All That... for This?! (1993)

Absolutely the worst movie.

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

This is a very weird movie. It starts and ends as a courtroom drama, but between it shows a confusing array of human relations .. from the indicted threesome (whose story later becomes the main part of the film) to complex amorous dealings between "district attorney" (or what it's called in French) and the judge, which includes mountaineering on Mont Blanc.Lots of real-like emotions, and many more bewildering. I keep discovering more beauties in Lelouch's works, and at the same time wonder more and more how much that France he pictures (or more precisely, the behavior of the people) is drifting out of understanding from me, like it was a different planet (and I live just a 2 hours train ride from France..) Recommended very much, if you like to experience the unexperienced - and that's what movies are for, aren't they?

This is a French film that's decent but won't exactly knock your socks off. It is a slow-moving film, too slow overall for most people's tastes including mine in this instance.The three guys and their respective love affairs are at least somewhat interesting, but the time spent on these judges and their love stories is so tedious it's beyond boredom. Marie-Sophie Lelouch, the wife the man who directed this film had a really pretty face that I enjoyed admiring. That, and clean language throughout the story, have my thanks, but little else in here is worthy of much praise.Somewhere in here was a minor crime story but basically, this film is all talk, talk, talk and more talk, and you keep waiting for something to happen.....anything! The translation of this title to English sums up the movie: "All this....for just that?" That's the way I felt after watching this snooze-fest, or as Peggy Lee immortalized in song, "Is That All There Is?"

This movie is typical of Lelouch's movies. We find in this movies most of his favorites actors/actresses, beginning with all his wives (current and former) and several of the greatest french actors, including Fabrice Luchini and Gerard Darmon who do - as usual - a great job. Other actors are good also but the show is stolen by these two, especially Luchini who creates a whole scene under a tent in the mountain that was clearly not forecasted.This is a movie about coincidences, about love, about love's fools. This is a pure entertainment that makes you laugh but also makes you cry by moment. We find out all Lelouch's signatures touch, including some dreaming philosophy, lot of great talkative exchanges and a scenario that just doesn't want to go anywhere else than to offer moments of lifes, as intuited by the title of the movie ("Tout ca...pour ca" is a famous quote in French meaning something like "All this... just for that??").If you like to dream, if you don;t need to be shown an "american" plot with good guys, bad guys, princess to save and solid morale at the end, you will like this movie and have a truly great time watching it. If, on the contrary, you need to be taken care of and you don;t like to let your brain go with the story, pass this movie. It is just a refreshing breeze of life's moments, it does not intend to deliver a message.

In spite of shortcomings and with hindsight, "Tout ca...pour ca!" might be Claude Lelouch's most palatable moment of all the works he left in the nineties. It would be a lie to hail it as a masterwork (you can count on the fingers of one hand the films that reach this level in the filmmaker's copious filmography) but it is filled with enough energy and humor to omit boredom.It's a "Lelouchian" work to the core with some of the topics cherished by the filmmaker throughout his career: love affairs between men and women, chance that links some men's fate. These two themes are the backbone of the two chief plots of the film. On the first road, we follow the love to-in gs and fro-in gs of a judge (Francis Huster) and a lawyer (Fabrice Lucchini) with their wives and mistresses. Then, on a second road, Lelouch films the adventures of three immature men acted by Gérard Darmon as a taxi driver, Vincent Lindon as a waiter and Jacques Gamblin. They wound up together after a disappointing love affair for each of them and plan to earn as much money as they can to leave France with Jacques Gamblin's daughter. Their two-bit tricks and swindles will bring them to court.Do these two plots complement themselves? There's superimposition and you have to wait until the end to see fusion maintained. Frankly, Lelouch had better discarded his judges' love stories because they are uninteresting and flimsy. It's the same drawback as "le Chat et la Souris" (1975), another honorable effort from Lelouch in which all that deal with Philipe Léotard's sentimental life was gratuitous filler. And in spite of Lelouch's virtuosity at camera, his directing seems extracted from a film of the seventies and makes his effort a little obsolete. It also could have gained with a more tightened editing.But when the film lays the focus on the incredible adventures of the colorful threesome of men, it really gathers pace and takes off thanks to the energy conveyed by the three actors. It amounts to a beneficent change of scene fueled with humor.All this for that? It means a little lame but enjoyable excursion from a filmmaker who persists in developing his personal ideas in films? Well yes. But if this film made of two unlikely plots charmed you, at least Lelouch won't have worked in vain.