What becomes of self-styled cultural revolutionaries once they have headed into their fretful 50's? If they haven't grown up -- and who ever really grows up? -- they turn into flabby philanderers and borderline crackpots spewing out grandiose pie-in-the-sky career schemes. ''The Birth of Love,'' a 1993 film directed by Philippe Garrel, a talented French New Wave director who never achieved the international renown of Jean-Luc Godard, studies two friends, Paul (Lou Castel) and Marcus (Jean-Pierre Leaud), who are only dimly aware their time has past.
Paunchy, stringy-haired Paul, a minor stage actor, carries on a succession of affairs with younger women while ignoring his pregnant wife (who gives birth to a baby girl) and emotionally needy adolescent son. Mr. Castel's portrait of this selfish malcontent is so naked that you feel for him even while cringing at his callousness. Marcus, whose girlfriend has just left him, is an aging journalist who still dreams of writing an earthshaking book. He is also prone to windy middle-aged ruminations. Two samples: ''Work is a fully assumed obsession untiringly fulfilled,'' and ''Men choose their destinations to calm their lack of destiny.''
Both men brood out loud about the fathers who damaged them. Paul's abandoned the family (as Paul would like to do with his own family), while Marcus's kept him cruelly under his thumb. The wounds still smart.
