Regular Lovers.

"'Can we make the revolution for the working class despite the working class?' one comrade wonders. The answer may be a foregone conclusion but Regular Lovers plods on dutifully, exhibiting the same glum perseverance as [Philipe] Garrel's career," writes J Hoberman in the Voice. "The film's subject matter and casting present an unavoidable critique of The Dreamers, Bernardo Bertolucci's risible evocation of Paris '68, which also starred Garrel fils. Dourly withholding as it may be, Regular Lovers is superior in every sense—not least in its near-complete absence of cinephilia."

For Salon's Andrew O'Hehir, it's "the transformative filmgoing experience of the last few months... but also a movie that would bore the pants and several layers of skin off many, many viewers." But "it inhabits the political, moral and spiritual anxiety of that era in a way The Dreamers never does."

Updated through 1/20.

"Nobody deserves a little commercial recognition more," writes Nick Pinkerton at indieWIRE; "trenchantly incapable of exposing film over anything but his own preoccupations, he's had a hardscrabble career of bumming short ends. His latest is a eulogy for lost revolutionary ideals - personal and political - recalled at their most beautiful twilight hours. Garrel's work has always borne him back ceaselessly into the past, revisiting lost girlfriends (a decade-long affair with Nico haunts his oeuvre) and stillborn utopias: 'It's a loser's film, really.'" And: "If someone can use this for an ad: 'A Masterpiece! 4/4 Stars!'"

Earlier: Scott Foundas in the LA Weekly. Also, this theatrical release is going to be limited, obviously, but here's good news: the DVD'll be out March 27.

The New York Times is running an abbreviated version of Manohla Dargis's New York Film Festival review.

"[Garrel] brings the past - even its unfashionable bits - back to life with an immediacy that bypasses retro cool," writes Steve Erickson at Nerve.

Update, 1/20: Nick Pinkerton at Reverse Shot: "I love and respect this movie far too much for deadening hyperbole - such a mass of celluloid deserves its fair chance to engage a living audience before our sect of art-house obscurists ceremonially put it in mothballs."

Posted by dwhudson at January 19, 2007 2:21 AM