Games of Love and Chance (2003)

A Masterpiece!

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

This 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?

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.

I 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.

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.