aFrenchparadox See 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.

nmegahey Abdellatif 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.

writers_reign Time: 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.

okurs 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.