After May

Aroview: Hatched from dir. Olivier Assayas' personal experiences, this bittersweet evocation of the leftist fervour that caught hold of young Europeans in the late 60s is at once vividly rendered and glossy to a fault.

Centred on the deeds of a handful of passionate French youths, the film holds a candle to the anarchist spirit of the era while also allowing the idealism of its characters to fade away in a telling reflection on the futility of revolutionary change - though this is not entirely supported by the overly nostalgic, sometimes cliched view of the period it gives us.