The Birth of Love
La naissance de l'amour
Synopsis
The Birth of Love studies two friends who seem only vaguely aware that their time has past. What follows is a search to return to the purity of their cherished ideals—a desire to overcome the complacency of ageing and familiar comfort in order to recapture their passion.
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Critics reviews
This ardent, muted Parisian melodrama, from 1993, derives its power from the director Philippe Garrel’s passionate identification with its middle-aged protagonists. Garrel sympathizes intensely with the artists’ emotional turbulence but also reveals its price. The scene where Paul leaves his family is one of the most painful depictions of paternal anguish ever filmed.
Richard Brody
December 01, 2010
The film has a compositional beauty that can’t be reduced simply to the lighting and framing of shots; it’s also a matter of scenic rhythm and emotional orchestration, and it’s equally apparent in Garrel’s brief, powerful uses of video footage of the gulf war’s aftermath and in the acted sequences.
Jonathan Rosenbaum
June 06, 1997
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