Something in the Air is a French film set in Paris in 1971, three years after the uprisings of June 1968; a time when civil unrest was still ongoing but starting to tail off. In France, this film is titled Après Mai, which makes a lot more sense, as it speaks of an aftermath, and I don’t understand why anyone imagined it a good idea to rename it with something quite so nebulous, although I’m guessing there were fears the American market would be too shallow and dumb to get it otherwise, which is always a worry. (Hark at me! When I read recently, ‘Sharon suffers stroke’ I gave no thought to the former Israeli PM and thought instead: ‘Who’d have predicted she’d outlive Ozzy?)
Anyway, the writer and director, Olivier Assayas, was 16 at that time, and this is an autobiographical teen movie, although, unlike most autobiographical teen movies, it is neither sentimentally nostalgic nor overly pumped full of props from that era, which is always a temptation. One tie-dye shirt and that was it, I think. Although whether you will like it any better for any of this, I don’t know.
Our hero is Gilles (Clément Métayer), a high school student with the thickest mop of unkempt hair ever witnessed outside One Direction. (Someone once reported they had witnessed an instance of a thicker mop of hair outside One Direction, but as there was no photographic evidence, it could not be verified.) Gilles, a talented drawer and painter, is immersed in radical politics, and the film opens as he faces down baton-wielding riot cops at some thwarted demonstration. From here on in, the story is — how shall I put this? — rather lax, as loose-limbed and floaty as the girls themselves, and their dresses.
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