Thieves (1996)

Don't listen to the negative reviews

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

I DVR'd this film in spite of a two-star rating from Comcast, because I like Daniel Auteuil and Catherine DeNeuve. How bad could it be? I wasn't disappointed. It begins with a mystery-who killed the father of the cynical little kid? And slowly breaks open the story, revealing the characters as it reveals the criminal enterprise that brought them all together. Most of them-including the little kid-are not family-friendly. This isn't a family film. A cop who hates his brother and is in turn hated by their father, who tells him, face to face, that he would have preferred that the cop had been killed instead. The dead man's son seems to despise his entire family, including his mother, and his uncle, the cop. Who, in turn, doesn't like kids. The cop's girlfriend doesn't like him much, and he really doesn't want to deal with her except for sex. But as others have noted about this film on this forum, the director pulls out just enough unexpected gilded moments to make it enjoyable to watch-like: a middle-aged college professor delivering a 3-minute dissertation on the position of money in western philosophy to a professional car thief during a nighttime ride-as a passenger- through the streets of Lyon. At the car thief's request. That sort of theater of the Absurd approach is one thing I like about French films. They're dependable that way.

How to describe this film in about 25 words. I agonized over that considerably. It really defies a pithy description.Is it a crime story? Daniel Auteuil (Caché, The Valet) is a cop from a family of criminals. His big brother is killed in a botched car theft, and he is piecing things together. Of course, he is not formally investigating as it is his family involved, and also his (girlfriend, lover, whatever) is also a part of it.It is, at the same time a love story. A love triangle between Alex (Auteuil), Marie (Catherine Deneuve), and Juliette (Laurence Côte). Alex is just using Juliette to let off some steam, but does grow to love her. Marie is madly in love with her. The relationships and the criminal enterprise are intertwined to the point where you really have great difficulty describing just what the point of it all is.Me? I just enjoyed the great performances of Deneuve and Auteuil and Côte, as well as Juliette's brother (Benoît Magimel). That was enough.

"Thieves" has Techine at the helm with Deneuve and Auetuil in the spotlight and critical plaudits aplenty. However, my reaction at the end of the two hour flick was "Yeah, so???". Telling of the intertwined lives of a cop and his brother and a girl and her lover and a handful of other people, this character driven flick wanders to and fro interminably, jumping around in time, examining the details of their fatalistic and pragmatic lives as they fuss and stew and brood over the this and that of their existence. Given subtitles and a soup thin story with no moral, no message, no hero, no villain, just character study heaped upon character study and no character that's even likeable, "Thieves" will not have much appeal for the masses. Recommended for French speakers or French film buffs only. (B)

Perhaps the subtitles failed to do justice to the movie, but the visual construction of Les Voleurs crosses all boundaries. The complexities of the plot can be confusing; however, the visual imagery used in the film helps reinforce the characteristics of each relationship the film studies. All in all, a brilliant film to watch if you feel up to reading the subtitles.