From the Archives — “Happenstance”
In time for Valentine’s Day, here’s a review from the archive. This one was one of the very first reviews I ever wrote. It was originally published in The Battalion, Texas A&M’s student newspaper. As you can tell, I was still developing my writing style but please don’t let my love-affair with hyperbole on display in this review deter you from checking out the movie. The review may be trite but the movie is most definitely not.
With a planet’s alignment, events are set in motion that will eventually bring two strangers together in “Happenstance,” the joyful French cinematic export retitled from the original “Le Battement d’ailes du papillon.”
“Happenstance” is an anthology of interwoven stories focusing on a mass of emotions that includes everything from love to fear.
Leading an impressive ensemble cast is Audrey Tautou from “Amelie” as a store clerk who finds love in a city of lost souls. The movie innovatively uses the butterfly effect theory, the idea that a butterfly’s wing flap can eventually cause a typhoon across the world. With interesting characters and amusing situations, “Happenstance” will leave a smile on any romantic’s face.
The film’s sheer wealth of stories and striking characters stuffed into the hour-and-a-half time frame help make the movie a beautifully constructed crowd pleaser. From a man’s infidelity and his inability to make a decision to a habitual liar’s discovery that he can’t live the life he’s constructed, the stories in the movie are all entertaining, well crafted and charming. But it is in the connection of these stories into a single cohesive outlook on life that distinguishes this movie.
Karma and the pursuit of happiness bring together all types of citizens. Serendipity plays a strong role with the ability to piece together a hodgepodge of ideas and create a classic love story that could have, under normal circumstances, been trite. Instead, the movie becomes a complex machine of Rube Goldberg proportions.
The movie is filmed in French, so unless audiences are well-versed in the foreign language, they will need to bring along their reading glasses. The dialogue-heavy movie is subtitled and the DVD does not include a dubbing feature. However, with prose that seems to jump off the screen, the subtitles never become a nuisance and in fact serve to help drive home some of the humorous quips and quotes that are sprinkled throughout the film, such as “you only have to piss in the ocean to rise the water.”
The movie is a charming picture that takes a cache of classic love stories and creates a delightful escapist film perfect for those movie dates in which you are looking for something a little more thought provoking than the same Freddie Prinze Jr. movie. Instead, viewers are recommended to treat that special someone to a charismatic foreign film that will have them smiling. Maybe you’ll even fool them into thinking you actually have some culture.
