Something in the Air an Ode to Youth's Universal Qualities

Olivier Assayas' gorgeous, freewheeling, semiautobiographical Something in the Air is an ode to both youth's universal qualities and the specifics of Assayas' youth in particular. The picture opens in the suburbs just outside Paris in 1971, among a group of teenaged students still energized by the explosive student and worker...

By Stephanie Zacharek

May 30, 2013

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Olivier Assayas' gorgeous, freewheeling, semiautobiographical Something in the Air is an ode to both youth's universal qualities and the specifics of Assayas' youth in particular. The picture opens in the suburbs just outside Paris in 1971, among a group of teenaged students still energized by the explosive student and worker protests of May 1968. The movie's better and more descriptive French title is Après mai ("After May"): These kids came along too late for the most exciting part of the revolution but have no way of knowing it. They're still in the moment, throwing Molotov cocktails in the direction of a better future. Our first glimpse of Laure (Carol Combes), the sort-of girlfriend of the lead, Gilles (Clément Métayer), is of her tripping down a verdant country road in a gauzy granny dress and flat, delicate sandals; it's less like a standard movie shot than a memory that has dissolved over time only to reassemble itself more vivid and beautiful than ever. The whole movie feels that way. Shot by Assayas' frequent collaborator, Eric Gautier, it unfolds in a place and time that's both real and unreal, corporeal and ghostly. Something in the Air is all about drifting — its story doesn't advance so much as glide from here to there, from Paris to Italy, from green-gray city streets to yellow-green country fields.

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Stephanie Zacharek was the principal film critic at the Village Voice from 2013 to 2015. She is a member of the New York Film Critics Circle and of the National Society of Film Critics. In 2015 Zacharek was named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism.

Her work also appeared in the publications of the Voice’s film partner, Voice Media Group: LA Weekly, Denver Westword, Phoenix New Times, Miami New Times, Broward-Palm Beach New Times, Houston Press, Dallas Observer and OC Weekly.