Thieves

Please, don't get misunderstood by the title: Thieves. OK, it is question of thieves, and also of a cop, but strangely despite those "ingredients", the way this movie is "cooked", it is not a crime drama. But a drama and characters study, yes, definitely. The making is very accurate, made with the greatest care, with a very complex story telling. Which supposed a very complicated editing game. It is not a crime film with gunfights, car chases; very unique indeed in the movie history. There are films with cops without being crime films, for instance GARDE A VUE or POLICE, but with cops and robbers without being a crime film.... Not my stuff, but still a good film.

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.

This film has a complex, multi-layered structure that grabs your interest...but not much substance underneath. There's no real mystery to the plot, and no real revelations about "human nature" either. Well-acted all around - including a little boy who is wise way beyond his years. (**)

"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.