Philippe Garrel: Definitions of Love
Screening Dates
  • July 12, 2018 7:00 with Introduction
  • July 13, 2018 8:15
  • July 14, 2018 6:30
  • July 15, 2018 8:20
Vancouver Premiere

“Sensuously shot and philosophically potent … Perhaps no modern filmmaker has captured romantic anguish as profoundly and movingly as Philippe Garrel.”

Yonca Talu, Film Comment

Winner of the SACD prize at Cannes’ Director’s Fortnight, Philippe Garrel’s exquisite new work is another lyrical, deceptively low-key examination of love, jealousy, and betrayal from the veteran master of those elusive themes. Shot in luminous black-and-white by Swiss cinematographer Renato Berta—DP on ​’80s essentials by Godard, Rohmer, and Malle—the film is Garrel’s first to revolve around his daughter Esther Garrel (Call Me by Your Name), before now a bit player in the director’s ever-rotating family ensemble. Here she’s 23-year-old Jeanne, a love-scorned dumpee who retreats home to discover that her divorced father (Éric Caravaca), a fiftyish philosophy professor, has a live-in girlfriend (newcomer Louise Chevillotte, marvelous) the same age as her. A push-pull of competing desires—romantic, paternal, some Freudian cocktail of both—follows, steeped in cool, detached nouvelle vague chic. Co-written with Buñuel scribe Jean-Claude Carrière, Maurice Pialat collaborator Arlette Langmann, and Garrel’s wife Caroline Deruas.

“A lithe, splendid picture, dazzling in its clarity, direct emotional resonance, and condensed storytelling.”

Daniel Kasman, MUBI Notebook

“Another quietly astounding monochrome miniature on love and other demons.”

David Jenkins, Little White Lies
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