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40A clever idea that never stretches beyond just that -- a caterpillar that never blooms into a butterfly.
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63It has every mark of inspiration by imitation.
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Like several recent films, Happenstance draws on chaos theory as an inspiration, musing on the slim difference between random chance and fate and trotting out the old chestnut about the flapping of butterfly wings causing a tsunami.
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75The movie is funny, but it's also touching and poetic -- and Bertin's scenes are devastating.
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50The movie has magical moments, but it's too contrived to gather much comic or dramatic power.
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75In Happenstance, fortune doesn't just smile -- it schemes and tricks and zigzags, forming an urban road map of fate's detours.
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70There's no doubt that sheer mechanism propels Happenstance, but the numerous characters and storylines flow and converge in a gracefully unpredictable and witty manner.
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60Fate plays both prankster and deliverer in Firode's never-too-clever scheme, buoyed, like his often-winsome images, by romantic fancy.
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80It brims with the charm, wisdom and light touch that have endeared French films to international audiences for more than a century. It doesn't hurt that its star is "Amelie's" Audrey Tautou.
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50Ultimately feels like tiny films glued together by events that often test plausibility. The idea wears thin soon, and some of the characters and their tales get lost in the unstoppable domino chain.
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40Viewers expecting another enchanting, whimsical tale of high energy and mischievous spirits will be sorely disappointed.
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50As slight as it is sweet.
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63That is not an original idea, for sure. But the ensemble cast -- especially Tatou as a 24-year-old store clerk named Irene -- is personable and the Parisian ambiance is catching.
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75Mild but engaging romance.
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75Happenstance represents an intriguing meditation on the unseen forces that no one can escape.
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25Tautou seems tired, mean-spirited and utterly devoid of that Audrey Hepburn-like charm that made her the international movie find of 2001.
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80Perhaps it's all a bit too much, and perhaps it doesn't add up, but the loose ends give the picture a jaunty, improvised feeling that, while it leads to some confusion, is ultimately part of its whimsical charm.
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40Episodic, pretentious, and more than a little silly.
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60Being French, the film at least has indelible details -- something a Hollywood remake would fix but good.
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80Stars Audrey Tautou, gaminelike, waiflike, vivid and completely adorable.
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80Utterly delightful fable of romantic destiny.