Va savoir (2001) Reviews

• Entertaining and Impressive

  GasperUK2004-01-09

  Having read many of the comments of "Va Savoir" here, (admittedly mostly from the other side of the Atlantic), I was surprised by the amount of hostility towards this film. Whilst I admit that it may have benefited from a little judicious editing, perhaps down to around two hours, this seems to me to be a well acted and entertaining slice of french life. The fact that the main characters are involved in the theatre is entirely secondary since their "real" lives depicted here are infinitely more interesting than the characters being portrayed in the Pirandello play. Perhaps that was the point. There are enough sub-plots and unanswered questions relating to the fully rounded, three dimensional characters to keep the average viewer engrossed for the length of the film. They do not conform to stereotypes and it is not possible to pigeon-hole them. We find out much more about them as the film progresses. This is a film about people, their interwoven histories, and the formation of new relationships. Jeanne Balibar's performance, seemed to me, complex and mature. Initially, I found her portrayal cold and unemotional, but this I believe was intentional and as the film progresses, she is revealed as a complicated and enigmatic character, capable of intense emotions but also of granting sexual favours just to create a diversion. There is also a fine performance from Sergio Castellitto as Ugo, entirely convincing, except perhaps in his refusal to bed the truly delicious "Do" played by a ravishing Hélène de Fougerolles, (surely another French actress destined for greatness). Indeed, Jacques Rivette seems to have nurtured excellent performances all round. Whilst this is not a perfect film, it offers more than enough to warrant a few short hours of your time. This is a fine French film, which will remain in your memory for sometime to come and compared with much of Hollywood's current output, is a mature and thought-provoking piece of film making. Open a good bottle of red Bordeaux and settle down with its cinematic equivalent.

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• "Life is what happens to you as you desire me"

  G_a_l_i_n_a2006-12-01

  The film's heroine, Camille, a French stage actress left Paris three years ago and found success in Torino, Italy where she became a lead actress for the theater company. She also became a lover of Ugo, a famous stage director. She returns back to Paris with Ugo and his company to act in Italian as a main character in Pirandello's "As You Desire Me", the play that explores the mysteries of identity and memory. While in Paris, Camille confronts her past life and Pierre, the man whom she loved and still can't forget. I found Camille's character (as played by Jeanne Balibar, the stage actress and a dancer) very interesting. She may not be likable in a beginning but she is talented and every character in the movie after watching her performing at the stage leaves with the feelings that they've witnessed something very special. Camille changes as the movie progresses and in the end she becomes like a sister or close friend to both Celine and Julie. Her every movement, gesture, the way she walks, smiles, turns her head, speaks in two languages changing the timbre of her voice are true marvels to watch and to listen to. Ugo tries to find in the Paris libraries the lost but existing play by the Italian dramatist of 18th century, Carlo Goldoni and is helped by an intelligent and beautiful young student, Dominique or Do and they both seem to have developed some special feelings for each other. Dominique has a half-brother, Arthur who is in love with Sonja, a new woman in Pierre's life or is he in love with Sonja's exquisite jewelry? Do and Arthur have a mother, Madame Desprez who has inherited the library of the rare and priceless old books but she does not sell them, she keeps them as a memory of her first husband. Sonja, Pierre's girlfriend seems to bring the peace and happiness in Pierre's life after Camille was gone but she, too, had a mystery in her rather wild past for which a marvelous ring, an object of Arthur's desire serves as a reminder. I like "Va savoir" a lot - it is so well constructed and absolutely Rivettesque and it made me smile all the time. It is long (as usual for Rivette's films) but elegantly relaxed. It moves well with its own wonderful pace and we enjoy leisure walkings and spend time with many old and rare books. We feel longing that is in the air - all six characters desire something and someone. We notice once again how much Rivette likes his characters sitting on the park bench where the magic events begin happening to them. We go through many wonderful sequences, ironic, dramatic, and lyrical and in the end we are awarded by the finale which is truly grand and theatrical in the best sense. After all the movie could be viewed as Rivette's love letter to theater. Va Savoir? Who knows?

