Product Details

• Actors:  Sara Forestier, Sabrina Ouazani Osman Elkharraz
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, Letterboxed, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: French (Unknown)
• Subtitles: English
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: Unrated
• Studio: New Yorker
• DVD Release Date: April 18, 2006
• Run Time: 117 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B000EMHWVE
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #79,726 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• For more information about "Games of Love and Chance" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

A sensitive, daringly original and deeply human portrait of a group of teenagers living in the projects outside Paris and surviving in a world marginalized by society. Set during preparations for a school production, it captures their affections, quarrels and jealousies as well as the budding romance between shy Krimo and Lydia, the fiery blonde star. Krimo, a pre-thug with great, big dreams forms a tight crew with his friends that carries its weight around their dangerous ‘hood. Confident and sassy, Lydia is a romantic, stunning beauty driven by passion. Friends throughout their lives, as they move into adolescence, Krimo realizes he has fallen in love. Using the show as a way to get closer to Lydia, Krimo persuades his friend, Rachid, to give up the lead role. Krimo wants Lydia and he's far too smitten to be scared of looking ridiculous in front of his crew. Rejection, seduction, betrayal, and love are the heart of this universal coming-of-age story.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Thoughtful but disheartening look at life in the French suburbs, January 18, 2008

By 

Andres C. Salama (Buenos Aires, Argentina) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Games of Love and Chance (DVD)

This French film, also released as L'Esquive in some countries, is a quite disheartening look at life in the public housing projects outside Paris. In a crumbling neighbourhood with a majority of immigrants from Northern Africa, a high school tries to produce a play by Pierre Marivaux (1688-1763). The heart of the film is the budding romance between the vivacious blonde Lydia (one of the few "native" French living in the neighbourhood) and the shy and painfully inarticulate Krimo, who is ridiculized by his thuggish friends for taking a part in the play. All the kids speak in an unintelligible slang, which makes a contrast with the classical French of Marivaux. I wrote it was disheartening (despite not being a drama) because it shows that the marginalized inhabitants of the projects have an almost nil chance of breaking into the mainstream of French society. Thoughtful and worth seeing.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Stop the Shouting and Arguing, August 28, 2009

By 

Daniel G. Lebryk (Chicago) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Games of Love and Chance (DVD)

Games of Love and Chance is a well meaning, well intentioned, serious look at the plight of minority teenagers in France. But the good intentions are just ruined by one of the most annoying films I have seen in ages. From the first scene, its clear this film will be bad. Although the thoughts were in the right place, this is just a lousy film.

The movie opens with several teenage boys talking. They speak in ghetto French. The language is extremely strong, the translations are roughly accurate, maybe even a bit mild in English. They are talking about going to beat up some other guys. What starts off as a reasonable back and forth, quickly turns into yelling. They argue over and over and over about the same thing. They all yell at once. The camera darts back and forth between each boy, confusing the issue even more. Now this scene would have been fine, taken alone. The film calms down. The central character, Krimo, walks away. The camera follows him. He stands in front of an HLM (public housing in France), and calls for his girl friend. They meet on the stairway. They start arguing. She starts yelling and cussing at him. And we're off to the noise races again. The movie calms down for a few minutes, then we get more yelling and arguing at another location. This goes on for a full 2 hours with absolutely no reprieve.

In theory there is a parallel story between the lives of these teenagers and a classic play they are rehearsing in their French class. Its all about class distinction. Their teacher spends about 4 minutes in a deep intellectual heartfelt discourse on how people can put on the clothes of the other class, but they will always be seen as from the wrong class. It is a lame attempt at making this film seem intellectual in some way.

Frankly, after 20 minutes, I was exhausted watching this mess develop. I slogged through the full bitter 2 hours. The comparison between the play and their lives was done with such a heavy hand. I was grateful for the ending of this film.

Technically the film was shot documentary style, handheld camera, poorly recorded sound, poor lighting, frequently out of focus shots, and poor pacing. The actors are all young, and likely from the neighborhood. They actually played themselves rather well. I fault the director for being so in your face, with no concept of how to slow down or pace a film. The arguing about miniscule details over and over and over was just too much to support. The language was realistic.

Some may feel this is a necessary view into the boring life of children in what amounts to a ghetto. The mistreatment by the police. That this film preserves some form of their language. To some people opera singing is the most beautiful thing in the world, to others is is as bad as fingernails on a blackboard. From me, this movie was 2 hours of scratching the blackboard.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Star-crossed love in the projects . . ., August 6, 2009

By 

Ronald Scheer "rockysquirrel" (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Games of Love and Chance (DVD)

This film from Tunisian-born French director Abdel Kechiche immerses the viewer in the world of its teenage characters, where boys and girls move in packs and live by restrictive tribal codes. It's a world where adults are mostly elsewhere - if not in jail - and there is nothing but time on a teenager's hands. Differences of opinion rapidly escalate into shouting matches, fierce loyalties and jealous rivalries are the norm, and intense disputes spring up over conflicting romantic interests.

The thread that runs through the film involves rehearsals for a high school production of French playwright Marivaux' "Game of Love and Chance," a play with a comic portrayal of love that mirrors the one that develops between the two main characters - Krimo and Lydia. While Lydia revels in the delights of flirtation on stage, she is far less certain how to deal with the infatuation of her real-life counterpart, Krimo, who is unable to do anything but moon over her in helpless infatuation. The attempts of Krimo's friend to resolve what he sees as a serious problem creates a comedy of its own - until interrupted by some heavy-handed police officers.

At almost two hours, the film is overlong for its story line, and some of the shouting matches get to be repetitive. Shot in closeup and cut with the pace of an MTV video, the film offers few moments for reflection. But it captures well the self-absorbed world of urban teenagers, filled with high intensity emotions and equal parts frustration and boredom. For that alone, it's well worth seeing.