Happenstance (2000)

I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much

Wonderful Movie

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Happenstance Happenstance is a romance movie. The movie gives many scenarios of people lives who comes from different walks of life. The movie Happenstance is centered on one girl starring Audrey Tautou (Irene) a young girl who seems to be miserable about her life as a young woman. She encounters an old lady on the train who believes in Horoscopes to be true when it comes to fate and read her horoscope and a young gentleman played by actor Faudel as (Younes) who also have the same birthday as Irene wants to hear more about his fate of finding love one day. Eric Savin (Richard) believes if certain incidents happen it is fate. He is struggling making the decision to leave his wife or stay. Eric Feldman (Luc) has no directions about life and looking for an easy answer for life.The main focus to me is on The Destiny Man played by Gilbert Robin who shows up in different angles of the movie to speak destiny about each individual in the movie. The scene when he tells the boy throwing rocks to miss throwing the last rock thru the fence. He shows up periodically in the movie to give it interest and keep you watching to see what is going to happen next. The music in the beginning brought some suspense to the part of the guard and the dog; the music corresponded well with the lighting in the scene and the old vigilant lying on the ground. Overall the movie was alright the music made the movie more come alive. The emotions of the actors/actress did not show any type of happiness about their lives they were very slothful throughout the movie which made it a little boring and plus it was not in English just the subtitles so it made it sort of difficult to view the film and get a sense of feeling from it. The dubbing was horrible could not understand a word without looking at the subtitle in English. I would compare this movie with Old Boy basically the same plot and theme but just in a different country, very close for as the emotions, the dubbing was horrible could not understand although they spoke some English in Old Boy but the movie had a little more action in the story line and both movies although foreign both ended in finding there happy medium in life despite their circumstances.

Narratives – whether written, visual or poetic epics – generally try to avoid too may characters; readers and viewers, after all, can be too easily overwhelmed by trying to keep track of who exactly is who. This is especially true in film, I think, simply because we cannot easily go back to refresh our memory in a cinema. Viewers like myself, however, don't have that problem because we see all our films on DVD or VHS.A year ago I was introduced to Audrey Tautou, a French actress, whom I first saw in The Fabulous Destiny of Amelie Poulain (2001) and later in A Very Long Engagement (2004), both of which were finely crafted and complex stories with a large cast of characters. This earlier offering exceeds the others in both ways: more characters and more complexity.Now, other directors have used those techniques before: Robert Altman with The Player (1992), Short Cuts (1993), Gosford Park (2001) and others; Paul Thomas Anderson did the same with Magnolia (1999). Stanley Kramer did it with A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World in 1963, a comedy of almost epic proportions. The difference with this film is, first the director lets us 'see' inside the head of some of the characters and second, some scenes are repeated as means to refresh the viewer's memory as the story flip-flops between different time periods.The basic – the core, so to speak – story concerns a young woman, Irene (Tautou) who is told, by a fellow commuter on a train, that she will meet her true love on that day. This occurs in the first few minutes of the film. The clever irony at this point is that Irene doesn't realize that the young man opposite (Gilbert Robin) may be that 'one true love'. And, nor does he...They go their separate ways with neither realizing the potential significance of their close encounter. However, chaos results throughout the rest of the day, not only for the two young people, but for the rest of the characters who appear in a series of cleverly constructed and interwoven vignettes that all seem to be going nowhere, and yet...If the story were simply that, it could tend to be boring, and even quite predictable. Not so. The script and the director rip into our expectations with a host of innovative scenes that are all too commonplace, but which are turned into believable, extraordinary events that allow the two possible lovers to meet again. For example, the next time some bird poo from the sky drops onto a book or paper of yours, consider your alternatives; two characters make an obvious choice that must occur before Irene and her man of destiny meet again. Or what about a stone chip flying onto your windscreen? Consider again what would happen...All of that is interesting enough. What was more interesting for me was assessing each new man who came along and trying to decide whether this guy was THE ONE for Irene, or whether it was, in fact, the young man on the train. That kept me guessing for a while.I'll let you think about that, should you see this delightful romp.Recommended for all.

The movie has one nude scene: A man sitting on the edge of the bed, with his exposed genitals smack dab in the middle of the screen. It is quite a long scene. What was the point? I almost think it was meant to be funny but we were watching it with my mother and it wasn't funny to have THAT staring at us for what seemed like a full minute.The movie is cold. None of the characters are even likeable. Audrey Tatou is cute, of course, but her character is an unhappy girl. I really would not recommend this movie. I had expected it to be charming and fresh but it was depressing. I wondered if the director was from a very upper crust, educated French family and he looks down on these characters.

Do you know about the Butterfly Effect? Sure you do. Jeff Goldblum explained it in Jurassic Park: "A butterfly can flap its wings in Peking, and in Central Park you get rain instead of sunshine." As one might guess from the title itself, Happenstance is all about randomness and chance. It details how the tiniest of events can lead to a particular outcome--in this case, the uniting of two soulmates.Happenstance adheres strictly to its philosophy, perhaps to a fault. The film skips from person to person in what is quite a large ensemble cast, itemizing how each of them contributes to the system. Due to the intricacies of details involved, in order to bring the audience to the "main" characters' resolution, it fails to follow up on supporting players, many of whom shared as much screen time as the leads. As a result, audiences might be left with more questions than what answers the ending provides. This might be solved by extending the length of the film to follow the other characters, but Happenstance borders on sluggishness at 90 minutes. Still, because of the film's constant reverence to its notions of chance and fate, it leaves us with a sense of faith that "happenstance" will come to everyone in their own turn.With such a large cast, it's surprising that there seem to be no weak links among them.We get to see a different side of Audrey Tautou's spectrum than the naive, wide-eyed dreamer we're familiar with... Here, she's a bit cynical, certainly a realist, and at times, rather self-centered. Her eyes and head hang a little low, and the pixie we watched in Amélie practically disappears. As with He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not, this film is not a great challenge to her acting abilities, but she provides a simple role with solid performance.The same can be said with all the cast, though it's a bit challenging to match actors' names with the characters' faces. They each play his or her role evenly, with a unique and distinguishable set of strengths and weaknesses.Such characterization was obviously well thought out by Laurent Firode, who wrote and directed Happenstance. He does a magnificent job at characterization, and one wonders how great he might do with a film focused on two or three main characters. His visual style, while not overpowering, also contributes greatly to the presentation of detail in the film.Don't rent this expecting Audrey Tautou in every scene, but if you wish to sample some more of her acting, or if you're just interested in an intelligent foreign film, Happenstance should leave you happy.