Hasards ou coïncidences (1998) - film review

Once a successful dancer, Miriam has abandoned her career to bring up her son, Serge, after her boyfriend walked out on her.  During a holiday in Venice, she meets an art forger Pierre with whom she falls in love.  During a trip to Canada, Miriam loses both Pierre and her son in a tragic accident.  With her camcorder, she records images of the places her son wanted to visit, but her camcorder is later stolen.  Meanwhile, Marc Deschamps is giving lectures on futurology, claiming that there is no such thing as chance or coincidence in life.  He has the opportunity to test his theory when he buys a stolen camcorder and sees Miriam’s last recordings.  Marc determines to find Miriam and return the camcorder to her, certain that they were destined to meet this way...

Since his popular 1966 film Un homme et une femme brought him international fame, Claude Lelouch has continued to make bitter-sweet romantic films which have found more favour with the cinema-going public than with film critics.  Hasards ou coïncidences is the latest film in this series and is arguably one of Lelouch’s better efforts, less marred by awkward sentimentality and cinematographic excesses than his earlier films.

Hasards ou coïncidences appeals both intellectually and artistically – the film has an unusual plot and it is shot and assembled with both originality and genuine artistic merit.  It combines dramatic and comedic elements with the effortless grace of a prima ballerina (one of the film’s recurring motifs).  More significantly, the film manages to convey both the trauma of bereavement and the nature of obsessive love without going overboard, showing that Lelouch is capable of making respectable films when he is able to exercise a little self-restraint.  Where the film gets into difficulty and starts to lose its audience is when the director gets carried away with his artistic impulses.  Fortunately, compelling performances from Alessandra Martines, Pierre Arditi and Marc Hollogne more than compensate for any weaknesses in the plot or in the direction, and the end result is a satisfying and attractive piece of cinema.

© James Travers 2002

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