Photograph: Allstar/SBS Productions
A slight, sexed-up, black-and-white rumination on desire, daddy issues and age-gap relationships, Philippe Garrel’s romantic drama fetishises “Frenchness”. Middle-aged philosophy professor Gilles (Éric Caravaca) is sleeping with the lithe, libidinous Ariane (Louise Chevillotte), a 23-year-old who happens to be one of his students. Meanwhile, Gilles’s daughter, Jeanne (played by the director’s daughter, Esther Garrel), is depressed after having recently been dumped and so moves into her father’s cramped Paris flat.
Voiceover is used in a vain, grating attempt to appear poetic (“I was played by love, not him,” says Jeanne in earnest), while a dance scene between the two girls is excruciatingly selfconscious. Still, though the film’s stylings are a little mannered, the two female leads are compelling screen presences, especially Garrel, who relishes the melodrama of fresh heartbreak.
