Lover for a Day
A young woman returns home to crash at her middle-age professor father's flat, only to find he's in a relationship with one of his students
The autumn-spring romance is an unwelcome cliché, but French veteran Philippe Garrel’s bittersweet study in fidelity proves nonetheless compelling. Part of the reason for its success is it isn't loaded in favour of its paunch-bellied male lead (philosophy professor Gilles), as is the norm. Instead the focus is the tentative friendship that forms between Gilles’ hedonistic girlfriend, Ariane, and Jeanne, his daughter of similar age, who turns up at the lovers’ boho apartment one night after being dumped by her boyfriend.
Jeanne's first words to Ariane are cutting (“you’re not as beautiful as my mother”) while Ariane takes the huff when Gilles makes the mistake of kissing his daughter before her when returning home, but soon this animosity turns to friendship as the women begin to share clothes, dating advice and, crucially, secrets.
Quotidian vignettes of the trio’s cohabitation are captured in velvety black-and-white 35mm, while an omniscient female narrator gives this feather-light feature a gently novelistic sweep. Playful ironies trump grand proclamations in Garrel’s cinema, so your heart isn't likely to soar during this poetic drama, but it might ache with recognition. [Jamie Dunn]