When Hollywood re-makes "The Taste of Others (Le Gout des Autres)" it will just manage to change everything in this delightful Woody Allen meets Eric Rohmer ensemble piece that it will be awful.
Here you have chaos theory at work as tiny coincidences of gradually revealed links between people whose lives wouldn't usually intersect (from an ex-cop to artists to a business executive) set off dramatic changes (or consideration of changes) in their lives. Such that something one contact says to another is then taken out of context to cause communication problems when it's passed on to another.
A lot of the triumph has to do with director/co-writer Agnes Jaoui's penchant for long shots and her trust in the actors (but then she and her husband--who also co-wrote the script--are also co-stars, though not an on-screen couple). For example, two casual lovers meet up in a restaurant, and the guy introduces her to his co-worker. That sparks fly between the new pair is communicated without close-up leers or touching and with bare conversation. The woe-be-gone boss drags two employees to a strip joint for distraction, and that each guy is at a different stage in his romantic travails is reflected in each's face and body language-- and we never even see the strippers, something Hollywood can never resist showing.
We root for the unexpected couples as well as their self-understanding, and they make unexpected yet believable choices. The naturalness of their interactions is laugh-out-loud funny in a knowing way, and breath-catchingly poignant.
Those of you intellectuals who are already familiar with "Hedda Gabler" won't be sandbagged by one scene as I was.
It deservedly won a slew of French Cesars.
(originally written 3/3/2001)
Here you have chaos theory at work as tiny coincidences of gradually revealed links between people whose lives wouldn't usually intersect (from an ex-cop to artists to a business executive) set off dramatic changes (or consideration of changes) in their lives. Such that something one contact says to another is then taken out of context to cause communication problems when it's passed on to another.
A lot of the triumph has to do with director/co-writer Agnes Jaoui's penchant for long shots and her trust in the actors (but then she and her husband--who also co-wrote the script--are also co-stars, though not an on-screen couple). For example, two casual lovers meet up in a restaurant, and the guy introduces her to his co-worker. That sparks fly between the new pair is communicated without close-up leers or touching and with bare conversation. The woe-be-gone boss drags two employees to a strip joint for distraction, and that each guy is at a different stage in his romantic travails is reflected in each's face and body language-- and we never even see the strippers, something Hollywood can never resist showing.
We root for the unexpected couples as well as their self-understanding, and they make unexpected yet believable choices. The naturalness of their interactions is laugh-out-loud funny in a knowing way, and breath-catchingly poignant.
Those of you intellectuals who are already familiar with "Hedda Gabler" won't be sandbagged by one scene as I was.
It deservedly won a slew of French Cesars.
(originally written 3/3/2001)