Regular Lovers

Regular Lovers (Les Amants réguliers, 2005) is a French black-and-white drama you can watch online on iFILM. Directed by Philippe Garrel and shot by cinematographer William Lubtchansky, it stars Louis Garrel and Clothilde Hesme in a story that runs nearly three hours without hurrying anywhere.

Paris, May 1968. François is twenty — a poet who goes to the barricades but refuses to throw a Molotov cocktail at the police. When the riots burn out he ends up in a friend's flat where days dissolve into opium, long philosophical talk and the quiet weight of what comes after a revolution that didn't quite happen. He meets Lilie, a sculptor; they fall into each other slowly.

Garrel's father Maurice appears in the film. The director was himself that age during the uprising, which gives the picture its specific gravity — memory reconstructed rather than story invented. Unhurried, elliptical, precise. Stream Regular Lovers (2005) online on iFILM.