Fierrot le pou

This French short begins with a nerdy guy alone in the gym shooting a basketball. Again and again, he misses every shot and is hopelessly inept. Then, a lady enters the gym to shoot and he tries very hard to impress her. This is kind of cute--especially when he still continues to miss every shot but at least looks cool doing it! Towards the end, out of the blue, he makes an excellent shot and looks great--oddly, for this scene, a Black man is his double and it's obviously not him. Perhaps this is meant that to be a good player, you need a Black man within or something--I dunno. As it is, it's a pleasant time-passer--but nothing great.

By the way, this film is part of the CINEMA 16: European Shorts DVD. On this DVD are 16 shorts. Most aren't great, though because it contains THE MAN WITHOUT A HEAD, COPY SHOP, RABBIT and WASP, it's an amazing DVD for lovers of short films and well worth buying.

I think it's a good beginning for a good director. Everything is already there,the sense of space,the rhythm and the more important influences...Spike Lee,i think that the Nike commercials are one of the basis of this short and Spielberg for the directing techniques. In a way it's one of the first french movies(the only with metisse and la haine)to show the influence of the street culture on the contemporary France,and the mix of culture. Kassovitz he's the first to show an hidden part of the french reality,the question is why nobody try to go in this way? It's a "real" short,no dialogs,only camera movement and simple acting,it's a commercial,"this is what i can do with a camera",that's why it's interesting.