Louis Garrel arrives at the Mostra di Venezia with a role far removed from the darker, more brooding image that accompanied a substantial part of his career. In It Will Happen Tonight, the new comedy in competition by Nanni Moretti, he plays Matteo, an idealistic Roman bookseller involved over the years in an unresolved romantic relationship with Greta, a married actress played by Jasmine Trinca. It is a lighter character, woven into a tale of intersecting destinies and missed opportunities, but the French actor's presence at the Lido inevitably reopens the chapter of his beginnings as well.
Garrel, now 43, was one of the most prominent young faces of European auteur cinema in the early 2000s. The son of director Philippe Garrel, over time he has built an independent career in front of and behind the camera, alternating performances for established auteurs with directing his own films. Yet two titles remain decisive in how audiences and critics came to recognize him: The Dreamers by Bernardo Bertolucci and Ma Mère by Christophe Honoré. Works different in approach, but united by a portrayal of sexuality that at the time placed Garrel at the center of a provocative, unguarded cinema.
A debut that came through Bertolucci's cinema
Released in 2003, The Dreamers is set in Paris in 1968 and follows the meeting between American student Matthew and French twins Theo and Isabelle. Garrel played Theo, alongside Michael Pitt and Eva Green, in a film where a passion for cinephilia, the political climate of the protests, and the protagonists' private lives end up overlapping. The erotic dimension was a central part of its international reception and helped make the work one of the most discussed titles in the final phase of Bertolucci's filmography.
For Garrel, that set represented a debut that offered no safe zones: not an introductory appearance or a role designed to ease him gradually into the craft, but a character physically and narratively exposed, entrusted to one of the most recognizable European directors on the global stage. Years later, the film continues to be cited as much for its explicit scenes as for its relationship with the imagery of the Nouvelle Vague and for its fictionalized, claustrophobic reading of the Maggio francese.
The Venetian setting makes this return particularly significant. This edition of the Festival is permeated by the presence of Bernardo Bertolucci both in the program and in the cultural debate, notably through Joie de Vivre, the documentary by Luca Guadagnino dedicated to the director. In this context, Garrel's career trajectory evokes a generational shift: an actor who was just over twenty when he entered the Bertolucci universe now returns to the festival as an established performer, director, and collaborator of an auteur like Moretti.
Ma Mère and the boundary Garrel had not anticipated
The year after The Dreamers, Garrel tackled another radical experience in Ma Mère, Christophe Honoré's film based on the novel by Georges Bataille. The cast included Isabelle Huppert, who played his character's mother; the film openly developed an incestuous relationship and staged sexual sequences that cemented its reputation as a challenging and disturbing work.
Garrel recalled being shaken by the nature of those scenes. Beyond his personal reaction, the key issue is the environment in which a young actor operated within European auteur cinema at the time: nudity and explicit sexual content were often considered integral to a project's formal freedom, whereas in contemporary debate, scrutiny of working conditions on set has become far more structured. This does not mean retroactively applying reductive categories to films made over twenty years ago, nor does it erase their artistic value or complexity. Rather, it means acknowledging that the way consent, boundaries, and performer protection are addressed has fundamentally changed.
Today, figures such as intimacy coordinators and more rigorous protocols for intimate scenes have entered the production vocabulary of many projects, especially in the English-speaking world and beyond. While their presence does not automatically solve every problem and varies across countries, budgets, and contracts, it brings into the open an aspect that was once treated as a private matter between director and actors. Garrel's remarks on Ma Mère thus refocus attention on a concrete industry transformation: a scene can hold artistic merit without the working conditions behind it being shielded from scrutiny.
From an iconic actor to an auteur with his own trajectory
However, reducing Garrel to the most extreme titles of his youth would be misleading. Over the course of his career, he has worked multiple times with Christophe Honoré, appeared in An Officer and a Spy by Roman Polanski, and played Professor Friedrich Bhaer in Greta Gerwig's Little Women. In parallel, he has directed films such as Regular Lovers, a festival-screened title notable for its closeness to his father's cinema, subsequently building an increasingly recognizable directorial filmography.
This dual identity explains why his appearance in Venice alongside Moretti carries weight beyond promoting a single film. Garrel brings an experience spanning intimate French cinema, international co-productions, and direct relationships with auteurs capable of imposing a distinct vision. In It Will Happen Tonight, however, his Matteo seems to offer a different tone: a man driven by a romantic concept of existence, involved in a story that unfolds through encounters, weddings, and postponed choices.
For Moretti, the film arrives after a difficult personal period. The director had been hospitalized following a heart attack the previous year; in the narrative, Matteo also confronts his father's terminal illness. While this theme does not define the film on its own—presented as a romantic comedy of fate—it introduces an autobiographical note to the story of an auteur returning to work after an event capable of altering one's perspective on time and life.
The presence of Jasmine Trinca and Garrel, both linked to a European cinema that has often alternated between auteur rigor and popular recognition, places the work in a potentially accessible space without making it alien to Moretti's tradition. For Garrel, it is also an opportunity to shift focus: from the imagery that turned him into an icon of erotic and transgressive cinema to a performance centered on delicacy, anticipation, and feeling.
This trajectory does not erase earlier films; if anything, it puts them into perspective. The Dreamers and Ma Mère remain works tied to a specific moment in French and European cinema, and to its drive to portray desire and transgression without compromise. Listening to Garrel today also allows us to observe the distance between that system and current production sensibilities. In Venezia, as Bertolucci once again occupies a place in festival discourse, the actor who was one of his most memorable young faces shows how a career can originate within a controversial image and continue well beyond that image.
