L'amant d'un jour

The French film L'Amant d'un jour was shown in the U.S. with the translated title Lover for a Day. It was co-written and directed by Philippe Garrel.

This movie has an interesting concept. Jeanne is a young woman who is kicked out of her boyfriend's apartment. She has nowhere to go, so she ends up at her father's apartment. No problem, except that her father is living with a young woman named Ariane, who is about Jeanne's age. It's interesting that Jeanne is played by Esther Garrel, who is director Garrel's daughter.

The two women get along well enough, and, except for a very dramatic scene, not much happens in the movie. It's very French. For, example, Ariane goes to the boyfriend's apartment to pick up Jeanne's belongings. She and the boyfriend have a very polite conversation, and they end up saying goodbye with the French double kiss. Characters in a U.S. film wouldn't be that casual and polite in that situation. Apparently it works in France.

We saw this film at the wonderful Dryden Theatre in Rochester's George Eastman Museum. It's a privilege to have a theater that shows a retrospective series of films by a French director who's not exactly a household name in the U.S.

Sadly, we just couldn't get into Garrel's style of filmmaking. The staff who introduce the films go on and on about his talent, but my wife and I weren't impressed. Maybe you do, indeed, need to be French to appreciate Garrel.

Almost all of the action in this film takes place indoors, so the movie will work well on the small screen.

P.S. The movie is loaded with sex. For better or for worse, most of the coupling takes place with the man and woman standing up in lavatories that are only semi-private. Not a great basis for eroticism.

About love and sex affairs, and also other intimate relations, all of them mostly dysfunctional (but realistic). In beautiful black and white cinematography.

It's tells a story, a statement or whatever you take. There is no blank or wrong plot or something like that with had nowadays movies. In a good flow, i saw a beautiful characters and good performances. I really enjoyed watching it.

An exploration of love and fidelity tied with a gloomy but humorous feeling.

Lover For A Day is about a philosophy teacher who is in a relationship with one of his students, Ariane, and his daughter, Jeanne, of the same age who moves in with them for some time. It is very French in that they immediately co-exist instead of making spectacles (although there are some hints that they are human like the rest of us despite being Parisienne).

The title of the film refers to the brief infidelities of Ariane. This behaviour seems to be treated as enigmatic, as a philosophical curiosity. There is nothing curious about it, the magisterium of anthropology is the place to turn to, it is well documented that the human animal has primary and secondary sexual strategies for transmitting their genes to the next generation. The answer is banal, the participants in this drama are banal, they do not rise above what is animal in themselves, there is no transcendence, no romance.

Ariane describes falling in love with Gilles when he says in class, "Philosophy is not about divorcing oneself from life". It was difficult not to see some humour in this in that he comes off as a bookish and torpid man. Of course Ariane is simply sleeping with him because he has roguish good looks, is comfortable in his own skin, and is the nearest authority figure.

One cannot fault the actors, Éric Caravaca, Esther Garrel, Louise Chevillotte, who absolutely outclass the boring story. I hope that the career of Louise Chevillotte takes off, as this appears to be her "break" as the Americans say.

The film's main positive is that it has a certain quality of eroticism, Esther finds out that Ariane has appeared in a pornographic magazine quite by chance, and there is no clang here as Chevillotte is genuinely attractive enough that this is believable. The sex scenes are very warming.

Garrel shoots in black and white because he knows nothing else, an old dog that cannot learn new tricks. Is he the last victim of 1968, dead alive? When the credits rolled there were little gasps and titters, "is that it?", yes that's it, no punchline, a little story without profundities.