Kung-fu master!

There's a good reason why the English language title for Agnes Varda's new film was borrowed from a video arcade game. Beyond the obvious metaphor of the game itself it spells out very clearly the lack of pretension in Varda's story of a forty-year old housewife who falls in love with a fourteen-year old schoolboy. On its surface the film is about an older woman recapturing the passions of youth, and a young boy's awkward reaching out toward maturity. But underneath is a thoughtful look at the erosion of old-fashioned romantic ideals in an age of safe sex and AIDS awareness, a fact Varda gracefully acknowledges in the final, chilling scene, which (in a subtle way) shows the darkest side of adolescent peer pressure. It's a quiet, undemonstrative drama; Varda has a poet's sense of how much to say and how much to leave unsaid, and the few remaining words she leaves in the capable hands of a first-rate cast. In a daring casting decision the director's own son handles the role of the teen lover, and with surprising skill for a kid his age.