Metacritic Film

Regular Lovers

Starring Louis Garrel, Clotilde Hesme, Julien Lucas, Eric Rulliat, Nicolas Bridet, Mathieu Genet, Raïssa Mariotti, and Caroline Deruas-Garrel

MPAA RATING: Not Rated

Films Distribution
Drama  |  Foreign
178 minutes | B/W
France
Released In Theaters January 19, 2007

A group of young Parisians turn to a bohemian existence after the events of May 1968. (Film Distribution)

WRITTEN BY
Philippe Garrel (scenario and dialogue)
Arlette Langmann (scenario collaborator)
Marc Cholodenko (scenario collaborator)

DIRECTED BY
Philippe Garrel

Overall Metascore

This is a weighted, normalized average of all individual scores given by critics, on a scale of 0 (worst) to 100 (best).

76 / 100

Critic Reviews

90 Salon.com
A magical and supernally beautiful meditative drug-trip head-space picture (a full-fledged ZZM, q.v. above) for which all Euro-film masochists should rearrange their schedules. It'll be out on DVD soon, and that's great. But Garrel's films are almost never seen on the big screen, and this one's worth it.
90 The New York Times
While the film’s desperately sad finale indicates that Philippe Garrel knows the truth of '68 better than most and might have suffered a crisis in faith in the years since, this magnificent film is itself proof that all was not lost.
75 New York Post
Long, talky and shot in black and white. In other words, it requires a commitment in time and brain power - a commitment worth making.
75 The Onion (A.V. Club)
Regular Lovers isn't a folly-of-youth story that aches with emotion, like "Au Revoir," "Les Enfants" or "The Squid And The Whale." It's drier, and simpler.
75 Premiere
Through a haze of opium smoke and Molotov cocktails igniting, Regular Lovers plays out like the heavier politicized and unsentimentalized counterpoint to Bernardo Bertolucci's "The Dreamers."
60 Variety Leslie Felperin
Regular Lovers evokes the '60s pretty well just through dialogue and rhythm -- better, in fact, than Bernardo Bertolucci's more reverently detailed "The Dreamers." However, the film's slow tempo induces the feeling one is living through the whole of 1968 in one sitting.
60 Village Voice
Austere, underlit, uncompromisingly lackadaisical at three hours, and anachronistic in a half dozen ways.

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