Seeing Bernardo Bertolucci's The Dreamers inspired French filmmaker Philippe Garrel to fashion his own paean to the student revolts that gripped Paris in May of 1968. If either director's version is to be trusted, there was never a better time to be young, beautiful and handy with a Molotov cocktail.

Yet The Regular Lovers – which stars Garrel's son Louis, also in The Dreamers – takes a different tack than Bertolucci's film. Concentrating on a group of opium-smoking bohemians, Garrel is more interested in the aftermath of that tumultuous time. Inevitably, the events at the battlements – compellingly staged by Garrel and captured with great vividness in the black-and-white photography by cinematographer William Lubtchansky – are more exciting to behold than the long, slow dissipation of the characters' idealism.

However, the later scenes are energized by Clotilde Hesme's lively performance as a sculptor who falls for the poet played by the younger Garrel. Equally arresting is the director's ability to reinvest the aesthetics of the French New Wave with new vigour. Would-be radicals who long for a taste of May '68 will be intoxicated by the ruptures and raptures in The Regular Lovers.