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• Who knows

  jotix1002006-05-07

  Obviously, "Va Savoir", like most of Jacques Rivette's films, is not a film for the masses. On the other hand, fans of the work of Mr. Rivette will enjoy this work for its own merits. The director gives us a play within a play. We are invited to watch as an Italian theater company is rehearsing Luigi Pirandello's "Come tu mi voui", or "As You Desire Me" for the Paris engagement. The Pirandello text has a lot to do with one sees on the stage, a ploy that doesn't come across for most viewers. The theatrical production of this 1930 play is a bit over the top for out taste, as scenes are played backward on stage and we are taken to see it. Also, being a theatrical production we watch being performed, it is played with a different intensity than the rest of the film. Camille and Ugo are lovers. She had left Pierre, a French philosophy professor, and went to Italy, where she settled. Camille's relationship with Ugo is going through some rough moments, no doubt caused by her return to Paris and nerves from the play she is the leading lady. Ugo, who also acts in the play, is determined to find a rare Carlo Goldoni's play, "Il Destino Veneziano", which might have been written in Paris in the eighteenth century. A few days after the opening, Camille goes to a park where she knows she will find Pierre, a man whose habits take him to the same places all the time. The encounter goes well, but we can see that he is still in love with her. Pierre is now married to the beautiful Sonia, who is a dance instructor. Camille had left Pierre three years ago, but for him, it appears as though it was yesterday. It's obvious that for Camille everything is over, yet, Pierre seems to hope it isn't so. Ugo, on the other hand, is referred to contact someone who is a descendant of the man who helped Goldoni during his stay in Paris two hundred years before. What he discovers is a mother who is willing to give him access to the library, and just by coincidence, she is the mother of Dominique, who he had met at a library where both were doing research. It's clear from the start that Ugo likes the young woman and she, in turn, likes him also. The first two hours of the film drag a bit, and could have used some editing in putting things into a different perspective. The last half hour makes more sense as all the different conflicts come to a head and the film becomes alive, especially the funny 'duel' between Ugo and Pierre at the theater. Also, Camille's ability to rescue Sonia's valuable ring from her lover, serves to perk the action. What it's not immediately clear is the connection among all the characters we meet. Rivette doesn't help things in explaining some of the liaisons have been forged, especially between Arthur, Do's brother, and Sonia, but we have seen the clue as he is seen spying on her ballet class. Also, the Pirandello play, which we see every now and then, doesn't clarify things. Much has been said in this forum about Jeanne Balibar's Camille. She goes through a whole range of emotions in the film in a nuanced performance. Sergio Castellitto, one of the best Italian actors working in movies these days, is perfect as Ugo. He can be intense, vain, or playful, yet he doesn't stray from betraying Camille. Helene de Fougerolles is a beautiful young actress who makes a lot out of her Do. Marianne Basler is seen as Sonia and Jacques Bonnaffe plays Pierre well. "Va Savoir" will be quickly dismissed by the audiences that are not prepared to go along for the trip that Jacques Rivette invites us to take with him.

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• Truly, a French Film, and Very Good

  gbheron2003-08-04

  The play within a play ploy is used in Go Figure to excellent effect. The play is an eighteenth century farce performed by an Italian acting troupe visiting Paris. The farce utilizes six characters, the optimal number to engage in romantic mix-ups, flirtations, and other amorous stuff. And lo and behold, Go Figure itself contains six persons who engage in romantic mix-ups, flirtations, and crimes, both physical and of the heart. There's the lead actress and her stage manager husband; she, who walked out on her now married ex-lover, whom she meets for the first time in three years (as well as his wife). Rounding out the six are two siblings, one a sexy young lady, the other her caddish older brother. There's jewel theft, a hunt for a missing manuscript, jealousy, and the falling in and out of love. And in the backdrop the acting troupe struggles to remains solvent. All this is served up in, what I would call a French style. Of course I've not seen that many French romantic comedies, but I can state that were this in the hands of an American 'Hollywood' director it would be an entirely different film. And probably not nearly as good. In Rivette's hands all the action and interactions seem natural and light. There's no 'look at me' style of acting; it's almost understated. And this makes for a very enjoyable viewing that loses little on the small screen.

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• Sophie Marceau wouldn't like it

  btodorov2004-12-09

  Some years ago Sophie Marceau explained her move to Hollywood in more or less the following terms: I am tired of doing the same French movies where all in all there is a love triangle and in the end the three of them have dinner together. Well, Va savoir is exactly that kind of movie. It is more complicated because there are actually four love triangles, but yes, they all have a cake to share in the end; all the six people who were involved in the triangles. So nothing new here. The good thing, however, are the characters. Except for the brother-and-sister duo who are kind of stereotypical and possibly present the spectator with the cliché of male and female libertine Parisians, the other two couples arouse our curiosity with their insufficiencies: Camille is a little too absent-minded to be completely sane, Pierre is a typical academic dork who falls into furies of sophisticated frustration, Ugo visibly carries the burden of his unattractive appearance and compensates for it with his thick Italian accent, while Sonia obstinately tries to keep to the level of those intellectual pricks and prove how much more she knows about real life. This is a good melodrama if you like the genre. I do, and I liked it. Marceau probably wouldn't.

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