Le battement d'ailes du papillon

The fluttering of butterfly wings in the Atlantic can unleash a hurricane in the Pacific. According to this theory (somehow related to the Chaos Theory, I'm not sure exactly how), every action, no matter how small or insignificant, will start a chain reaction that can lead to big events. This small jewel of a film shows us a series of seemingly-unrelated characters, most of them in Paris, whose actions will affect each others' lives. (The six-degrees-of-separation theory can be applied as well.) Each story is a facet of the jewel that is this film. The acting is finely-tuned and nuanced (Audrey Tautou is luminous), the stories mesh plausibly, the humor is just right, and the viewer leaves the theatre nodding in agreement.

Do you know about the Butterfly Effect? Sure you do. Jeff Goldblum explained it in Jurassic Park: "A butterfly can flap its wings in Peking, and in Central Park you get rain instead of sunshine." As one might guess from the title itself, Happenstance is all about randomness and chance. It details how the tiniest of events can lead to a particular outcome--in this case, the uniting of two soulmates.

Happenstance adheres strictly to its philosophy, perhaps to a fault. The film skips from person to person in what is quite a large ensemble cast, itemizing how each of them contributes to the system. Due to the intricacies of details involved, in order to bring the audience to the "main" characters' resolution, it fails to follow up on supporting players, many of whom shared as much screen time as the leads. As a result, audiences might be left with more questions than what answers the ending provides. This might be solved by extending the length of the film to follow the other characters, but Happenstance borders on sluggishness at 90 minutes.

Still, because of the film's constant reverence to its notions of chance and fate, it leaves us with a sense of faith that "happenstance" will come to everyone in their own turn.

With such a large cast, it's surprising that there seem to be no weak links among them.

We get to see a different side of Audrey Tautou's spectrum than the naive, wide-eyed dreamer we're familiar with... Here, she's a bit cynical, certainly a realist, and at times, rather self-centered. Her eyes and head hang a little low, and the pixie we watched in Amélie practically disappears. As with He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not, this film is not a great challenge to her acting abilities, but she provides a simple role with solid performance.

The same can be said with all the cast, though it's a bit challenging to match actors' names with the characters' faces. They each play his or her role evenly, with a unique and distinguishable set of strengths and weaknesses.

Such characterization was obviously well thought out by Laurent Firode, who wrote and directed Happenstance. He does a magnificent job at characterization, and one wonders how great he might do with a film focused on two or three main characters. His visual style, while not overpowering, also contributes greatly to the presentation of detail in the film.

Don't rent this expecting Audrey Tautou in every scene, but if you wish to sample some more of her acting, or if you're just interested in an intelligent foreign film, Happenstance should leave you happy.

Laurent Firode's film Happenstance (2000) is an extended meditation on the relationship between fate and perception. In a film with few real characters and no discernable plot, Firode would seem to be doing nothing more than expounding a form of applied chaos theory if it wasn't for the fact that this film is so much fun. The joy of this film comes with the god's-eye view afforded to the viewer. In a single day of Parisian urban interactions, none of the characters perceive the intricate web of chance that ties them together to the delight of the audience.

Happenstance uses chance relations to construct a paradigm which allows for a kind of karmic justice to flourish. As the human mind develops free will from the deterministic relationships of atoms and molecules, so justice emerges from a series of random seeming encounters. The lovers meet, as they were destined to. The cheating husband avoids harming his innocent son. Luc Gossard admits his failings, and while he loses his job, he gains his inheritance.

This perspective could be termed a sort of theoretical physicist's version of karma. Complex systems with seemingly random cause-effect relations are recognized to have very significant levels of emergent organization when seen from different scales. The human mind is one example; the formation of the solar system from clouds of cosmic dust is another. Biology can offer the concept of evolution, which is based on random-seeming interactions between predator and prey leading to extremely complex forms and survival mechanisms, from the venus fly trap to the giraffe. Is it so very unbelievable that a network of humans (intelligent particles) can exhibit an emergent intelligence of its own?

jonny muggs

Charming little movie about a girl on her way to work on the Metro who has her horoscope told and is informed that today she will meet the man she will fall in love with. The story then divides into a bunch of individual tales about the people on the Metro platform, with each tale in one small way moving the girl closer to meeting her intended. A lot of hilarious and unexpected belly-laughs. A movie one has to trust in as the payoff is uproariously funny. Along the way one wonders how some of the stories will affect the outcome but inevitably they do. The meaning of the title in French - "The beat of a butterfly's wings?" When a butterfly beats its' wings on one side of the Pacific it creates a tidal wave on the other side. A very funny charmer with the gorgeous Audrey Tautou who has all of the delightful screen persona of that other unforgettable Audrey.

This film is cute and spirited but not particularly deep. I was drawn into the film just to see how far this director would take this outworn theory that every event in life effects things immediately around us. There is a Law of Cause and Effect that determines what happens to an individual, but the theories of luck, fate, predestination and coincidence are not true. Therefore, I had some trouble accepting the butterfly theory. The butterfly or a man does something and something happens as a result of that action. It does not happen in the nice convenient way that this film seems to wish us to believe. In other words, our actions determine our life but do not, necessarily, influence those around us, though they may.

Audrey Tautou is as charming and delightful as she was in Amelie. The supporting cast is delightful. The film is delightful and I recommend it. Just do not get so caught up in the "message" of the film for it is fairly meaningless.