Games of Love and Chance (2003)

The Worst Film Ever

Highly Overrated But Still Good

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

This French film is a quite disheartening look at life in the public housing projects outside Paris. In a crumbling neighborhood with a majority of immigrants from Northern Africa, a high school tries to produce a play by Pierre Marivaux (1688-1763). The heart of the film is the budding romance between the vivacious blonde Lydia (one of the few "native" French living in the neighborhood) and the shy and painfully inarticulate Krimo, who is ridiculized by his thuggish friends for taking a part in the play. All the kids speak in an unintelligible slang, which makes a contrast with the classical French of Marivaux. I wrote it was disheartening (despite not being a drama) because it shows that the marginalized inhabitants of the projects have an almost nil chance of breaking into the mainstream of French society. Thoughtful and worth seeing.

This is one of those films that'll cause you to wonder just how it made it past the critics alive -- and if your spouse will ever again agree to "watch something French" with you! Jerkily filmed, peopled by endlessly foul-mouthed street louts, and ruthless in its examination of the utterly banal, this film will be a puzzle to most who decide to take it home from the video shop. Perhaps its original allure was in its multi-ethnic cast and the warm and fuzzy resonance multicultural themes always elicit among left-ish film critics. The troubles now endemic to her low-rent ethnic suburbs may cause the French to re-evaluate their initial enchantment with this film. Non?

I think this film deserve theirs Césars for a lot of reasons. The actors are excellent, especially Sara Forestier who's not from suburbs and has learned all words of this 'particular' vocabulary. The screenplay is very well, finally that's a play in a play ("le Jeu De l'Amour Et Du Hasard" written by Marivaux). This film shows almost the reality, is sometimes funny. The french teacher is disgusting, she is exactly what the director wants to fight : a society were there is no hope for an inhabitant of suburbs. As to her, Kremo is an idiot because he will never be Arlequin, he 'll never be in love and he doesn't even know how to play it. The film shows how wrong it is... The low point of the film is the sound, very bad, I think they wanted to be more realistic but that could be better, and realistic. This film is well to see, everyone can learn something.Even for french the language is hard to understand(sometimes we would have wanted subtitles!). I don't think the foreigners (particularly the ones who watch only blockbusters) will enjoy, or/and understand. But this freshly film is worth to be seen with attention.

L'Esquive is the coming (and going) of age story about Krimo, a resilient, emotionless, passive teenage boy living in a French ghetto. He is surrounded by his macho violent homeys, confused girlfriend, conniving teenage girls and a beautiful actress named Lydia, played by what may be the Olson Twin's long-lost triplet.It plays out like the French "Kids", without the poignancy. It's tedious. In fact, it gives new meaning to tedious. These shrill teenagers are constantly at each others throats. The few moments of calmness were not enough to hold people in there seats at the Vancouver Film Festival. After 40 minutes of hormonal bickering, the theater was half full.There is not enough story or character to keep this going. In needs to be taken back to the editing room and trimmed of down 40 of its 120 minutes. No doubt this would leave you with a short tale, but it's as long as this thin story needs to be told. Many scenes are used to explain what we've just scene. One-topic dialogue runs for as long as 10 minutes, in pointless circles until an opening is made for another superfluous scene.However I will say that the drama is very realistic and plays out in a natural ways that is commendable. But for story and entertainment's sake, things need to be cut, sharpened, explained and unexplained.As the end neared, I could feel my ears trembling, knowing that whatever the climax was, it would be ten times more shrill and irritating as the rest of the script. But I was wrong. Not only was it quieter and tolerable. It was void of a climax, at all. Not only is there no character change, but there seemed to be an adamant effort to avoid this natural convention at all odds. Even of it could have saved the movie.There are short moments of charm, wit, humor and a minuscule amount of beauty. However, L'Esquive is nothing you can't find at your local Blockbuster.