![]() Only by venturing far into the absurd, with a hilarious scene at a Pinewood Studios shoot in London involving Nazis, a voluptuous cavewoman and a fire-breathing prehistoric reptile, does Gilles find what appears to be his path forward. Some half-hearted involvement with his father on a television detective series follows, cementing his disdain for bourgeois convention. That sensation is steadily amplified as his commitment to radicalism starts to ebb and he struggles with the direction his future should take. PHOTOS: Venice Film Festival Day 1: Opening Ceremony Brings Out Glitz, Glamour and Kate Hudson His close comrade Alain ( Felix Armand) and the latter’s American girlfriend Leslie ( India Salvor Menuez) also are bound for other destinations, causing Gilles to head back to Paris, stung by his first taste of disillusionment. She wants them to continue traveling with an agitprop filmmaking collective, but Gilles finds the group’s craft uninspired and their politics primitive. Idyllic as much of their time there is, fissures begin to form, notably between Gilles and Christine. But when a security guard is injured, Gilles and a handful of others escape the heat by going to Italy for the summer. Initially, there’s a sense of heady purposefulness as Gilles and his group are mobilized, gathering materials for daring nighttime graffiti raids in which they plaster the school buildings with anti-establishment posters and slogans. The opening scenes that recreate a violent clash between riot police and activists in 1971 are visceral, breathless and tremendously unsettling. It also takes in his failed romances with free-spirited Laure ( Carole Combes) and later the more grounded Chrstine ( Lola Creton), both of whom display a self-knowledge that eludes him. Starting when Gilles is a high school senior, the film charts his increasing pull between radicalism and self-expression as an artist, first as a painter and then via his curious early steps into the film industry. PHOTOS: Venice Film Festival Day 3: Zac Efron Touts ‘At Any Price,’ Spike Lee Celebrates ‘Bad 25’ It also provides a certain flipside kinship with the director’s 2010 epic Carlos, which was set partly in the same period but with a contrasting illustration of revolutionary zeal put into galvanizing action. That gives his film a melancholy texture that sets it apart from most screen forays into this territory. While Assayas makes clear that the rabblerousing was a necessary phase of the countercultural movement, he rightly questions its effectiveness in achieving many of the immediate goals. In the case of Gilles ( Clement Metayer) and many others it was channeled into art instead. That caused the political energy to wane and eventually evaporate. The big-picture ideology that called for sweeping change was fragmented by countless micro-ideologies in irreconcilable conflict. The passionate commitment of the time toward revolution is amply conveyed here, but it’s also depicted as cripplingly diffuse. ![]() But Assayas refreshingly considers that legacy – “after May,” as the original French title indicates – from a clear-headed distance and with a certain amount of wry cynicism. The radical leftist spirit that lingered long after the May 1968 Paris student protests has been the subject of countless European films, usually romanticized with that softening glaze of middle-aged nostalgia for youthful convictions. STORY: Venice 2012: ‘Something in the Air,’ ‘Pieta’ Premiere Austrian Film Blasted by Catholic Group 'Blonde' DP Talks Interpreting Marilyn Monroe's Life Through Experimentation and Excess: "We Were Just Pushing Things"
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