The first comparison that comes to mind is the movie "Kids", but that is a superficial comparison. Both movies employed non-actors and got great performances, but the similarities end there. L'Esquive is set in a Parisian housing project with a majority Muslim population. The slang translation (subtitled) is matched to the slang used in a New York City housing project. Part of the humor comes from this posturing and there is a lot to be laughing about. The performances are strong all around and although the story is simple (a girl drops her boyfriend and he becomes interested in another girl) the kids fill it with energy and drama. There is none of the extreme violence that a similar story, set in the States, would have. There is no bloody shootout at the end - this fact alone recommends it. Sara Forestier (Lydia) you might have seen (if you watch French film) and will see more of - possibly in American film. Osman Elkharraz (Krimo) also has a charisma that makes him a candidate for future roles. The film is a very energetic and fresh examination of kids growing up in a fishbowl, up to and including their harassment and abuse by the French police. If you have any interest in French film, here is a refreshing and funny movie. Enjoy.
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pressboard6 September 2005
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okurs1 April 2004Although 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. -
naouak20 March 2005The 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.
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babaji9 May 2004I saw L'Esquive at the San Francisco Film Festival on April 24. I was prepared for a sappy coming-of-age romantic movie but with the first dialogue which whisks you up before even the titles are shown and doesn't put you down until the end of the movie, I got something much more fulfilling. This is one realistic and well-performed movie. The director got some fantastic acting out of an almost 100% amateur cast. Very realistic and fast-paced. It is not a perfect movie, but it is very energetic and definitely a must-see.
Well worth seeing and probably the highlight for me at the festival. Hopefully it will screen in the US. -
"Games of Love and Chance (L'Esquive)" is an involving experiment in giving classic French comedy of errors relevance to today, in a dramatic demonstration of "Plus ça change, plus c'est la meme chose" -- the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Writer/director Abdellatif Kechiche juxtaposes the titular 18th century work by Marivaux with junior high kids in a poor, inner city Arab immigrant neighborhood, for an effect that crosses Larry Clark's "Kids" with "Mad Hot Ballroom." Like any period farce, the real relationships are dizzyingly circular: A loves B who loves C who is in disguise with D. A threatens C, B changes places with D to pursue his suit and use Marivaux like Cyrano, C can't make up her mind, friends of B and C misunderstand everyone, and the course of true love doesn't run smooth.
While marred by wincingly heavy-handed intellectualizing on class social criticism by the literature teacher who is directing the kids in the play and a deus ex machina insertion of biased cops, the frank life and death-ness of adolescent romance strongly comes through in comparison to Marivaux's mannered floweriness, even as these kids communicate amongst each other with four letter obscenities, bluntly crude slang (that may not be too well represented in the English subtitles but I'm sure French subtitlers likewise have trouble with the patois in movies such as "Four Brothers"), heart-tugging looks of longing, painfully hurt tears, and, finally in frustration, physical action.
It is not clear if "the blonde" as she is referred to in the English subtitles (played by the excellent Sara Forestier, who seems to have been the only member of the cast with some previous experience before the cameras) is also from an immigrant family or Muslim, or if she just picked up use of a couple of Muslim catch phrases in her slang as to whether Kechiche is adding another layer of social commentary. Or she could just be part of the trend in French cinema to fixate on pouty young blonde temptresses, viz. "La Petite Lili," "À Tout de Suite (Right Now)," "Lila Says (Lila dit ça)."
This film has a lot of parallels with "Lila Says (Lila dit ça)," not just about sex and social setting, though it dealt with older kids, but also how literature can be an escapist outlet yet also a threat that brings hidden emotions to the fore.
The grim mise en scene makes wonderful use of a crowded, high rise neighborhood where the kids hang out chilled because they have little privacy at home, some fathers are in jail, their loving mothers try to keep tabs on them, and cell phones are their expensive lifelines.
While the film goes on a bit too long as scenes meander, probably because it isn't clear how much has been scripted and how much the kids are very effectively improvising particulars around a basic story line, their relationships are enthralling, both the romances and the friendships. Each teen actor creates an indelible and different character.
