Thieves

"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)

This is a fine effort by Andre Techine describing a messy triangle between a philosophy professor (Deneuve), a grim, harried detective (Auteuil) and the teenaged girl they are both in love with (Laurence Cote). The girl has joined the crime family that the cop has escaped from--Alex's brother has just been killed by police in a shoot-out while trying to steal luxury cars, and Alex must move very carefully when he returns home for the funeral. All these matters are handled very adeptly by the director, whose early works I confess to finding dull and lifeless exercises in style (Barocco!).

I can't say enough about Deneuve's performance; she has left the glamour behind in her 50's and just gives us one fine role after another. Marie makes it clear she has a special affection for Juliette: "I don't love women, I love Juliette." Her tolerance for Alex's clumsy attentions after Juliette's disappearance is beautifully done. Auteuil's attraction is more problematic; you can sense that there hasn't been much affection in his life and allowing Juliette to get close to him endangers his efforts to remain a loner. Finally, praise to Laurence Cote for her bravura blend of elegance and punk-rock; a wonderful new star.

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.

A love triangle. A crime story. A drama about fraternal conflict. All could make fine stories on their own, but in this film they're thrown together, and then given a philosophical spin (appropriate, since one of the characters is a philosophy professor). It's also more character-driven than you'd expect from this type of story; we are taken into the character's motivation, so we understand their actions, rather than have them driven by plot machinations. And it's done like a novel, flashing back and forth, so actions unfold gradually to reveal another layer. Unfortunately, as, it seems, with many films from France, the story doesn't so much end as stop. This may be appropriate with something like, say, UN COEUR EN HIVER, but it left me feeling a little cheated here. Still, this is worthwhile viewing.

Of the actors, the only ones which are immediately familiar to me are Daniel Auteuil and Catherine Deneuve. Auteuil is playing someone who has trouble expressing himself, a character he seems to specialize him, based on what I've seen of his films (JEAN DE FLORETTE/MANON OF THE SPRING and UN COEUR EN HIVER), and he does another fine job here. I've never been a fan of Deneuve; I usually find her too inexpressive and icy. Here, however, she plays a character you usually don't find in crime films; an older woman having an affair with someone younger (here, a woman) who isn't fading or scheming. She makes Marie, who at first seems didactic, fully human.

The film, Shakespeare's shades. At the heart of the film is love. Everything else, just around this love.

And when Auteuil says: You just do not want to fight.

Heroine Catherine Deneuve fights: I fall asleep with her and wake up with her.

What can say more?

It's a wonderful movie in the movie.

Suicide. And how is it possible to live,

The image Heroine (Deneuve) - two in one, Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet buried in the apartment.