Watch Va Savoir (Who Knows?) For Free

To me, this movie is perfection.

The Age of Commercialism

Highly Overrated But Still Good

Fantastic!

A touring theatre group are performing in Paris. The film switches between the actors' performances on stage and their lives off stage. Off stage we are treated to amusing, farcical situations involving secret desires, infidelity, confused relationships and dishonesty. Things settle down nicely by the end of the film. A light and amusing film with entertaining characters that interlink well with each other. An enjoyable main plot with creative sub plots. The idea of a play within a play is nothing new but it's generally well done here. The film is perhaps too long for the story it is telling. An entertaining film but not a classic.

This film has pretensions of being an art film. I am a believer that art should delight and entertain as a result of its excellence. The reality of "Va Savoir" is that it delivers an absolutely dreadful movie, badly made with insipid performances. VERRRRRY boring and overly long. This movie is not a pleasure to watch, which disqualifies it as art, in my view.In an brazen attempt to grab the viewer's interest, the makers of the movie inserted a shower scene with Jeanne Balibar followed by a flash of her muffy, around the middle of the film. The shower scene doesn't clarify or advance the plot. Plus Ms. Balibar's scrawny body is the wrong subject for this desperate attempt at commercialism. When gratuitous nudity fails to redeem a movie for me, then there's something definitely wrong.My French isn't fluent, so I must watch French films in subtitles. I still enjoy following the French soundtrack and evaluating the quality of the English translation. The subtitling of "Va Savoir" is generally good, using the best colloquial English equivalent to the French. Some of the rawer French is slightly sanitized, however. Unfortunately, the soundtrack for the subtitled version I saw was muffled and indistinct. I prefer subtitled foreign films to dubbed movies to hear the expression of the actors delivering their lines. The soundtrack of the version I watched was so bad that I couldn't connect with what the actors were trying to convey. Or perhaps there wasn't anything to convey.The Italian play didn't add to any understanding of the film. These scenes could have done with some heavy editing and perhaps something coherent could have emerged. Jeanne Balibar's Italian sounded synthetic, monotonous and wooden to me. I don't know Italian stage conventions but Sergio Castellitto was quite expressive in the play. In fact, to see how to show expression in one's second language, one need look no further than Sergio Castellitto's performance in the French language. As a final comment, I've had enough of the genre of actors portraying actors. To me, that's not a stretch. It's not just the French that bore me with this kind of story. Hollywood and the TV Networks fall into the trap of displaying their own tiny little world. When an actor or actress does working class and does it realistically, then that's art. Check out "Frankie and Johnny", "Tampopo" or "What's Eating Gilbert Grape" for the best of the working poor on film.

Godard once said that "The Americans know how to tell stories, the French don't; they do something else". Seeing that most Americans commenting on this film didn't like it, I suppose it's at least partly because the film does not really tell a story, well, not in a good straightforward way at least. This might make the film tedious and overlong for some. I, however, found it charming enough to watch it non-stop from beginning to end. I don't know why; I suppose it is in part because both Jeanne Balibar and Heléne de Fougerolles are, each in her own way, so cute, funny and sexy in a way that only French actresses can be (even if they are not "beautiful" in the supermodel-silicon-tits way). Also I suppose because of the humour and lightness - too many french films tend to take themselves way too seriously, this one doesn't. Sergio Castellito is very watchable too. OK, it's not a masterpiece, maybe it could gain from some editing, etc. But it's not so bad. Plus, it made me curious to see or read "Come tu me vuoi", the Pirandello piece that the actors are performing. Seems interesting.

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.