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Shot in lustrous black and white, Regular Lovers is a melancholy meditation upon both the events of May 1968 in Paris and a doomed love affair. Writer-director Philippe Garrel's son Louis (star of Bertolucci's The Dreamers) plays 20-year-old poet and student protester François, who falls for the beautiful sculptor Lilie (impressive newcomer Clotilde Hesme) during the numbed aftermath of the revolution.

This is a film very much in two halves, with the first hour focusing on the "Night of the Barricades". The draft-dodging François and his comrades hurl Molotov cocktails at columns of riot police in an extended sequence full of expressionistic verve. The plumes of tear gas across the wasteland, the dream sequences imagining uprisings throughout history, and the restricted camera perspectives give these clashes a phantasmagoric quality.

"A HOMAGE TO NEW WAVE CINEMA"

The rest of Regular Lovers concentrates on the relationship between François and Lilie. The couple retreat from mainstream society and hang out with a circle of artistic, opium-smoking friends at an opulent crash pad belonging to the independently wealthy Antoine (Julien Lucas). This section of the film is a virtually plotless homage to French New Wave cinema. Beautiful young actors wander deserted Parisian streets, conversation is snatched in fragments and characters directly address the camera.

Regular Lovers is undeniably a demanding watch, but its hypnotic sadness and disillusionment has a lingering power.

In French with English subtitles.