Olivier Assayas looks back at the days following the events of May 1968 – and at his own youth – with a delicate wit
Link to video: Something in the Air: watch trailer here
The son of a movie director and now in his 50s, Olivier Assayas has built up an interestingly varied body of work as a critic for Cahiers du cinéma, authored several books including a monograph on Ingmar Bergman, and directed over the past 20 years a succession of modest, intelligent films. Most are concerned with moral problems and social responsibility in a middle-class setting like his Les Destinées sentimentales about a rebellious young man reluctantly taking over the family's prestigious porcelain factory in the 1920s, and Summer Hours, the tale of siblings and their elderly mother gathering to settle the estate of a recently deceased painter. Slightly different are Irma Vep, a cinéaste's celebration of Hong Kong movies and...
Link to video: Something in the Air: watch trailer here
The son of a movie director and now in his 50s, Olivier Assayas has built up an interestingly varied body of work as a critic for Cahiers du cinéma, authored several books including a monograph on Ingmar Bergman, and directed over the past 20 years a succession of modest, intelligent films. Most are concerned with moral problems and social responsibility in a middle-class setting like his Les Destinées sentimentales about a rebellious young man reluctantly taking over the family's prestigious porcelain factory in the 1920s, and Summer Hours, the tale of siblings and their elderly mother gathering to settle the estate of a recently deceased painter. Slightly different are Irma Vep, a cinéaste's celebration of Hong Kong movies and...
- 5/25/2013
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
Olivier Assayas seems to be dramatising his own youth with this beautiful-looking account of the soixante-huitard aftermath – but politics give way too easily to nostalgia
In contemporary French and European cinema, the events of May 1968 live stubbornly on – intensely debated and treasured and re-mythologised. A whiff of tear gas is a madeleine. For wasn't it cinema itself, and the attempted sacking of the Cinématheque Française chief Henri Langlois, that helped spark the Paris uprising? Philippe Garrel's Les Amants Réguliers, or Regular Lovers (2005), showed a young poet, played by the director's son Louis, taking to the barricades in 1968. Louis Garrel played something similar in Bernardo Bertolucci's soixante-huitard swoon, The Dreamers (2003). Before that, Louis Malle's Milou En Mai, or May Fools (1990) starred Michel Piccoli as the provincial Milou, whose family estate in May 1968 is on the verge of being dismembered by history itself.
Olivier Assayas's Après Mai, or After May,...
In contemporary French and European cinema, the events of May 1968 live stubbornly on – intensely debated and treasured and re-mythologised. A whiff of tear gas is a madeleine. For wasn't it cinema itself, and the attempted sacking of the Cinématheque Française chief Henri Langlois, that helped spark the Paris uprising? Philippe Garrel's Les Amants Réguliers, or Regular Lovers (2005), showed a young poet, played by the director's son Louis, taking to the barricades in 1968. Louis Garrel played something similar in Bernardo Bertolucci's soixante-huitard swoon, The Dreamers (2003). Before that, Louis Malle's Milou En Mai, or May Fools (1990) starred Michel Piccoli as the provincial Milou, whose family estate in May 1968 is on the verge of being dismembered by history itself.
Olivier Assayas's Après Mai, or After May,...
- 5/23/2013
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
In a similar vein to his most recent project Carlos, renowned French filmmaker Olivier Assayas returns with Something in the Air, yet again proving his distinct talent for placing the viewer in a particular period, and immersing us within this world unbeknown to our own, as a director who has a real knack for finding intimacy amidst quite epic surroundings.
Set in 1968, we follow the coming-of-age tale of idealist student Gilles (Clément Métayer), an aspiring artist and political activist who joins forces with a group of likeminded youngsters, seeking a change and brighter future in the wake of the riots that took place across France that spring. Torn between his political allegiances and artistic notions, such a divide extends to his love life, as he falls for two women – Laure (Carole Combes), a freewheeling, liberated bohemian, and Christine (Lola Créton), a dedicated campaigner and revolutionary, and it seems that Gilles...
Set in 1968, we follow the coming-of-age tale of idealist student Gilles (Clément Métayer), an aspiring artist and political activist who joins forces with a group of likeminded youngsters, seeking a change and brighter future in the wake of the riots that took place across France that spring. Torn between his political allegiances and artistic notions, such a divide extends to his love life, as he falls for two women – Laure (Carole Combes), a freewheeling, liberated bohemian, and Christine (Lola Créton), a dedicated campaigner and revolutionary, and it seems that Gilles...
- 5/22/2013
- by Stefan Pape
- HeyUGuys.co.uk
When fighting their various political fights, young people oftentimes lose sight of why exactly they are fighting in the first place, getting swept up in the intrigue of dodging the police or suddenly having a tangible purpose in life. Olivier Assayas’s Something in the Air follows a group of these idealistic young people, who think that revolution is in their grasp… until disillusionment sets in. The film chronicles the lives of high schooler Gilles (Clément Métayer) and his friends’ involvement in this all-consuming revolutionary fight against the establishment in early 1970s France, in the aftermath of the General Strike and student uprising of May 1968. Assayas’s film is interesting and adeptly captures the misguided, yet well-meaning political fervor of this specific youth culture, but it sometimes falls flat in terms of delving deeper into characters and getting to the root of their passion for their various causes. At the start of the film, handsome...
- 10/6/2012
- by Caitlin Hughes
- FilmSchoolRejects.com
Title: Something In The Air (Après Mai) Sundance Selects Director: Olivier Assayas Screenwriter: Olivier Assayas Cast: Clément Métayer, Lola Créton, Carole Combes, India Menuez, Felix Armand Screened at: Review 1, NYC, 9/26/12 Opens: October 4, 2012 at the NY Film Festival, wide in spring 2013 Demonstrations against governments may be taking place these days in some of the “less developed” nations like Libya and Egypt, but in the late sixties, early seventies, the most progressive countries bore the brunt of high physical action most by the young. Here in the U.S. the youths had a point: end the Vietnam War, because if the conflict continued, there was an ever increasing [ Read More ]
The post Something in the Air Movie Review appeared first on Shockya.com.
The post Something in the Air Movie Review appeared first on Shockya.com.
- 9/27/2012
- by Harvey Karten
- ShockYa
Sex, drugs, art, and revolution — such was the life of a young European in 1971. Or at least it was the life of a young director at 17 trying to reconcile the state of his country and his ambitions for the future. Taking us along for the rapid ascent into adulthood of a group of school-aged French radicals, Olivier Assayas‘ semi-autobiographical film Something in the Air (Après mai) is a slice of life at a time of wholesale liberation. These Trotskyites look to dissolve the government’s ‘Special Brigades’ and win student rights through pamphlets and graffiti, their actions’ consequences escalating while their political bent begins to wane. There’s nothing like growing up to put an end to youthful idealism.
Gilles (Clement Metayer) is the epitome of boutique rebel, carving an ‘A’ for anarchy on his desk and listening to Syd Barrett while painting. A prospective artist, his dreams are easily...
Gilles (Clement Metayer) is the epitome of boutique rebel, carving an ‘A’ for anarchy on his desk and listening to Syd Barrett while painting. A prospective artist, his dreams are easily...
- 9/9/2012
- by jpraup@gmail.com (thefilmstage.com)
- The Film Stage
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