The Salt of Tears (Philippe Garrel, 2020)

You know, the sorts of things people say about Hong Sangsoo would apply just as well to Philippe Garrel. From film to film, there is great continuity of theme and formal approach, such that those who are temperamentally unsympathetic to what Garrel does can reasonably wave them away as tired repetitions. The films will be in black-and-white. They will always grapple with young adult romance. And typically they involve questions of infidelity and romantic realignment. So on the occasions when Garrel significantly departs from this template -- most notably 2004's Regular Lovers -- the films are noticed by those outside the coterie. Aside from those anomalies, people can adopt a fairly consistent opinion. They either like Garrel or they don't.

So part of what makes The Salt of Tears notable is that while it mostly adheres to the precepts of late Garrel, it reflects a few key changes. First of all, this film is almost aggressively multicultural. Although I'd have to go back through decades of Garrels to make a definitive statement regarding his treatment of race, The Salt of Tears is the first Garrel film I've seen that is obviously working to depict the diversity of contemporary France. 

The protagonist, Luc (Logann Antuofermo) travels between Paris and the country in order to attend a prestigious carpentry school. While waiting for a bus, he spies Djamila (Oulaya Amamra), a young French-Moroccan girl. He chats her up at the bus stop, with the sort of remarkable confidence that comes with knowing your prospective hook-up in already in the script. It's almost a wry allusion to the history of brash romanticism in French cinema. Luc and Djamila click, but he's only in Paris briefly, which in Luc's mind is reason enough to rush things. When Djamila partially rebuffs him -- she doesn't want intercourse -- he cops an attitude and takes off.

Once Luc is back home with his father (André Wilms), he has an unexpected encounter with his old girlfriend Geneviève (Louise Chevillotte). They immediately resume their relationship, with Luc ghosting Djamila, going so far as to establish a tryst and failing to show up. The relationship with Geneviève is comfortable, and Luc seems to think it reflects an appropriate future. When it's time for Luc to return to Paris to start school, Geneviève is hurt, and then she discovers she's pregnant. Again, Luc flees, breaking all ties with his "local" sweetheart.

On a blind date, Luc eventually meets Betsy (Souheila Yacoub) and immediately taken with her. They move in together, but soon Betsy asks if her friend Paco (Martin Mesnier) can crash with them. Luc learns that Betsy and Paco are fuck-buddies, and a non-monogamous situation is established, against Luc's wishes. 

Before leaving for school, Luc's dad warns him about the "temptations" of Paris, and this seems to be a subtext throughout The Salt of Tears. Luc's relationship with Geneviève (who is white) is contrasted with the more complicated, exciting couplings with Djamila and Betsy. Garrel depicts Luc as struggling to find a new identity amidst the more cosmopolitan environment of Paris, and this entails subsuming his whiteness, allowing it to become one among many ethnic identities rather than the default position. This is emphasized in a run-in with French racists outside a nightclub, with two guys hurling epithets at Luc's friends and calling him a "traitor."

But one thing that The Salt of Tears conveys, whether intentionally or as a textual excess, is that the negotiations of race and gender are always tricky. Even as Luc expands his social circle, he retains the privilege that comes with being white and, especially, male. His dismissal of Djamila, and his eventual conflicts with Betsy, both speak to his sense of prerogative. While it's certainly true that The Salt of Tears comes across as Garrel's most contemporary film -- rooted in a time and place, abandoning the vague sense of romantic timelessness that often pervades his films -- it also zeroes in on a potential failures of a pan-cultural France. It's Luc, as the white Frenchman, who seems to set the terms of play, and in this respect he is a blinkered liberal who trusts his baser impulses far too quickly.