270 years since Marivaux and the human heart hasn't changed. -
This French film is a quite disheartening look at life in the public housing projects outside Paris. In a crumbling neighborhood with a majority of immigrants from Northern Africa, a high school tries to produce a play by Pierre Marivaux (1688-1763). The heart of the film is the budding romance between the vivacious blonde Lydia (one of the few "native" French living in the neighborhood) and the shy and painfully inarticulate Krimo, who is ridiculized by his thuggish friends for taking a part in the play. All the kids speak in an unintelligible slang, which makes a contrast with the classical French of Marivaux. I wrote it was disheartening (despite not being a drama) because it shows that the marginalized inhabitants of the projects have an almost nil chance of breaking into the mainstream of French society. Thoughtful and worth seeing.
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randolphtaco8 March 2005This 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. -
Hilander19802 February 2006hello;
i'm not -at all- trying to imply any kind of criticism i'm just trying to share u my point of view concerning this movie i've seen yesterday. 1.high pitch dialogs: the long arguments governing a large portion of the movie seems as trying to focus on the real, on earth dialogs taking place between the french & NA immigrants, and maybe other nationalities in France as well. this dialogs seems to be RATHER unprofitable and unheard by both parties, taking an aggressive form in some occasions; this argument is not only found between french-immigrants but also in between immigrants-immigrants themselves; this will lead to the second issue, 2.the theme of POWER: it is so vivid when focusing on the relations between characters of the movie: Lydia-Krimo, Fathi-all other characters, police(government)-all others.
* there is one question i would like to raise: Lydia; i can't stop questioning her background? the structure of her character is will built but i guess there is something missing?. -
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.
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niyayesh-abdolkarimi4 January 2014This is a powerful movie about the low social class living in France mostly Arabs living in a poor neighborhood.a number of Arab teenagers are trying to prepare a play for school meanwhile love comes between them and makes things difficult.but i think it's not a romantic movie at all. the feelings that grow throughout the story is out of loneliness, not choices. i movie is cold and dusty and we don't want to be in those children shoes. they are not having fun despite their age. they are troubled and aggressive.they act like criminals and i a scene we see that they are treated as criminals by the police. Kechiche's directing always amazes me. i wonder how could he make those novice young actor to play this much life-like and comfortable. generally i loved the movie.
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nmegahey20 June 2008Abdellatif Kechiche's L'Esquive focuses on the less than glamorous lifestyles of the kids in the Parisian suburban 'banlieue'. Its low-budget, shaky hand-held gives the impression of realism, as does the ghetto-speak delivered by the young mostly non-professional actors, but I doubt that most impoverished, minority race Paris suburban youths consider rehearsing 18th century plays as their preferred outdoor leisure activity.
That might give some indication of just how heavy-handed L'Esquive is, a school production of Marivaux's 'Games of Love and Chance' being shoehorned in to draw parallels on how social divisions and prejudice are not just tolerated, but actively enforced by the society and the authorities to the extent that those repressed come to believe that they aren't deserving of anything more. The use of language meanwhile is used to compare and contrast those social divisions and attitudes, showing in the process that essentially, people are pretty much the same regardless. Just in case you don't get it though, a police squad swoops down at the kids at one point to make sure they know their place and don't get any ideas above their station.
It's a relevant subject and one of particular social significance at the time the film was made, leading the Césars to shower it with awards for tackling such edgy material. Any good social points the film has to make however are negated by its storytelling and film-making deficiencies. In addition to being heavy-handed, it's tedious in the extreme - a banal, badly-acted story of attraction between profoundly irritating ghetto kids bickering at the tops of their voices for what feels like an interminable two-hours. -
acrmartray30 October 2005I 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.
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sossalemaire29 March 2005This movie's a disaster. Yes, it shows french suburbs the way they are. But that's the only good thing you can say about it ; frankly, how can you be interested in seeing almost 2 hours of stupid suburban kids yelling at each other, insulting each other all the time ? French critics are ecstatic, this movie has won 4 cesars (french equivalent for the Oscars), but it's just a dull vision of dull people. I've seen enough of that verbal and physical violence myself to get any pleasure from this deeply boring movie.
