"Les cerfs-volants" ("Kites") is a TV adaptation from Romain Gary's last novel, with some fine production values but almost no aim to fully conquer audiences.
It has a fine basis to charm audiences with a complicated love story set on France before and during World War II, a fine cast as well but it gets so
unappealing and repetitive while creating conflicts and scenarios about two young people in love who fail to grow with their emotions and know exactly
what they want from love and life. It is a fair and honest portrayal of youngsters in some ways, but that doesn't make a good film necessarily.
It follows a young orphan French peasant (Marc André Grondin) who gets obsessed
by a pretty Polish girl (Gaëlle Bona) who teases him from time to time, and through such connection he finds work as a financial whiz that could help
her crazy rich family to survive the drunk patriarch's gambling losses. Obvious that the social clashes between both doesn't help them in any way, but he
gets support from one of her brothers, and also from his idealist uncle (Tcheky Karyo), an idealist/pacifist postman obsessed with kites and the only
family the boy ever had.
In between up's and down's, the plot thickens when her German cousin appears (Frank Geney), a handsome man who's also in love with her, provoking
a rivalry that will push everybody to the limit as WWII approaches and the three nations will be deeply involved. That's when the saying "all is fair
in love and war" proves itself as they move on different directions, find one another then disappear from time to time, and by that time the young Frenchman is involved
with the French resistance while the other becomes a Nazi officer, and the girl divides her time between both either to test their commitment or just to
provoke some jealousy.
Oh, young love. Usually aesthetically pleasing but not fully formed as the mind and emotions are on development, slowly maturing. So what do we get? A
series of dumb acts of despair, jealousy and unfulfilled needs and desires. Also goes as crazy love, l'amour fou as one of the characters mention early on.
Not saying it's a rule, but it happens more frequently on youngsters and this particular story proves how inconsequential some actions can affect and harm
the matters of the heart in a deep way.
"Kites" wasn't so troublesome with the universal yet cliched themes, the problem lies with a strange presentation of things, from some odd use of
humor that almost turns everything into a comedy when the film already has established a serious tone - when they daydream about their married life with
the rabbits, the sequence pops in very randomly; and then it's all a series of coming and going that slowly becomes a bore filled with one-dimensional
characters. The sequences during the war make it all slightly enjoyable with its twists and turns, even though you could predict everything from the
minute the love triangle was formed.
The only great aspect of it all comes from Tcheky Karyo's uncle character, and he's responsible for all the best moments in the film while teaching
and encouraging his nephew on the matters of life, love and kites. He's always a delight to watch, though he's mostly given villainous role in Hollywood,
but here he has the chance to shine and play a positive father figure that isn't stern or authoritative yet he loves and educates the young man. Grondin
was very suitable as the leading man, but the script made his and other characters all look too childish and annoying at times.
It has its moments but doesn't satisfy as a whole and neither taught me anything new about the complications, the difficulties and the painful
dynamics that lovers and fighters endure when they're in love and need to find ways to mantain it. Maybe it proved that love is blind, dumb, and surely
follows the ones that don't need it yet the heart has its reasons and it can't help by following its stupid beatings. 5/10.
