An Exercise In Nonsense

Absolutely the worst movie.

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

If your attention-span is severely traumatized by Police Academy then best give this one a miss. Keeping track of all the separate threads is like keeping track of individual strands of spaghetti after it's doused in sauce. On the other hand if you make the effort you may decide it's worth it. In one sense it revolves around Camille (Jeanne Balibar) a French actress back on French soil for the first time in three years via a European tour of Pirandello's As You Desire Me. Camille is, in fact, the first thing we see as a pin-spot picks her out of the darkness reinforcing the theatrical quality we are in for. Ostensibly an item with Ugo (Sergio Castellitto) the director of the play and leading actor opposite her, Camille has it in mind to look up her ex-lover, a Professor of Philosophy who, in the interim has married and become a devoted husband. Neither is Ugo as open as he might be about his quest for a lost manuscript by Goldoni and the young girl Dominique who is 'helping' him in this quest. The plot thickens when we learn that Dominique's brother, Arthur, is not only enamored of the Professor's wife but has eyes also for an expensive ring she wears. Rivette and his two screenwriters - both, incidentally, actors themselves - keep the balls spinning and throw in a series of set-pieces as well as ringing the changes on duets, trios and quartets a la opera bouffe and all is resolved a la Shakespeare when le tout ensemble come together in the empty theater and dance off into the night as a haunting lyric performed by Peggy Lee implies that this is not the end of anything. Jeanne Balibar is the main attraction, Castellitto, so warm in Mostly Martha, turns down the heat on his natural charm but still turns in a solid performance. At two and a half hours it's clearly not for everyone but if you're one of those it IS for then this is for you (and let's face it, could Pirandello himself have put it better).

Some years ago Sophie Marceau explained her move to Hollywood in more or less the following terms: I am tired of doing the same French movies where all in all there is a love triangle and in the end the three of them have dinner together. Well, Va savoir is exactly that kind of movie. It is more complicated because there are actually four love triangles, but yes, they all have a cake to share in the end; all the six people who were involved in the triangles. So nothing new here. The good thing, however, are the characters. Except for the brother-and-sister duo who are kind of stereotypical and possibly present the spectator with the cliché of male and female libertine Parisians, the other two couples arouse our curiosity with their insufficiencies: Camille is a little too absent-minded to be completely sane, Pierre is a typical academic dork who falls into furies of sophisticated frustration, Ugo visibly carries the burden of his unattractive appearance and compensates for it with his thick Italian accent, while Sonia obstinately tries to keep to the level of those intellectual pricks and prove how much more she knows about real life. This is a good melodrama if you like the genre. I do, and I liked it. Marceau probably wouldn't.

One could consider this film like a cinematic whole-wheat pancake. Your film comes topped with butter, syrup, and all the fruits you can think of (the characters of the film). When it is presented originally Va Savoir looks tantalizingly delicious, but after ten minutes of eating you realize that you finished and still hungry. You realize that this mound of goodness was nothing more than fluffy cooked dough that will ultimately make you fat, lazy, and sleepy. While it may give you a high at first, the darkness of the inevitable 'sugar-low' is fast approaching and causing you to grab your stomach in disgust. Also, it was a flop. Perhaps that was a bit overboard, but I really wanted to explain this film in a way that was a bit more entertaining than the film itself. To put it bluntly, this film was like watching the grass grow in your back yard in anticipation of having to mow it again. It was slow, not very colorful, and a pain to sit through. When it finally gets too long, it hurts too much to do it again, but you know it must be done. That feeling is exactly how I felt about the film Va Savoir.This is a devoutly character based film. To make a deeply rooted character based film to work, you must first have exciting characters that you know your audience is going to want to follow. Sadly, this was not the case in this film. From the opening scene (where the subtitles were not working on my DVD) all the way till the final moments of the film, we have to follow four of the dullest characters in cinematic history. Cammille is our pilot, following an emotion and feeling that is never quite developed in the story and therefore never quite developed in her. Her mannerisms and reactions to situations made me feel as if she was a bit on the loony side. Perhaps it was the way that Jeanne Balibar chose to play her, but there was nothing making me believe that Cammille was a very strong character. Her actions throughout the film prove that much, but what are her motives and reasonings? That is never explained or developed, yet there was three hours to do it. Strange. This goes the same for Sonia, who I also never really fully grasped onto. She seemed to be in love, but at the same time enjoying moments with Arthur. Her need to rearrange made me think that her and Cammille had similar personalities (loony), which is what made them become friends near the end. Yet, again, it was never explained. We, the audience, were forced to follow a lot of assumptions in this film, and whenever we felt that we fully understood and connected with a character, Rivette would pull us further away. It was as if he never really wanted us to fully understand them, but still accept them. That didn't brood well with me.Couple this with random intermissions of the play that these performers are putting on for the Parisians only helps to confuse the audience. I couldn't tell if Cammille was actually acting in the play or just walking through the lines. Half the time it looked as if it bothered her to be there. There was no emotion or excitement when she was on stage prompting me to question whether she was this 'infamous' actress that they claimed her to be. I have seen several foreign films in my lifetime, but this one takes the cake as possibly the longest passenger car to Dullsville. I had trouble understanding the play that was happening throughout the film, thus causing me to care less about the characters. The final thirty minutes of this movie are actually fun. The scenes where Pierre and Ugo decide to duel are hysterical. I actually watched this scene over again because I enjoyed it so much. The connections made at the end tied the film up nicely, but still left too many questions unanswered. Overall, I was lost in this film. If you ever pick up this film and you see a blonde-hair, blue-eyes 26-year old wandering through the scenes, it is I just trying to understand this film. I can't figure it out, I can understand most Lynch, Gilliam, and others of the 'jigsaw puzzle' genre, but this was just beyond my control. The characters seemed drab and never fully comfortable in their roles, and those that were jumped between emotions like playing leapfrog in kindergarten. The stories were connected well, but it didn't make any difference if the characters (the glue of the stories) didn't hold them together. In your eyes, and in your DVD player, you can see where this film just falls apart. If you are looking for a stronger emotional powerhouse film where characters work with their characters and push the envelope even further, I would check out Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia. This film reminded me of Magnolia except bad. I don't suggest anyone wasting their three hours on this film, but who am I except a lost guy in this film. Again, if found, please return!Grade: * out of *****

Godard once said that "The Americans know how to tell stories, the French don't; they do something else". Seeing that most Americans commenting on this film didn't like it, I suppose it's at least partly because the film does not really tell a story, well, not in a good straightforward way at least. This might make the film tedious and overlong for some. I, however, found it charming enough to watch it non-stop from beginning to end. I don't know why; I suppose it is in part because both Jeanne Balibar and Heléne de Fougerolles are, each in her own way, so cute, funny and sexy in a way that only French actresses can be (even if they are not "beautiful" in the supermodel-silicon-tits way). Also I suppose because of the humour and lightness - too many french films tend to take themselves way too seriously, this one doesn't. Sergio Castellito is very watchable too. OK, it's not a masterpiece, maybe it could gain from some editing, etc. But it's not so bad. Plus, it made me curious to see or read "Come tu me vuoi", the Pirandello piece that the actors are performing. Seems interesting.