Review: J’entends plus la guitare

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When I saw Philipe Garrel’s 1999’s “Le Vent de la nuit,” I wasn’t sure what I was watching, but I wish I could see it again now. In 2005, the longtime French film director, headstrong throughout a prolific career, made his marvelous, little seen remembrance of Paris 1968, “Les Amants reguliers,” one of the best films of the past decade, and his 1991 “J’entends plus la guitare” (“I Don’t Hear The Guitar Anymore”) demonstrates his romantic, elliptical, suggestive style in the most concrete way of the three. Garrel emphasizes moments that occur between two male friends, Gerard (Yann Collette) and Martin (Benoit Regent), and the women in ever-irresponsible Martin’s life. Martin’s especially driven by his passions for Marianne (Johanna ter Steege), a strawberry blonde with a dark soul and her own relationship with drugs. The story’s patterned after Garrel’s own lengthy relationship with Nico, and he made the film three years after her death. For some, “Guitare” will be gallingly Gallic, but its tapestry of love and heartbreak, the very harrowing of breath, is a marvel: these simple, painful exchanges by grown-ups effortlessly dressed but emotionally frayed, hair tousled just so, against backdrops of exposed brick and weathered walls, are articulate, ill-aware wails. The world outside is an insistent bird, a telephone, saucers jangling to the gestures of a spoon in a café. It’s all music. The score by Faton Cahen is unexpected in all the best ways, a separate current. Bonus: the most alarmingly playful kiss while Marianne, seated, pisses loudly. 95m. (Ray Pride)