Les voleurs

Perhaps the subtitles failed to do justice to the movie, but the visual construction of Les Voleurs crosses all boundaries. The complexities of the plot can be confusing; however, the visual imagery used in the film helps reinforce the characteristics of each relationship the film studies. All in all, a brilliant film to watch if you feel up to reading the subtitles.

The film, Shakespeare's shades. At the heart of the film is love. Everything else, just around this love.

And when Auteuil says: You just do not want to fight.

Heroine Catherine Deneuve fights: I fall asleep with her and wake up with her.

What can say more?

It's a wonderful movie in the movie.

Suicide. And how is it possible to live,

The image Heroine (Deneuve) - two in one, Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet buried in the apartment.

Told in an annoying non-linear sequence, the plot throws together the unhappy families of Alex and Ivan, brothers who hate each other, and bro and sis petty criminals Juliette and Jimmy.

Alex is a sour, dull cop who detests his brother's semi-criminal business, set up by their criminal father (yes, the father also hates Alex, in a merry-go-round not so merry). Ivan is the father of creepy child Justin who - guess what? - hates uncle Alex. Juliette is a thin, sour, bony androgynous girl who everybody finds attractive, for reasons impossible to understand.

Juliette is a shoplifter who occasionally mixes with dirtier business with Ivan and her brother's gang. She used to be Ivan's lover then moved on to Alex. Enters another useless character in the shape of Marie, a philosophy teacher who's in love with Juliette. You get an headache following all the couplings back and forward in the non-linear sequence.

All characters are morose, unpleasant and having over the top conversations and melodramatic reactions (or none at all, staring stone cold into space). The film starts with creepy Justin, who narrates the beginning and the end of story from his point of view, which isn't the most informed.

Bad things happen to some characters, but I couldn't have cared less because the narrative is ordinary and flat... maybe because this is supposed to be a "realistic" movie...

"Thieves" has Techine at the helm with Deneuve and Auetuil in the spotlight and critical plaudits aplenty. However, my reaction at the end of the two hour flick was "Yeah, so???". Telling of the intertwined lives of a cop and his brother and a girl and her lover and a handful of other people, this character driven flick wanders to and fro interminably, jumping around in time, examining the details of their fatalistic and pragmatic lives as they fuss and stew and brood over the this and that of their existence. Given subtitles and a soup thin story with no moral, no message, no hero, no villain, just character study heaped upon character study and no character that's even likeable, "Thieves" will not have much appeal for the masses. Recommended for French speakers or French film buffs only. (B)

Everyone is a thief in this film; don't pay for the goods emotional or physical. A psychological film on the need to take love where we can, things where we can because money is in the main excrement in the world excreted from one person to another. Deneuve sums the need for money in a car scene which is quite brilliant as she is talking to a thief who takes. This is our world and we are all involved in theft in one way or another, as deep down it is a love/ hatred towards sexual obsessions and objects, to have, then pass them on. As one reviewer said it is not a ' family ' film, and the acting is up to Techine's high standard. The consequences of crime reminded me of French crime films of the 1950's ( Gabin etc ) and the studies of each character interesting to watch. The only scene that did not convince was Deneuve having her first Lesbian relationship. She acted it well, but the kiss ( a bit blurred or was it my eyesight ) was total fake. I give it an 8 because for once in his films I found it too clever and too contrived. Snow features quite a lot; coldness of the heart, the cold thrill of stealing and the human heart too emotionally divided. Look closely at the scene where Deneuve collapses, and while she is unconscious Auteuil steals her face by taking a photo of her.