J'entends plus la guitare (1991)
Directed by Philippe Garrel

Film Review

Frequently cited as Philippe Garrel's masterpiece, J'entends plus la guitare is a frustratingly slow but nonetheless captivating film that offers the most poignant meditation on the transience of love and youth, whilst reflecting on the futility of dreams and the anguish of a life scarred with failed illusions.  It is as much a memorial to the crushed hopes of May 68 as it is a homage to its author's long-term relationship with Nico, the Velvet Underground singer who appeared in several of his films.  Nico's sudden death at the age of 49 in 1988 had an immense impact on Garrel and prompted him to make this film, his most personal - an elegiac tribute to a love affair that was the centrepiece of both his life and his art.  The film was honoured with the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1991 and is arguably Garrel's finest achievement.   The central actors in the drama, Gérard and Marianne (interpreted with a blistering authenticity by Benoît Régent and Johanna ter Steege) are clearly intended as stand-ins for Garrel and Nico. 

Garrel's distinctive penchant for lingering close-ups and long takes gives the film the feel of a drug-induced torpor, but once you have fallen under its spell it is riveting and you cannot fail to be impressed by the perceptiveness of the film's author and the skill of his actors in conveying what constitutes the main characters' ambiguous relationship, a typically 1960s notion of free love, without hang-ups or boundaries.  How easily the taking of drugs can be read as a metaphor for succumbing to the illusions of May '68, an aberration of youth which was sure to end in broken dreams and a life tainted with regrets.  It is with exquisite subtlety that J'entends plus la guitare expresses the quiet sorrow we are all bound to feel when we look back and realise how foolishly squadered were those precious years of youth.  When the guitar stops playing, that is the time to weep.

Film Synopsis

Marianne and Gérard are a couple enjoying a languorous holiday at a villa in the Italian coastal town of Positano.  Gérard spends many lazy hours drinking or smoking hashish with his friend Martin, whose own partner Lola has just left for Rome to appear in a film.  With Gérard so frequently absent, Marianne finds it easy to leave him for another man.  Gérard then begins a new relationship with Linda, in the hope that Marianne will return to him.  Back together, Marianne and Gérard become addicted to heroine, but this has a destructive effect on their relationship and they end up separating again.  Some time later, Gérard learns that Marianne has died in a tragic accident and he is left to contemplate the passing of his youth...