I've read critics saying it was a refreshing vision about french suburbs. I guess they think it's refreshing because you don't see drugs or guns, and it is "in" to say that these kids have some sort of raw inner strength only waiting to be applied to something good. Yeah, think again, they're really that violent at each other, but they don't study Marivaux in real life...
Watch it at your own risks. -
I'm going to keep it short.
To be honest I didn't want to see this film, however I had to go so a movie at a film festival for my international cinema class. When I left it was one of those experiences where you want to truly thank a teacher for making you do something. Altogether this was a great movie, yes it was long, however the director captured the real emotions and nuances of teens in love so amazingly you feel like he stole the performances from the young actors. Not to mention this movie gives a great view of the hardships for minorities in the south of France, by not directly addressing them.
Check this movie out, no matter what you won't be mad that you saw it. -
cinemindal10 April 2005I think this film deserve theirs Césars for a lot of reasons. The actors are excellent, especially Sara Forestier who's not from suburbs and has learned all words of this 'particular' vocabulary. The screenplay is very well, finally that's a play in a play ("le Jeu De l'Amour Et Du Hasard" written by Marivaux). This film shows almost the reality, is sometimes funny. The french teacher is disgusting, she is exactly what the director wants to fight : a society were there is no hope for an inhabitant of suburbs. As to her, Kremo is an idiot because he will never be Arlequin, he 'll never be in love and he doesn't even know how to play it. The film shows how wrong it is... The low point of the film is the sound, very bad, I think they wanted to be more realistic but that could be better, and realistic. This film is well to see, everyone can learn something.Even for french the language is hard to understand(sometimes we would have wanted subtitles!). I don't think the foreigners (particularly the ones who watch only blockbusters) will enjoy, or/and understand. But this freshly film is worth to be seen with attention.
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aFrenchparadox22 September 2010See my review of "Ve'lakhta lehe isha". Leaves you more or less with the same feeling at the end of both: I couldn't stand to live in such a communautarian culture/group, where I would really feel like my personal freedom is hindered. Two more things particular to this movie: because it's about teenagers playing a Marivaux's play, I would say that at least a third of the film is fulfilled by this play's dialogues, and therefore benefits from his rhythm. Not sure how well it translates to English and other languages though. Secondly, I don't like the end, where finally the police presence spoils all the good that had been built until then; I know it's quite true that the police in this type of poor French neighbourhoods is a watchdog as powerful as the community (though driven by different goals/intentions), but I guess I would have liked a bit of optimism for once.
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omouallem24 September 2004L'Esquive is the coming (and going) of age story about Krimo, a resilient, emotionless, passive teenage boy living in a French ghetto. He is surrounded by his macho violent homeys, confused girlfriend, conniving teenage girls and a beautiful actress named Lydia, played by what may be the Olson Twin's long-lost triplet.
It plays out like the French "Kids", without the poignancy. It's tedious. In fact, it gives new meaning to tedious. These shrill teenagers are constantly at each others throats. The few moments of calmness were not enough to hold people in there seats at the Vancouver Film Festival. After 40 minutes of hormonal bickering, the theater was half full.
There is not enough story or character to keep this going. In needs to be taken back to the editing room and trimmed of down 40 of its 120 minutes. No doubt this would leave you with a short tale, but it's as long as this thin story needs to be told. Many scenes are used to explain what we've just scene. One-topic dialogue runs for as long as 10 minutes, in pointless circles until an opening is made for another superfluous scene.
However I will say that the drama is very realistic and plays out in a natural ways that is commendable. But for story and entertainment's sake, things need to be cut, sharpened, explained and unexplained.
As the end neared, I could feel my ears trembling, knowing that whatever the climax was, it would be ten times more shrill and irritating as the rest of the script. But I was wrong. Not only was it quieter and tolerable. It was void of a climax, at all. Not only is there no character change, but there seemed to be an adamant effort to avoid this natural convention at all odds. Even of it could have saved the movie.
There are short moments of charm, wit, humor and a minuscule amount of beauty. However, L'Esquive is nothing you can't find at your local Blockbuster. -
gphgrm0123 June 2018Its a very multilayered film. It looks rough and row, however, its just a directing trick, mostly because its about kids, and young actors. However, its a complex social drama, where the most important stuff are on the margins of the script, yet quite visible.
