possibilities of feeling a story.

Great start then downhill

[jasongbeale · 3/10 · 9 August 2011]

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.

Bohemian rebellious...

[susanaferenc · 8/10 · 12 October 2008]

It's not like an historical movie, it's not a movie with unforgettable love stories, it's not a movie with a spectacular scenario, but i can surely say it's a movie with a great atmosphere...

It had that 60's kind of bohemian and rebellious spirit: a group of friends living in a poor apartment in Paris, each one making art, dreaming of changing the world, doing drugs and loving in his very own way.

It takes a lot of patience to watch, and a special mood, that if you're not in, you might find it extremely boring and dull.

I liked a lot the very realistic approach of the events that took place and their immediate effect on student's lives: the fear for their future, the difficulty of earning their living, the obstacles in following their dreams.

What i absolutely loved was the black & white image. The still camera angles were amazing, they were like freezing moments. It left me the impression of a long slide show of old and very emotive and suggestive photographs. I actually had to see the movie again, just to take those amazing screen-shots.

In one word: beautiful...

Worst French film of the year!

[z-olmek · 1/10 · 19 March 2006]

I saw this film last night and came online specifically to see if others thought it was as awful as I did.

Granted, obviously some people see a lot in this film that I didn't, so if you're one of those people, fine - good luck to you. But I'm a patient person. I've enjoyed extremely long films before. But this was an exercise in torture for me.

I honestly felt that this was one of those films with little to say, and that it was more about style than substance - however, the style, too, made me feel like tearing my hair out. Pretty much anything interesting that happens during the course of the film happens OFF-SCREEN. It's like a deliberate attempt to make a film entirely from outtakes - the bits that would usually be reserved for the deleted scenes section of a DVD, if they were shown to the public at all.

You don't even get to find out, in the end, ANYTHING about the main character, Francois. I had no sympathy for any of the characters in this film, except perhaps the violinist & his goat, and the old man who believes that octopuses live to 300 because they're really smart. Seriously, I was excited when it cut to a shot of Francois holding a gun to his head. I felt so ripped off when even his inevitable suicide turned out to be gut-wrenchingly boring.

Oh, and where was the editor? Off smoking opium, too? I swear, I almost screamed every time I was subjected to an extended shot of absolutely nothing happening, except perhaps someone pacing backwards and forwards, and then FINALLY there would be a very abrupt cut to the next scene, and it would be A YEAR LATER, and WE'D MISSED EVERYTHING INTERESTING THAT HAPPENED IN THE MEANTIME, and everyone was STILL wearing the SAME BLOODY CLOTHES....!?!?!???

So, in conclusion, if you liked it - great. But this review is intended as an antidote to the fawning "you'll love this film if you love cinema" dross I've seen posted here and elsewhere. (See? I hated the film and I STILL included a sly winking reference to its content!)

What to say...

[minunimion · 10/10 · 24 November 2020]

Could this movie be any better? No, I don't think so, everything was absolutely as it had to be... scenery, script, actors, B&W, atmosphere, pace. A portrait of the situation that you read about Paris, France, but even in other Countries. Young people, a bit confused who reacted to the power thinking that the solution would be the violence, destruction, drugs to feel the smell of freedom. Unfortunately, more or less they destructed only themselves and in the end many of them started to work as other people already did. Of course they changed a bit the system, but the system, the power, is much stronger than a bunch of people, because the power has that money that young people often hate, but as it's depicted in this movie one of them is rich and thanks to his money is possible to have a Jaguar, a big house to host the others, food and drugs for all of them. You see, the revolution without money is difficult, but often the revolution is against money. A bit confusing. Anyway, among the others, we have a painter, a sculpture who works to live, a writer who doesn't really know what to do in his life and that will be the most vulnerable person in this movie, at least in my opinion. The portrait of that time is perfectly depicted, every shade, shadow, nuance is just perfect so the choice of shooting in B&W. The story of a group of young people in the late sixties, men and women with their issues, the ideals, the love or something called in that way, the sadness, the anger, the dreams, the life, the "freedom", the hope and then, the very reality. A group of people who support each other like a family until the moment in which some of them realize that it's time to move forward, the time of the revolution is gone and they can't go on like that. Some of them find themselves abandoned and incapable to go on without the support of the others. I was a bit younger than them in the late sixties, but I lived the revolution that happened in the middle of the seventies in Italy and it wasn't any different... violence, destruction, robberies, drugs. Not for everybody.

Terrible

[paulmartin-2 · 5/10 · 8 April 2006]

This is one of many films I have seen at the Melbourne French Film Festival 2006. I average 100 films a year on the big screen and this is only the third film I have ever walked out on (after 75 minutes).

Yes, it looks absolutely beautiful. Cinematography and lighting are great. The characters all look authentic and you'd swear you were watching a film made 30 or more years ago. It looks like a piece of art, but for me cinema is all about telling a story. And that's where this film falls apart - all style and no substance.

There is no story, nothing compelling. It was so laborious to watch and a struggle to stay awake. There was little to differentiate this film from just looking at a book of old European photography (and that's not what I go to a cinema for, as much as I love photography). I felt that if it was like this after 75 minutes, how can I sit here for 3 hours! Obviously many others felt the same way because about 10% of the audience left before us. The only other time that I have seen a walkout like this was with The Aristocrats. This film was a wasted opportunity.

What a waste of time

[mamlukman · 1/10 · 22 September 2005]

I saw this at the Toronto Inter. Film Festival in Sept. 2005. The description seemed intriguing--how wrong I was! This could easily be the worst movie I have ever seen--in 50 years! I see the director is my age (b. 1948) and lived with Nico of the Velvet Underground, which leads us to Andy Warhol, which coincidently is the one I thought of while watching this--Warhol's 24+ hour movies of nothing much happening. This is not art, this is boredom.

Specifically: black & white. OK, maybe...but what is the purpose here? Surely they had color in 1968! And there is no contrast with the present. And yes, the subtitles were in white, naturally. I don't think I missed much, but that made about 20% of them illegible.

Next, it's pure chronological order, but with seemingly random events thrown in. What's the purpose of the conversation with the old man at the dinner table? It adds nothing to the movie. There were many similar scenes--almost like someone took a camcorder and filmed random people and spliced them together to make a movie.

Plot? None. The "riot" consists of some figures in the distance occasionally heaving a rock off screen. Mostly it's an excruciating length of time watching people (in the distance!) stand around. The repetitive opium smoking is just as boring. When the main character got a cute girlfriend, I perked up, but no, she was boring too! This is perhaps the only French film I've seen where no one takes off their clothes. Probably they were too bored to bother.

Romance? None. The girl seems totally indifferent to everything--maybe her sculpture holds some interest, but if it does, we're not shown that. We are completely indifferent to the fate of the characters because they are all unappealing. Maybe that's the point of all this?

Boring. Boring.

[NYCDude · 2/10 · 11 February 2007]

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.)

Romance ?

[simonasidorin · 1/10 · 2 July 2007]

Well , of course everybody is entitled to have an opinion about a thing ...everything. The presentation was interesting : black and white movie , the year 1968 , students manifestations , general strike , youth , ideals, love.....etc. Sorry but I did not sense LOVE , ROMANCE . A lover who is all right that his girlfriend sleeps with no matter who ? That is love ? But not only that , the movie is very long and for no reason , I had to stop watching the movie several time because I simply lost interest. I waited for something to happen but .......NOTHING. The only thing I was impressed during the movie : Gypsy fiddler playing in the streets , yes that was nice. I do not think that art should be complicated , encrypted , hidden in secret meanings , confusing .Big disappointment and waste of time !