Something in the Air

Assayas' Rich Evocation of the World That Shaped Him
Something in the Air (aka Apres Mai), 2012: As the French title suggests, this film is less about the spirit of 1968 than about the slow but sure dissolution of that spirit. Assayas sets his film in the Paris of 1971 and focuses on a group of high school students whose main form of entertainment is covering their school grounds with revolutionary posters and graffiti at night. Assayas captures the excitment the kids feel when printing subversive literature and riding their mopeds to the site of yet another of their revolutionary night raids, but its also clear that he views them as hopelessly privileged and therefore more than one step (and social class) removed from the realities of working class conditions and revolution. The film is supposedly about Assayas' own youth but if this is a memoir it is an extremely strange one because we never get very close to the main character, Gilles. Its as if Assayas wants to revisit the era but is hesitant to revisit (or reveal much about) his...


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