Its about the troubled, tenage poor kids from the typical suburb blocks of flats whose life looks very simple, although at the same time full of hardships, and difficult situations: lack of money, conflicts with other kids, fathers in prison, etc. There is a lot of anxiety and aggression in their dialogues, although only in the end of film we see the pressure they live under, and race and class struggle that exist in French society. All the jovial representations of the class differences from Marivoux' play, used in the film, get quite a rustic, hyper realistic and graphic shape in the actual context of the kids' lives. What is in background of the story is a bit unspoken social and ethnic background of the girl, Lydia, who is blond, while everyone else is clearly of African or Asian ethnic origin. Lydia might not even be a "European" French, she could be a Muslim too, just her white skin, light hair and eyes, imply certain "trouble" for possible love plot in the film. For some reason, she is different, and often called names by other jealous girls or guys. On the other hand, she also seems quite aware of her distinction. The irony of the fim is that they are all French, just they have not been treated like ones.
So the kids in the film are even half-supportive of Lydia and Krimo's potential dating, since they all grew up together, so they still dont apply racial and class distinctions. They do try to see it as an ordinary coupling, and give it a romantic dimension. However, the harsh reality of their lives will come between them. Krimmo himself is a depressed and almost mute guy who desperately tries to be with Lydia. In the end we suspect that its not even love what drives him, but more like some kind of desperate move, desire for escape, wish to bring a difference in his life, with a clear expectation that he would be either turned down by Lydia, or exposed to some other trouble. Krimmo is suspiciously lifeless, which is explained by his father being in jail. However, he is obviously depressed kid, with desperate idea of reaching something extraordinary in his life, which will always stay out of his hands.
All female roles in this film are outstanding. Script and directing are very efficient, in spite of long scenes of disputes and conflicts. Kechiche is apparently very good at getting the maximum from his actors. This is highly recommended film. -
rgoodden31 December 2006This is one of those films that'll cause you to wonder just how it made it past the critics alive -- and if your spouse will ever again agree to "watch something French" with you! Jerkily filmed, peopled by endlessly foul-mouthed street louts, and ruthless in its examination of the utterly banal, this film will be a puzzle to most who decide to take it home from the video shop. Perhaps its original allure was in its multi-ethnic cast and the warm and fuzzy resonance multicultural themes always elicit among left-ish film critics. The troubles now endemic to her low-rent ethnic suburbs may cause the French to re-evaluate their initial enchantment with this film. Non?
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writers_reign26 October 2004Time: The Present Place: An estate in the Paris banlieues. Population: Almost exclusively Arabic.
This is the kind of locale than in England we call a 'sink' estate where half the occupants are dealers and the other half users and a girl who reaches fourteen without having three children by three different fathers (thereby qualifying for her own flat and generous State support) is either a lesbian or a VERY ugly heterosexual. It would be nice to think that their local comprehensive was teaching Marlowe, Webster, Ben Johnson or even Shakespeare but somehow I doubt it. Yet Abdel Kechiche - whose idea of directing a film appears to be to plant his camera in the faces of a group of teenage Arabs living in the banlieues, tell them there's 100 euros waiting for the one who can utter the most variants on the F-word in 30 seconds and then yell 'Action' - tries to tell us that fourteen year old Arabs on the outskirts of Paris are so transformed by Marivaux's 'Le jeu d'amour et hasard' (The Game of Love and Chance) that they can't WAIT to rehears it on their own time and in the banlieue itself and get really uptight should they be interrupted. This contrast in lifestyles - the elegant world of Marivaux where manners are everything and the banlieues where good manners consist of kicking someone already on the ground only six instead of seven times in the head - is what passes for subtlety in Kechiche's book. So, fourteen year old Krimo (Osman Elkharraz) who's known Lydia (Sarah Forestier) all his life only really NOTICES her when she plays a 'lady' in Marivaux and is so smitten that he bribes the boy playing Arlequin to ankle and leave the way open for him. Credible? Bet your ass and that swampland in Florida is a STEAL at ten grand an acre.