Customer Reviews

Foreign Student [VHS]

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

In most romance movies, the viewer can pretty well predict early on whether the lovers will wind up together. There is something about the opening tone, usually set by music, shades of color, locale, or brief introductions to the lovers, that foreshadows their future. In FOREIGN STUDENT, the red light of failure flashes right away and stays flashing right to the credits. Marco Hofschneider plays a sweet French student studying in the south United States in the 1950s. He meets a lovely Robin Givens, who radiates a smoldering passion that Marco flits toward. The problem is that in the south of that time, interracial relationships were doomed from the start, yet the lovers try. Each seems to feel that in another place and another time, they could succeed, but in the here and the now, they can only invite disaster. Of the two, Marco is the more emotional one, the lover who sees only the object of his desire and not the formidable obstacles to its fruition. Givens is the one who has her feet planted firmly is the sociological soil of her time. She cannot be faulted for beginning the affair--after all Marco is the perfect dream man: handsome, cultured, athletic, and speaks French into the bargain. But she has enough sense to hear alarm bells go off inside, and she breaks off the relation.
The first time I saw this film, it seemed a trite piece of soap-opera fluffery, designed more for the female who longs for more in a lover than the clods she is used to. But repeated viewings indicate that love and attraction can occur even in a racially and culturally divergent set of lovers, and if society squashes that love, then the pain that they feel can be felt by the viewer too. Any movie that can do this cannot be so easily dismissed as fluffery. Many love stories try to involve the viewer; FOREIGN STUDENT is one of the few that succeed.

This movie was very beautiful and expressed passion so well between the actors and the storyline. You couldn't help but get emotional in some of the scenes. It's a breathtaking love story between an interracial couple, whereas the lead male character is a young man from France who falls heed over heels in love with a very attractive black girl in the south in 1955. Although, the movie takes place in the south at that time, it wasn't to focus on the historical context of what would be happening at that time between an interracial couple, but to focus on true feelings between to people. The movie truly makes one feel what "being in love" feels like. Rent it!

This is a sweet story about young love (forbidden love) on its surface, but a bit more than that upon closer analysis. The repressive racial climate of the 50's is seen through the eyes of one who was not brought up in it and in the narration, Philippe's recounting of his first introduction to this segregation is just heart-wrenching:

"There are two hearts that beat in the body of America - one is hidden behind the other, and once I heard its cry, nothing was ever quite the same for me."

This one metaphor speaks not only to the character's idealistic rejection of the prevailing system of segregation but also to his determined and perhaps a bit reckless attempts to pull the veil aside and connect with America's hidden heart personally. Philippe is likeable enough but naive and inept and we are left feeling that he is not nearly man enough for April, despite their attraction.

April, meanwhile, appears to have been conditioned to believe that there is no hope of escape for her from this system even when Philippe suggests that they could go to France where things would be very different. Her inability or unwillingness to trust in Philippe's experience of a better world beyond the one she knows is a failure he might have been able to overcome with more experience and the will to confront it.

Robin Givens' portrayal of April is warm, intelligent, savvy and a bit mischievous but I couldn't help but feel like there was so much more to her that we weren't being told. Her beauty stood in sharp contrast to the dry academic environment of the college and the drab featureless expanse of the surrounding countryside and I found myself so hungry to see more of her that I rewound and replayed her scenes before letting the movie progress to the next part!

Perhaps it is my bias showing, but I found it easy to see what Philippe could see in April, but not so easy to see what she could see in him. Nevertheless, I was pulling for their love to succeed and frustrated by Philippe's foolishness that doomed it. I felt April's pain upon realizing that she must end it and Philippe's regret many years later for having lost his true love when he opines that he finds himself like so many men who took more than they gave . . .

". . . standing on a pile of glass, searching for the diamonds I threw away".

Foreign Student is my next favorite interracial romance after Mississippi Masala. The film touches me personally because I'm an African-American woman in a romance with a white French-Canadian man. Both Robin Givens & Marco Hofschneider's acting & physical appeal is angelic. This movie never got any press in my town. I just happened to run across it at a video store. I must admit that interracial romances between African-Americans & foreigners have always intrigued me. Foreign Student is intriguing, romantic, sexy, and slightly political.

You will love the movie if you are a Robin Givens fan. The movie is about a relationship that Robin has with a foreign student(he is European or French). Society doesn't agree of the relationship, but they continue to see one another.

I loved this movie. I had never heard of it before i seen it at blockbusters one day about a year ago. I have always been a fan of interracial romance films. I think that when ur in a interracial relationship it is that much more special because of all the barriers you have to break to make it work. THe two actors in this film made it work, it was so beautiful. This movie takes the cake for best romance film ever with the excpetion of the movie Bent. You have to see this movie, its great.

I am confessing to you that I watched this film and I am writing this review more as a public service announcement.

"The Foreign Student" starts out promisingly enough: a French exchange student comes to the American South during segregation and is transformed as he realizes that this world is so unlike the one he has left behind...

But the implausible leaps the film takes us on -- most importantly the grand canyon jump that doesn't explain how our hero's initial schoolboy crush suddenly turns into a hot physical affair with an attractive young black teacher/domestic (Robin Givens) -- gives it a very Zalman King/"Red Shoe Diaries" vibe. The film definitely doesn't acknowledge the viewer's intelligence: shouldn't we consider the historical context of what it would mean for these two people to have a relationship at that time in the South? I thought Ms. Givens was poorly directed (her character's range amounted to two signature facial expressions, one I'd describe as a sexy sneer). She plays the role very 90's and is not believable as a woman from the South of the 1950s.

It's not that all of the acting is bad, and there are some moments, but wouldn't you rather see a good film? On the positive side, I can tell you that this film gave me one of the best hysterical laughing fits I have had in years. For that much I'm grateful.