Dynamixor The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

FuzzyTagz If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

Juana what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Guillelmina The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

colin rose MANY YEARS AGO I bought a bottle of wine 3 or 4 times the price I usually paid. Expecting something akin to the gods' nectar I got just wine, very disappointing at first then I gradually realised I could drink this for the rest of my life and it would always only taste of wine, but always as a renewed experience, never tiring on the palette. Since then I have had the privilege of drinking comparable wines from France or Italy and grown tired of wines from elsewhere that shout ''I will astonish you' ' yet forget they aught to taste of wine. After Va Savoir I remember I watched a film. Was there direction or camera or cutting? Disappointment at first and wanting 'astonish me', instead I got Film; pure perfect film. By the end I felt very grown up. At the end I wished it had been somewhat longer: The first half hour took an hour the subsequent two hours took half that time!

Claudio Carvalho While in Paris in a tour of the Italian play "Como Tu Mi Vuoi", the lead actress Camille (Jeanne Balibar), who is living with the director Ugo Bassani (Sergio Castellitto), recalls and misses her former love Pierre (Jacques Bonnaffé). She visits his apartment and meets his present mate Sonia (Marianne Basler). Meanwhile Ugo is searching a lost play by Goldoni, and meets the charming French Dominique (Hélène de Fougerolles) that helps him to find it in her mother's private library. Meanwhile, Do's smalltime crook stepbrother Arthur (Bruno Todeschini) seduces Sonia to steal her expensive ring.I saw "Va Savoir" with great expectation, but I was quite disappointed with this pointless film. The charming cast and the good direction are lost in a promising story that goes nowhere. I do not dare to say that it was a complete waste of time, but I regret the terrible conclusion, which gives the impression that the writer got lost with the entwined romances. My vote is six.Title (Brazil): "Quem Sabe?" ("Who Knows?")

noralee "Va Savoir (Who knows?)" is for Eric Rohmer fans, though it's even slower and with less humor than Rohmer's intellectually romantic talk fests.Director Pierre Rivette is a contemporary of Rohmer's whose penchant for long, slow films has hampered his success in the U.S. And I guess this is his most accessible film, as the last half-hour suddenly becomes sweeter and filled with coincidences so the interplays of three couples become intertwined almost in a drawing-room comedy.But first are all kinds of references that went way over my head as I hadn't realized until late in the movie that the play that we keep seeing long chunks being performed in Italian by one of the couples is a Pirandello piece, with the gimmick here that we sort of see it backwards, mostly from the last scene to the start, so I missed some points. The well-acted characters do get more and more interesting as we slowly learn surprises about them such that we start rooting for different combinations than we started out understanding.It doesn't help that the subtitles are stiffly translated by a non-native English speaker, such that "kimono" is translated as "kimono" instead of as "bathrobe" or "l'aggression' as "aggression" instead of "a fight." (originally written 10/21/2001)

GasperUK Having read many of the comments of "Va Savoir" here, (admittedly mostly from the other side of the Atlantic), I was surprised by the amount of hostility towards this film.Whilst I admit that it may have benefited from a little judicious editing, perhaps down to around two hours, this seems to me to be a well acted and entertaining slice of french life. The fact that the main characters are involved in the theatre is entirely secondary since their "real" lives depicted here are infinitely more interesting than the characters being portrayed in the Pirandello play. Perhaps that was the point. There are enough sub-plots and unanswered questions relating to the fully rounded, three dimensional characters to keep the average viewer engrossed for the length of the film. They do not conform to stereotypes and it is not possible to pigeon-hole them. We find out much more about them as the film progresses. This is a film about people, their interwoven histories, and the formation of new relationships.Jeanne Balibar's performance, seemed to me, complex and mature. Initially, I found her portrayal cold and unemotional, but this I believe was intentional and as the film progresses, she is revealed as a complicated and enigmatic character, capable of intense emotions but also of granting sexual favours just to create a diversion.There is also a fine performance from Sergio Castellitto as Ugo, entirely convincing, except perhaps in his refusal to bed the truly delicious "Do" played by a ravishing Hélène de Fougerolles, (surely another French actress destined for greatness). Indeed, Jacques Rivette seems to have nurtured excellent performances all round.Whilst this is not a perfect film, it offers more than enough to warrant a few short hours of your time. This is a fine French film, which will remain in your memory for sometime to come and compared with much of Hollywood's current output, is a mature and thought-provoking piece of film making. Open a good bottle of red Bordeaux and settle down with its cinematic equivalent.