Regular Lovers

“Regular Lovers” is three and a half hours spent with some of the most boring people you’ll ever meet. They’re boring because they’re bored, most of the time, and they’re boring because they’re terribly narcissistic, which means they think themselves fascinating. You’ve probably met people like this. Possibly you’ve been someone like this. Chances are you avoid people like this. I do.

Set in France in 1968, Philippe Garrel’s film follows a group of students as they overturn cars and throw bricks at police. When their revolution fails, they find a rich friend and all move into his extremely large house. There they smoke a lot of dope, trade bed partners, and pretend to be artists. One paints, and sells his paintings to his rich friend. Another writes poetry he never tries to publish. It’s a good thing, because what he reads for us to hear is awful. Another sculpts, and works in a foundry. She’s the only one who has a job.

[YouTube=http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b253/thisglimpse/regularlovers.jpg]
178 minutes is a long time, but Garrel manages to make it feel even longer. He refuses to explain anything he can simply suggest; when the riots happen, the shots are almost all mid to long, and so we see lots of burning cars, some faceless folks throwing bricks at a fire, and a anonymous crew of police firing mortars at an unknown target. Hope you can fil in the blanks on your own, because there are a lot of blanks and few clues. We never really get to know any of the characters; their clearly supposed to be placeholders in which anyone who “lived through the sixties” can impose their own experiences.

The movie ends with a thud – the rich friend decides to move to Morocco, and the gang has to figure out what to do with their lives. From a certain perspective, you’d have to say that the loss of their benefactor is a good thing; each of them has to decide if he’s really an artist, willing to make sacrifices for the sake of the art, or just a poser, living rent free in a house with lots of drugs.

Recommended

• if you ever lived in a rich friend’s house and did his drugs while pretending to be an artist. (Apparently, this description fits a lot of movie critics.)
• if you just love artsy French cinema.
• if you say you want a revolution, but well, you know, we all want to change the world.

Not Recommended

• if you’re not into long, slow, pretentious French movies.
• if you think people who pretend to be revolutionaries and artists but mostly spend their time spending their rich friend’s money are called LOSERS.