L'étudiant étranger

In 1955 a French student named Philippe (Marco Hofschneider) spends a year at a college in Virginia as an exchange student. There he meets a beautiful black woman (Robin Givens) and falls in love...but that was forbidden back then. But he can't stop his feelings for her...

Laid-back adaptation of a true story. It's good but distressingly TOO mild. This story has been told before and this is a good version but everything is so toned down it's hard to react to it. Also it mixes in football, blues music, a nervous breakdown and alcoholism in bits and pieces making it a jumble--the movie seriously lacks focus. Still this is not unwatchable.

It's beautifully filmed and has a feel for the period in clothes and cars (LOVE Cal's one). The acting really pulls this one through. Hofschneider is just great--young, handsome and full of life. His reactions when someone tries to get him into a blues club are hilarious. Rick Johnson is also good playing his best friend Cal. Givens is pretty terrible--a one note performance but she IS beautiful. Also the film is tasteful. There is a sex scene between Hofschneider and Givens but no nudity is shown! Hofschneider however was completely nude when they filmed it--he complained it was too cold shooting it and thought it was unnecessary but he did it.

All in all the film DOES work. I actually cried a little at the end. This came and went VERY quickly in 1994. It was supposed to boost Givens' career but didn't do a thing. It's worth seeing but don't go out of your way. I give it a 7.

Foreign student is a beautiful film. It's been a long time since i've come away from watching a film feeling 'high' on romance, or with my head in the cloud!! I love watching romantic movies involving interracial couples....it's so refreshing, new, and interesting! I also loved the song played in Foreign student, called 'you turn my life around' but i can't find it anywhere on the internet. Marco looked absolutely handsome and Givens looked beautiful...such a sweet couple...aaaaaaaaaah if i could find a man alike marco's character in Foreign student, or more precisely if he finds me and chases me i would me one happy girl!!! I need a man to sweep me of my feet, to really want me....i think all girls do. I recommend anyone go and see this film because it truly is beautiful and inspires you to find your true love and not to give up hope in finding it because it's out there for everyone!!!!

The theatrical picture "Foreign Student" is, looked at on its own, a sensitive and often moving film. The atmosphere of 1950s Virginia is skillfully re-created, the performances, are for the most part, incisive and stirring, and the script is tender and refreshingly non- melodramatic, allowing the proceedings to evolve in a mature and realistic way. Yet for all that, all this, the greatest plus, the most positive element is--drum roll, please--Robin Givens. As April, the local schoolteacher who also works as a domestic, she deftly creates a soulful and sexual woman. We immediately see why French exchange student Phillipe is drawn to her, why he falls in love with her. Indeed, we rather envy the young Parisian for being able to hook up with such a sexy and mature and quietly passionate girl. And when, at the end, they part and April leaves him a warm and loving good-bye note ("To Phillipe. All my love. Always. April"), we genuinely feel Phillipe's satisfaction at having had such a gorgeous and caring and fully-rounded lover. It is Robin's graceful beauty, her smoldering sexiness, and her classy intelligence that make her such an admirable love object and cause her to be the high point of the picture. When People Magazine did a story on her during the 1980s, it quoted her as contending that her long-range plans included more parts for "wholesome black girls--we don't have many female heroes in that vein." Robin Givens's character in "Foreign Student" may not be "wholesome," but through her smooth good looks and stylish sex appeal, she is certainly, definitely a "female hero" for black girls and, in fact, for girls of all races.

FOREIGN STUDENT

Aspect ratio: 1.85:1

Sound format: Dolby Stereo

Based on Philippe Labro's bestselling memoirs, Eva Sereny's film FOREIGN STUDENT strives valiantly for a sense of lyrical beauty, exemplified by cinematographer Franco Di Giacomo's evocative vision of rural Virginia in 1956, and by the sparse poetic voice-over, much of it presumably lifted from the book. But the narrative suffers from the vacuum of Marco Hofschneider's decidedly uncharismatic performance in the crucial leading role. The central romance lacks passion.

I was there. I arrived in the US from Paris France for my first year in the US in 1954 (v. 1955 in the movie.) I had no idea what "Football" was. I went out. I said I wanted to be a "guard" because I thought that's what they called the guy in the backfield who "protected" the "Quarterback" who then threw me the ball (what I really wanted.) When they told me to get in the line, I didn't know what to do. So, when the ball was snapped, I pulled out of the line and ran around the end with the quarterback. "Hey, Mr. McGehee, Ned is running away!" That's when I realized that American boys could be nasty, unlike the affable qb in the movie. That's when I felt bullied for the first time in my life. That's when I realized that American boys are raised to be "over-competitive." I'm eighty now, and I've come through fine; but, it wasn't as easy as in Hollywood. In summers, I lived in the mountains of North Carolina, where I made good long-term friends amoung the mountain people, who are neither bullies nor prejudiced. This movie rang very hollow to me, as though it was written by a foreigner who was never there. Sh-boom.