Born in '68

Born in ’68 is an involving but ultimately slightly frustrating family drama spanning several generations looking at French left-wing activism in both the late 60’s and then seeing how the children of the next generation fare in the present-day.

The film as created by writer-directors Jacques Martineau and Olivier Ducastel, starts out with a group of fresh-faced young students taking their causes to the streets of the Sorbonne in May ’68, showing their varying reactions to the struggle. We also see the romantic liaisons that form as lead character Catherine (Casta) is the subject of interest from several suitors whilst her best friends are also caught up in protests, book-reading and debating issues.

When the time for action on the streets dies down, the group leaves Paris and forms a hippy commune in the country (a la Reggie Perrin) and from there, the film follows the students, now grown up, as well as then showing the predilections of their children in the present, revealing how issues such as aids occupy them. You then get the debates between people of different generations over who was more vocal in terms of forcing issues to be debated in the public eye.

Born in '68 is a reasonable if ultimately slightly overwrought and sprawling effort as a film, arguably overlong and perhaps slightly becoming too diffuse and losing direction at times, but the acting is good, the relationships believable and the film does have some worthwhile points to make, even it takes slightly longer than perhaps might be thought necessary to reach them.