Lover For a Day – first look review

The vet­er­an French direc­tor Philippe Gar­rel is on a major roll at the moment. Since the release of his 2013 film, Jeal­ousy, he’s hun­kered down to focus on pro­duc­ing a series of faux-casu­al rumi­na­tions on the illu­sive qual­i­ties of fideli­ty. These films clock in at around the 70-minute mark are are jam-packed with meaty inci­dent and tor­tured, humane char­ac­ters. They focus on tiny rivulets of emo­tion and show a direc­tor using a cam­era as a way to under­stand his sub­jects and, by exten­sion, peo­ple. These films some­how tran­scend banal empa­thy and trite philo­soph­i­cal guid­ance to become eth­no­log­i­cal stud­ies of the human animal.

His new film, Lover For a Day, looks like one more minia­ture trea­tise on roman­tic inscrutabil­i­ty for the pile, but it’s so much more than that. Gar­rel rehears­es his actors and builds up his char­ac­ters from a clay of pure emo­tion. It’s like these peo­ple are born into these sto­ries rather than just switch­ing on a new per­sona when the cam­era starts to roll. This one is about woman and the ways in which they can chal­lenge old fash­ioned male atti­tudes of sex­u­al dom­i­nance. A guy sleeps around and he’s a play­er, while a woman sleeps around and she’s a slut. That seems rather unfair.

Ari­ane (Louise Chevil­lote) and the old­er Gilles (Éric Car­ava­ca) are teacher and stu­dent. In the film they are seen break­ing in to a teach­ers only lava­to­ry and hav­ing loud sex against the grimy wall. Theirs is a secret rela­tion­ship that has blos­somed into a con­ju­gal bliss. They talk freely about their desires, and when their rela­tion­ship does fall on the occa­sion­al sour moment, they remain cold­ly ana­lyt­i­cal about how to pre­serve this fair­ly utopi­an set-up.

Enter Gilles’ daugh­ter Jeanne (Esther Gar­rel), her life in tail­spin after she takes a heat­ed argu­ment with her boyfriend very seri­ous­ly and choos­es to act with her feet and move out. She tries to cloak her inter­nal anguish while tucked away on he father’s sofa bed, all the while exam­in­ing first hand the intrigu­ing and poten­tial­ly com­bustible tan­go that’s unfold­ing around her. Esther Gar­rel has the same thou­sand-yard pok­er face as her broth­er, Louis, but there’s far more capac­i­ty for ambigu­ous emo­tion in her wide eyes and soft features.

As the film’s cen­tre­piece, Jeanne and Ari­ane go danc­ing in an attempt to for­get their trou­bles and remind them­selves that the pos­si­bil­i­ty of no-strings sex is there for them. This beau­ti­ful­ly chore­o­graphed sequence sees the cam­era sway­ing back and forth as ran­dom young men gnaw and nuz­zle at their pray, while the women do their best to keep things civilised and let every­one know who’s boss.

With the help of an instruc­tive nar­ra­tion, the film moves stealth­ily though a short block of time and leaves no embar­rass­ing detail un-dredged. Infor­ma­tion is gath­ered and used as a bar­gain­ing chip between allies, but the film nev­er real­ly moves into the ter­rain of the­atri­cal back­stab­bing and dou­ble-cross­ing. It’s care­ful and poised cin­e­ma that hangs on every pre­cious syl­la­ble. It’s ideas are deeply root­ed with­in words and faces, there for the tak­ing but nev­er just hand­ing over any­thing unbidden.