Tomorrow we’ll find out if Olivier Assayas’ “full-blown comedy” Non Fiction, starring Juliette Binoche, will be part of the Cannes competition line-up, but it’s not the only announcement related to the French auteur that we’re getting this week. If one became acquainted with him in recent years with Personal Shopper and Clouds of Sils Maria, you’ll be pleased to know there’s a wealth of early films from the director to be discovered, and one of them has been given a 4K restoration.
Cold Water, his 1994 film about a pair of teenagers in Paris in the early ’70s, will enjoy a theatrical run starting later this month followed by a likely release on The Criterion Collection. In anticipation of the beautiful-looking restoration, Janus Films have released a new trailer and poster, both of which can be viewed below. For more from Assayas, read our in-depth interviews with the director on Personal Shopper and Clouds of Sils Maria.
Following two teenagers (Virginie Ledoyen and Cyprien Fouquet) as they wander Parisian suburbs shoplifting records and clashing with authority, few films as evocatively exposed the angst-ridden years following May ’68. A deeply personal tribute to rock and roll, teen love, and the impermanence of youth, and including one of the greatest party sequences ever put to film, this semi-autobiographical portrait of youth in revolt drew from Assayas’s own experiences and features an iconic soundtrack that includes Nico, Bob Dylan, and Janis Joplin.
Cold Water opens at the IFC Center in New York starting on April 27 and at the Laemmle Royal Theater in Los Angeles on May 18, 2018, to be followed by a nationwide rollout.