Regular Lovers (2005)

Fantastic!

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

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...

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.

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!)

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?