Ah
yes, to be young and free from consequences.
It is 1971, three years after the 1968 demonstrations. For a group of young radicals, life is
fantasy world of activism and sexual hedonism.
Nobody really worries about who pays the bills in Olivier Assayas’s Something in the Air (trailer here), which opens this
Friday in New York at the IFC Center.
Gilles
and his New Left high school cronies are outraged when special French riot
police break-up their riots, so they respond by rioting more. When a Molotov cocktail seriously injures a
campus security guard (who could’ve figured?), the radicals decided to lay low
in Italy until things blow over. They
still debate the various merits of Trotskyism vs. anarchism, idling away their
summer vacation in the Dolce Vita environment.
Everyone
gets deeply worked up about injustice in general, but nobody seems to have many
specifics. Frankly, every teenager
should have the opportunities Gilles’ TV producer father can provide. Yet, Assayas presents these coddled middle class
revolutionaries with no sense of irony.
Nor do they have strongly differentiated personalities. They all just seem to drift through scenes,
feeling things deeply. Lola Créton is
the notable exception portraying Gilles’s sometimes girlfriend Christine, as a
sad, somewhat tragic figure, because she eventually grows up and tastes some of
life’s disappointments.
Aside
from Créton’s Christine, Something’s characters
are a uniformly dull lot that leave no lasting impression. However, the period details are great. Production designer François-Renaud Labarthe’s
team earns kudus for tracking down working mimeograph machine. The soundtrack choices are also great,
including songs that are era appropriate but far from overplayed, like Robin
Williamson’s “Fare Thee Well, Sweet Mally” and the Incredible String Band’s “Air.”
