101 minutes / B&W
French / English subtitles
Release: 2020
Copyright: 2019
Veteran filmmaker Philippe Garrel once again fashions a pinpoint-precise and economical study of young love and its prevarications, which ever so gradually blossoms into an emotionally resonant moral tale. Handsome Luc (Logann Antuofermo), following in his aging father’s footsteps to study the craft of furniture joining, doesn’t appear to have any trouble meeting and dating women; as the film opens he’s aggressively courting Djemila (Oulaya Amamra) at a Paris bus stop. Skeptical yet ultimately trusting, Djemila will not be Luc’s one and only. Constructed and composed with crystalline austerity, and co-written with Jean-Claude Carrière and Arlette Langmann—who collaborated on Garrel’s last two films, In the Shadow of Women and Lover for a Day —The Salt of Tears is a pocket portrait that demonstrates the persistent vitality of one of French cinema’s great observers of the callowness of youth.
“A heady mood of refined melancholy underpinned with aspects of contemporary politics… (with) an ecstatic dance scene that embodies the elusive dream of happiness.” —Richard Brody, The New Yorker
“Could be classified as a filmic version of that French literary genre the conte… a concise but intellectually resonant narrative focusing on emotions and morals. One of the most finely turned and richly achieved of (Garrel’s) recent works.” —Jonathan Romney, Screen International
“Fresh and invigorating.” —Boyd van Hoeij, The Hollywood Reporter
“Garrel continues the intimate relationship examinations of his last three films, but this time he turns the player prototype on its ear and, in doing so, exposes just how toxic behavior that was, until just recently, seen as normal truly is.” —Edge Media Network
A close look at infidelity and the particular, divergent ways in which it's experienced and understood by men and women. Directed by Philippe Garrel.
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