Fiction

L' Amant d'un jour

Lover for a Day
Philippe Garrel
FRA 2017
76 min
V'17

A young woman returns home to live with dad, only to find him distracted by a lover her same age in Philippe Garrel’s tantalizing triangle.
The film opens with a young brunette sitting on the sidewalk at night, sobbing her heart out, so upset she can’t breathe. Judging by the big luggage she’s carrying, it’s likely that her lover has just thrown her out of the apartment. In the next scene, we hear a young woman’s sighing – only this time, it’s a gasp of pleasure, not of pain, as she enjoys illicit sex with an older lover in a university bathroom.
The sight of women crying is nothing new in Garrel’s films; in fact, most of them do, at some point, because life rarely fulfills their expectations on love. What feels entirely fresh for the director, however, is the sight of a woman being satisfied with quite such intensity. Taken together, these two opening moments reflect the film’s double ambition: to further deepen the director’s ongoing Freudian analysis of female characters launched with jealousy, while also starting to explore a new continent, female pleasure. (Pamela Pianezza)

On Nov. 1 in the presence of Esther Garrel.

Credits
  • Eric Caravaca - Gilles
  • Esther Garrel - Jeanne
  • Louise Chevillotte - Ariane
  • Paul Toucang - Matéo
  • Jean-Claude Carrière
  • Arlette Langmann
  • Philippe Garrel
  • Caroline Deruas
  • Renato Berta
  • François Musy
  • Gabriel Hafner
  • Guillaume Sciamma
  • François Gédigier
  • Jean-Louis Aubert
  • Manu de Chauvigny
  • Justine Pearce
SBS Films

SBS International

DCP
bw
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