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Review of Lovers

Lovers (1999)
5/10
Dogme love story
27 October 2005
This is a dogme film using location shots, no props, natural lighting as far as possible etc. The story concerns a Yugoslav Serb artist, Dragan adrift in France. He goes into a bookshop to try and buy an art book and meets a girl, Jeanne, who works there somewhat intermittently, and they fall in love. Although they have to speak in English because she can't speak Serbian and he can't speak French remarkably they never have to struggle for words (I do tell a lie he does have a problem - once.) One night they are stopped by the police after some drunken bad behaviour on Dragan's part and Jeanne discovers to her horror that his papers are not in order and he will be allowed three days before being deported by the authorities. His friends had warned him to regularise his stay with the authorities but he had ignored them and now they are both up the proverbial creek. Elodie Bouchet as Jeanne puts in a good performance and the cinematography creates a nice atmosphere from its shots of Paris streets and claustrophobic apartments but the pacing of the film is glacial. There is little or no dramatic tension until Dragan gets his marching orders from the cops, there is no witty dialogue and no real political point to make as in L'Afrance another French film which deals with more or less the same subject but in a rather sharper way.
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