Va Savoir (Who Knows?) (2001)

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Jacques Rivette's acclaimed La belle noiseuse (1991) is a masterful meticulously crafted portrayal of a painter, his model, his friends and family in a complex and climactic drama. Ten years later, Rivette is even more riveting with an astonishing screenplay working again with long-time collaborating writing team of Pascal Bonitzer & Christine Laurent.Va savoir (2001) - aka Who Knows? - is a story we have heard before of an actress dating the plays director and theatre group owner. They happen to be touring Europe and we see them in Paris, which brings back memories for Camille, the main actress. However, as we advance in the story and see the main character quirkiness, hopes, fears and dreams and feel the tension of their past, present and future love interests intertwine we enter an alluring drama way beyond conventional clichés of performing art in cinema.A lot of details are in the screenplay with funny twists and turns, discomfort, joy, questioning and dismay. We find unconventional and uncompromising story lines that are curious and captivating. Moreover Rivette's directing and some fine acting from all the cast elevates the piece and allows tension and storytelling threads to weave a tight deliciously unpredictable narrative. There is a play being performed that has some relevance to the world outside the theatre. The rhythms and tones of the play feel somewhat exotic performed in its native Italian in France and with more or less convincing depending on the performance night and mood. The real life events of the the characters outside the theatre are even more theatrical and has never been done quite as well, although Iñárritu's Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014) came close as a theatre actor backdrop. Aronofsky' Black Swan (2010) also come to mind but for dance.Va savoir (2001) has so many interesting elements with side stories of a life that lead to prison or the central search for a unpublished and never performed play. There are many sexual and emotional tension building between the strong central and secondary characters over the course of two and a half hours and an unexpected funny and fitting finale.Rivette's choices make the situations intense and bring the viewer into an in intellectual, emotional and physical experience of high calibre that is not quite like any other. An understated masterpiece to be enjoyed.

MANY YEARS AGO I bought a bottle of wine 3 or 4 times the price I usually paid. Expecting something akin to the gods' nectar I got just wine, very disappointing at first then I gradually realised I could drink this for the rest of my life and it would always only taste of wine, but always as a renewed experience, never tiring on the palette. Since then I have had the privilege of drinking comparable wines from France or Italy and grown tired of wines from elsewhere that shout ''I will astonish you' ' yet forget they aught to taste of wine. After Va Savoir I remember I watched a film. Was there direction or camera or cutting? Disappointment at first and wanting 'astonish me', instead I got Film; pure perfect film. By the end I felt very grown up. At the end I wished it had been somewhat longer: The first half hour took an hour the subsequent two hours took half that time!

I saw this in the theater when it was released (getting truly rave reviews in New York newspapers) and was baffled by this extra-slow version of La Ronde or of one of Woody Allen's many comic movies (but with two quite physically unattractive lead characters).I put my lack of enthusiastic response down to my ignorance of Heidegger's philosophy, of the particular Pirandello play they used throughout, and of most of Goldoni. (I'd merely known of Heidegger's sympathy for the Nazis, read Six Characters in Search of an Author, and seen Mistress of the Inn with the marvelous Tovah Feldshuh).I thought that if I knew Heidegger's philosophy better (perhaps some dictum about an inverse proportionality between beauty and truth?), had read more of Pirandello (or at least the play of which we keep seeing excerpts) and had a more comprehensive knowledge of Goldoni - then I would understand the point of this movie. I though this was a movie that I would just have to say was "over my head" - the laughs must come from the clever juxtapositions between various things written by these three men and what I was seeing.But in the four years since I saw the movie in a theater, I've read no more from those three men. But I also came to the realization that most people I have encountered DON'T know much of Heidegger's philosophy, haven't read more than "Six Characters" by Pirandello, and few seem to have seen even a single play by Goldoni.And few of the people who express enjoyment of the movie on this site seem to do so based upon the relationship of these authors' texts to what is happening on the screen. So, perhaps there was something about this movie that even in my state of comparative ignorance, I simply missed. So I rented it again.I now doubt that I missed much - and think the movie simply fails on all levels.Romantic comedies really need appealing characters - this has only one -played by the lovely Helene de Fouguerolles. She's probably the least significant of the three female characters - and somehow fails to wind up with the man - in fact bizarrely, she is the one whom NONE of the men find worthwhile to pursue! This is true perversity.The lead female character is a sadly ugly woman of no discernible charm or grace, given no witty lines and only ugly behavior (fidelity to her boyfriend, chaste behavior, even the necessity to be pleasant to other human beings around one - mean nothing to this wretch and the fact that she's nervous/annoyed/irritated through most of the film is hugely unappealing).The second lead is more physically attractive but her attraction to the two men in her life is mystifying and her past is despicable (as is her desire to continue the to keep the ill-gotten gains from that past).The three men are idiots.The furnishings are nice - including the sets in the play within the play, the references to Goldoni, Pirandello and Heidegger obviously intrigued me when I first saw it, but the only reason to see this film is the appeal of the enthusiastic, vivacious, lovely, gracious Helene de Fougerolles - and it's not enough to watch this slow-moving unfunny dud.For those interested in the subject, watch almost any other about several couples - from La Ronde to Husbands and Wives, from Everybody Says I Love You to Libeled Lady. They're all vastly superior - with characters one might like and actors whose looks don't make you wince.

Some years ago Sophie Marceau explained her move to Hollywood in more or less the following terms: I am tired of doing the same French movies where all in all there is a love triangle and in the end the three of them have dinner together. Well, Va savoir is exactly that kind of movie. It is more complicated because there are actually four love triangles, but yes, they all have a cake to share in the end; all the six people who were involved in the triangles. So nothing new here. The good thing, however, are the characters. Except for the brother-and-sister duo who are kind of stereotypical and possibly present the spectator with the cliché of male and female libertine Parisians, the other two couples arouse our curiosity with their insufficiencies: Camille is a little too absent-minded to be completely sane, Pierre is a typical academic dork who falls into furies of sophisticated frustration, Ugo visibly carries the burden of his unattractive appearance and compensates for it with his thick Italian accent, while Sonia obstinately tries to keep to the level of those intellectual pricks and prove how much more she knows about real life. This is a good melodrama if you like the genre. I do, and I liked it. Marceau probably wouldn't.