Les amants réguliers

An atmospheric and original portrait of a group of young students in Paris when the beach was to be found under the streets. A central figure in the group is dealer and opium-smoker Antoine. He owns the house where the friends, who return to him ritually to help smoke his inexhaustible supply of drugs, come together or live. Antoine, however, is not the real protagonist of the film. This role is reserved for François, played by Louis Garrel, the director's son. The friends stand on the threshold of a new era; or at least that's what it feels like, and they investigate all the ways they can find to distinguish their lives from those of their parents. Experimenting with drugs is one of them, but there's also building barricades, finding first love, writing poems and considering suicide. The film is more based around atmosphere than narrative. The images are presented in an unreal kind of black & white. The film was fed by the maker's memories of the period around that famous, almost mythical month of May 1968. Autobiographical may not be the word - although it is applicable to the two other Garrel films in this programme - but this film makes it obvious that the maker did not pick up his knowledge of the mood and conditions from books. (GjZ)