|
Something in the Air
| Released |
24 May 2013 |
| Director |
Olivier Assayas |
Starring
|
Clément Métayer, Lola Créton, Felix Armand, Carole Combes, India Menuez, Hugo Conzelmann, Mathias Renou, Léa Rougeron |
| Writer(s) |
Olivier Assayas |
Producer(s)
|
Charles Gillibert, Nathanael Karmitz |
| Origin |
France |
| Running Time |
122 minutes |
| Genre |
Drama |
| Rating |
16 |
|
|
The kids aren’t alright.
Following on from 2010’s muscular and assured Carlos, Olivier Assayas returns with another period piece, this time drawing focus on a number of artistically-inclined Parisian teenagers following the May ’68 student uprising.
To go into plot particulars would be folly, such is the meandering nature of Assayas’ work, but he provides us with various snapshots of a listless group of teens as they; practise militant anarchism, have casual sex, fall in and out of love, dabble in heroin, burn poems by candlelight and generally fool themselves into thinking this is all working towards finding themselves. Assayas’ rhetoric is awash with adolescent naiveté, but it is often unclear whether he is glamorising or scorning his subjects. Each one of these young people is a bland caricature of the starving artist, as most come from prosperous middle class backgrounds. Thus, the film fails to convince us of its human side, despite some lush, period photography and a convincing sixties soundtrack of Nick Drake and Syd Barrett.
It will come off like an early hipster examination to most, but those who embrace it as a sinuous, thumbnail sketch may just find life in Something in the Air.
- Cathal Prendergast |
