Games of Love and Chance

Although imperfect from a cinematographic point of view, this film is remarkable as it penetrates deep into the lives of suburbia kids in Paris.

All kids are from North Africa. They are boeur, which means arab in their bizarre dialect of french. I really doubt an old french man or woman understand what they are saying without subtitles.

To love someone, to leave someone make deep marks in our souls when we are young.

This sincere and honest film about teenage love should not be missed, if there is any screening available.

This movie is getting fresh exposure in France thanks to its win at Les Césars, or the "French Oscars" as other countries like to call them. Its success will probably mean that it now gets exposure outside the country, too, and I wonder how successfully.

Though an accurate and contemporary examination of France, the film's world is a foreign one, even to many people living here--the specificity of the setting (the projects, in a "suburb" of Paris), the language (rapid-fire, slangy, "vulgar", and peppered with "verlan", a street language of inverted syllables--the word itself could translate as "wardsback", and how anyone will translate this dialogue I have no idea), and the behavior (mostly arguing--strident, pushy, beautifully repetitive) may not play clearly outside of France. I'm not sure how clearly it plays here, or how willing people are to watch it, especially as it turns the idea of the scary bad French projects somewhat on its ear.

This isn't a criticism of the movie; on the contrary. Kechiche has shot a riveting cross-section of teenagers growing up in social housing, in broken homes and poverty, who lack the tools of expression, and who have adopted the posturing of the wounded (and, in the story, almost entirely absent) adults who raise them, attacking (the movie unfolds at a near-constant level of verbal aggression) and dodging ("esquiver" means "to dodge" or "to evade") one another's attacks with all they can muster.

The film's intensely political side feels almost accidental; in its unfolding, it has great heart, and its actors, who are apparently mostly amateurs from around the shooting location, are outstanding. On the whole, it reminded me a great deal of David Gordon Green's George Washington: a simple love story set against a landscape of poverty, played out frankly and honestly, allowed to unfold at a distinctly un-Hollywoodian rhythm. If Green's film is more beautiful cinematic ally, L'Esquive is more concentrated, more unflinching in its examination of the deep repercussions and violence of economic, social, and familial hardship. Its statement that France is no longer a country of the French-of-French-ancestry, and that its refusal to accept its own transformation does not mean its lost generation accepts its loss, could not be more clearly nor more poignantly made.

Without spoiling or going into detail, there are things about the plot that are implausible, things that probably hurt the film overall, but watching this movie for plot is like watching Ocean's Eleven for social insight. This is a positive study of character in a bad situation, of a stratum of society rarely filmed and still more rarely treated as fairly as it is offered up here, beautifully and eloquently.

This is a dream film, of which I am so entirely thrilled that it received so many awards over the mediocre but over hyped Rois et reine. The self effacement of the director in this film is impeccable, one has the eerie sense of watching a Fred Wiseman documentary. It is true that dialogue can run long and circuitously, but for those with my taste for extreme realism this can only be a downside if the acting is poor, and in l'esquive it is not. The acting is on the contrary frighteningly good, whatever self consciousness the members of this young cast might have before the camera is immediately absorbed in the documentary-like mise en scene, that is to say, it only furthers the sensibilities and aesthetic as a whole. L'esquive is a singular film that we can only hope will influence a generation of young French filmmakers who are tired of the well lit, over produced cinema this country is getting far too comfortable with.

The life of a band of teenager in a suburb near Paris. But instead of showing what would be the "urban legend" of this kind of poor suburb (violence, rapes...), Abdelatif Kechiche shows us what's the daily life of those guys: not much to do, not much dreams. Still, some of them have fun rehearsing for a play. Among those "players", Lydia, long time friend of Krimo... And Krimo, a bit shy, finds himself in love with this joyful girl. The good thing in this movie is that it shows the suburb as it can be : not really fun but not the awful thing we think it is. No, they're not all juvenile delinquents. Their lives are just no fun. And yes, they don't speak like Moliere did, yes they use F words. It's the way they talk to each other. But when talking to adults, they're just very polite. And even if there's no much suspense in this movie (it's just about wondering if Krimo will go out with Lydia), L'Esquive shows another suburb. A suburb where teenagers (all french, but from different origins, from Spain to Asia) are not dangerous people.

I really did like this film! - those viewers, French or otherwise, who have seen, and been able to follow the sound track of La Haine, will be quite at home in this environment, will know what to expect, and will be sensitive to the message the film conveys. True, it may lack the sort of 'excitement'that some film-goers may seek, but one has to take it for what it is: a hard-hitting social document which will resonate with many who are familiar with the inner-city tensions found in many French towns in recent years. The gambit of choosing amateur actors worked very well,in my opinion, a point which other viewers seem to echo.