A Paris Education

A handsome French film student moves to Paris. Although full of self-doubt, he projects an impression of serious purpose. Everyone he meets, male or female, seems to fall in love with him.

Which year the film is meant to be taking place is unclear. The students despise the leaders of the student rebellion of 1968 for being phonies and sellouts. But they still speak to each other, and there are no smartphones to be seen.

The film is very French. The young people are almost an Englishman's caricature of French intellectuals: they talk endlessly, read voraciously, quote philosophers and poets, smoke cigarettes, strike poses, and argue interminably about changing the world. It is charming at times, but tedious too often.

It is also very long. 2-and-a-quarter hours feel more like 3-and-a-quarter. The youths are supposed to be film students. Have they never learned about editing, about pace?