A good-looking but slim confection that's short on the multi-characterisation and sense of entwined destinies that mark the great Lelouch sagas.
And Now Ladies and Gentlemen (2003)
Genre: Foreign Films
Starring: Jeremy Irons, Patricia Kaas, Thierry Lhermitte, Alessandra Martines, Jean-Marie Bigard
Screenwriter: Claude Lelouch
Producer: Claude Lelouch, Paul Hichcock, Rick Senat
Composer: Michel Legrand
Reviews
According to common usage, the French word stupide comes closer to silly than to dumb, which is how I might rationalize my affection for this harebrained, obvious, but euphoric tale.
Lelouch isn't interested in anything so pedestrian as plausible narrative.... some people want to fill the world with silly love songs.
Lelouch's wink at the viewer, his gentle undermining of the illusion of the dramatic unity of time and place, playfully tweaks the film's fundamental project of connection.
Because the majority of scenes are drawn out and obviously improvised, this disjointed and rambling confection will have limited appeal to others.
Lelouch ... assuring he doesn’t fully lose his audience by the convolutions of the mind, still actively takes part in putting up a fog screen as to avoid total comprehension.
This is like a collection of the best moments from Claude Lelouch's filmography -- with bits and pieces joyously borrowed from his films from the 1970s and '80s, when he was at his most prolific and ingenious.
The most sophisticated love story since In the Mood for Love, The House of Mirth and The English Patient.
... simply abstract, substituting romantic gesture for romance and gluing scenes together with vague emotional logic and silky style.
You'll either like this soaringly daft confection, even as it aggravates you with its self-absorption, or you won't. I did.
This drowsy caper comes on like a fun-house mirror of layered pretensions.
The movie is overcrowded with ideas, any one of which might have made a fun premise. Put them all together and the result is just plain silly.
Few, if any, other actors could match Irons' stiff-lipped exterior sealing an internal combustion engine of mischief and passion.
May not be entirely successful, but there are worse ways to spend an afternoon.
...plays like your neighbors' two-hour vacation slideshow that they insist on showing every time you come over.
It's two-plus hours of trinkets and baubles and clever repartée beneath a perfect summer sun and beside the whitewashed walls of Fez.
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by: REEL_REVIEWER 5/25/05


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