Regular Lovers (Les Amants R&eacute;guliers) (18) <!-- none onestar twostar threestar fourstar fivestar -->

Like Bertolucci's recent The Dreamers, this French drama reels back to les événements of Paris, May 1968, and tries to sift some meaning from an era that seemed at once more passionate and carefree. Philippe Garrel and his cinematographer William Lubtchansky shoot it in ravishing black and white, so that even a street choked with riot police and fires takes on the lyrical air of a dream.

Louis Garrel, the director's son, plays François, a 20-year-old poet with Valentino eyes who has escaped military service and, like countless others, sniffed revolution in the air. During a running battle with police he encounters budding sculptor Lilie (Clotilde Hesme), and they move into the apartment of a rich-kid friend Antoine (Julien Lucas) who presides over a lotus-land of druggy torpor.

The film is more a salute to tousle-haired youth than to the "spirit of 1968", which would be fine if Garrel hadn't seen fit to allow this virtually plotless meditation to meander for a full three hours. All the revolution seems to mean to these middle-class slackers is the right to get out of their heads on hash and opium, indulge in narcissistic posturing and hop into bed with passing strangers: in other words, to be a student, pre-New Labour style. A bit of a blague, as they say in France.