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Bookmark this pageChance or Coincidence (1998)
Director: Claude Lelouch
Movie review
From Time Out Film Guide
Star dancer and single mum, Myriam (Martines), waits for fate to make its next move. Working on a canvas beside a canal in Venice, Pierre Turi (Arditi), an art dealer, happens to forge his 'lost' masterpieces. Myriam and son become part of the frame of his life. Plans are made for a long holiday together, until a yachting accident leaves Martines to make the trip on her own. Camcorder in hand, she creates a video for those she's lost. Lelouch aims for emotions on a global scale, but only in the first half does the result measure up to his ambitions. Arditi's charisma whisks us along, but once he's off the scene, Martines has a task to carry the picture on numbed grief alone. Furthermore, an intersecting plot strand with Hollogne, a college lecturer and filmed-theatre performer, fails to engage. Without a solid grounding in credibility or emotional involvement, the film's edifice threatens to tumble, but then only a lovable madman such as Lelouch would dare to conjure an epic vision from such ramshackle elements in the first place.Author: TJ
Cast & crew
Director: Claude Lelouch
Producer: Claude Lelouch
Cast: Alessandra Martines, Pierre Arditi, Marc Hollogne, Laurent Hilaire, Véronique Moreau, Patrick Labbé, Geoffrey Holder full cast
Duration: 121 mins
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