French filmmaker Mia Hansen-Love’s new movie is a love story of the music of a generation where the plot and people involved really do take a back seat. Right from the opening scene set in 1992 in Parisian suburbs where another illicit rave scene party is taking place in an old deserted fort where they are playing the newly imported trend of ‘garage’ music we meet Paul a very impressionable teenage student.He is very quickly smitten and persuades his best friend Stan to form a DJ duo called ‘Cheers’ with him so they can start promoting their own parties. The two of them soon have an odd coterie of followers and collaborators including Julia an American ex-pat who is one of the first of Paul’s many girlfriends, none of whom can ever compete with his passion/obsession for making music. Determined to make this his role in life he abandons his university studies much to the concerns of his very agitated mother who is convinced that now he is running these raves, he will soon be hooked on drugs too.
Hansen-Love wrote this movie with her DJ brother Sven and faithfully portrays what life was like in the 90’s as the rave parties struggled to find venues, and blend the styles and techniques and as the music industry explored with all these new genres of techno music that often emanated from chance encounters with different gifted amateurs. These are heady days when all Paul wants to do is just spin his turntables playing the pulsating beats that has the packed dance floor writhing with pleasure, and he has little concern for anything else.
Whilst two of Paul’s wider circle of acquaintances are drifting to another strand of techno music and they later become ‘Daft Punk’, he sticks rigidly to his music that was first heard at the Paradise Garage in NY. He burns through his twenties and then stumbles into his thirties and as success quickly fades when his music becomes unfashionable he plunges deeper into debt and much more reliant on the drugs he just used to dabble in. Women come and go, even as his friends build more stable relationships and have families. When Julia catches sight of him many years later she means to compliment him when she says ‘it’s crazy that you haven’t changed’ but the reality is that it has a whole other meaning in his case.It is always about the music though and even though there is a talented young cats led by Félix de Givry, Pauline Etienne, Hugo Conzelmann and an uncomfortable looking Greta Gerwig, they simply cannot complete with the very luscious soundtrack that overwhelms the narrative.
This is a rise and fall drama that about a whole music genre and how it affected one man’s life, and albeit far too long (131 minutes) it is a rather wonderful poignant reminder of a whole generation of music and how it affected many of our lives too.
