Regular Lovers review

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Writer/director Philippe Garrel’s autobiographically-inspired epic Regular Lovers is a wonderfully melancholic meditation on both the events of May 1968 in revolutionary Paris and on a lost love in the numbed aftermath. The filmmaker’s son Louis (the star of Bertolucci’s The Dreamers) is the 20-year-old poet and student protester François, who’s dodging the draft, hurling Molotov cocktails from the barricades, and falling for the beautiful sculptor Lilie (Clotilde Hesme).

A virtually plotless homage to Nouvelle Vague cinema – beautiful young actors on the streets of the French capital, characters addressing the camera, fragments of conversation, dream sequences, the use of chapter headings – Regular Lovers isn’t an easy watch, but its hypnotic mood of sadness and disillusionment has a lingering power.

The Total Film team are made up of the finest minds in all of film journalism. They are: Editor Jane Crowther, Deputy Editor Matt Maytum, Reviews Ed Matthew Leyland, News Editor Jordan Farley, and Online Editor Emily Murray. Expect exclusive news, reviews, features, and more from the team behind the smarter movie magazine. 

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