Lover for a Day

Jeanne leaves her boyfriend and returns to her father's flat, where she finds herself living with Ariane, her father's new lover, who is her own age. The two young women are wary at first and then become confidants; the father shrinks between them. Philippe Garrel directed. His own daughter Esther Garrel plays Jeanne, Louise Chevillotte plays Ariane, Eric Caravaca the father. The film is black and white and runs a little over sixty minutes. Like all of Garrel's late work it is short, plain and fixed on one subject. The subject is not fidelity but what fidelity means across two generations. Ariane wants the relationship kept open, the father behaves as though he agrees, and cannot bear the arrangement he made. The cinematography works with natural light and a single source; most scenes are two actors and a room. It played in the Directors' Fortnight at Cannes. Who it is for: viewers who like French relationship films and Garrel's plain style. Who it is not for: anyone wanting incident; the film is nearly all conversation.