Something in the Air (2013)

This Movie Can Only Be Described With One Word.

Nice effects though.

Good start, but then it gets ruined

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

Gilles is an interesting character, a political activist studying to be an artist. But it's frustrating that beyond his political beliefs we get to know little about him. Conversations are short. What do any of the people feel? There are a lot of opinions and judgments made about society, authority, each other - usual for French films. But left me unsatisfied. Warning: Ironically, be prepared to meet many dissatisfied people, even majorly unhappy ones, during the course of this film. Wonderful evocation of times ('70s) and attention to detail though.

Olivier Assayas's film 'Something in the Air' is an affectionate, although not uncritical, look at the lives of young French radicals after 1968. Watching it, you get an interesting sense of an era when students were interested in something other than building their careers (although the protagonists don't all completely abandon their bourgeois dreams); there's also the contrast between their profound political beliefs, and the feeling that their beloved freedom is basically the freedom of being young and moneyed - the revolution as a gap year, so to speak. The way that a life spent chasing experience ultimately does not build the foundation of lasting relationships is also well-conveyed. Overall, the cast are a little too beautiful - who wouldn't be a revolutionary when the benefits were so obvious? - and if the film has a serious weak-point, it's in not fully explaining quite why youth was drawn to the counter-culture except in a vague, spirit-of-the-age type way. A final quibble - the English translation of the French title (Apres Mai) is an awful one, better befitting a light romantic comedy.

I don't have a lot to say about 'Something in the Air', mainly because it doesn't seem to have a coherent plot - perhaps appropriately, given that it's about a bunch of anarchists. A group of French teenagers in the 1970s sit around in smoke-filled rooms thinking too much, occasionally carrying out acts of violence in the anarchist 'cause'. As time passes some remain committed to the cause, while others, though still professing belief, find their personal lives and ambitions eclipsing their anarchy. If you're in the right mood for this type of film it certainly hits the spot, and there's a very amusing scene where one of the young men gets a job at Pinewood Studios in the UK and finds himself working on a film involving Nazis, sea-monsters and a scantily-clad cavegirl - a far cry from the experimental (read: commercially unviable) cinema to which he'd rather devote his time. Welcome to real life, mate!

"Something In the Air", the latest film from French auteur Olivier Assayas feels like his most personal since "Cold Water" in 1994. Both films feature a young man named Gilles (this time played by Clement Metayer) acting as the surrogate for Assayas himself, tantalizingly poised on the precipice of awkward adulthood. But where "Cold Water" dealt with interior feelings of belonging and amour fou (in the relationship with beautiful but dangerous Virginie Ledoyen), the stakes are a bit higher in "Something In the Air". Set in Paris after the May events of '68, this Gilles and his close sect of friends find themselves mixed up in violent student activism… so violent that they accidentally hurt a security guard during a routine vandalism attempt and are forced to split up in hiding. And while the first third or so of "Something In the Air" deals with these subversive acts of revolution, the real thrust of Assayas' narrative kicks in after this action, setting up Gilles, Christine (the wonderful Lole Creton), Alaine (Felix Armand) and their various lovers to seek out their own paths in life. The title, while initially evoking the revolutionary scents in the air, subtly changes to denote the forks in the road each individual takes with their lives. Assayas handles all this reverie beautifully, never losing his gentle touch on relationships and staying to true to the way he continually crafts a knockout finale. It may not all be 100% accurate, but the way in which Gilles the man on screen become Assayas the filmmaker is still precise, loving and attuned to the nuances of everyday emotions.