Excellent movie and one largely overlooked beautiful thing about it is the music - old songs, from 30. and 40. and 50. One may wonder whether anything shown in there happened in reality as Victoria Foyt plays it quite convincingly.... It is also interesting that the director directed his wife's nude scenes... Amazing film, done largely in the manner of filming documentary drama, and that was in 1997! However, whenever I see a movie like this I think why on earth directors do not put children in such stories.... because when children are there, there is no room for good romance or finding the love of your life.... it's just that simple :-(

I once experienced the most vivid sense of Deju Vu. It was having met a young woman in Copenhagen, my first trip to Europe in 1968, as a single man of 28. We were not in love, but we connected. We were going "steady" for a few days...and I was staying at her apartment, where she was living with a family.She was a long term visitor from Poland, and in some ways we didn't even connect, but there was the strongest sense of being on a treadmill, where my destiny was pre-ordained. Although I was in a strange city, I felt amazingly comfortable.I'm not a mystic, so I attribute it to a combination of jet lag, or the sun rising in the middle of the May night, of a combination of irreality, and absolute physical-sexual comfort. It never happened before...or again.Now about the film. In spite of my relating to the Deja Vu aspect, I found the conversation lacking in spontaneity or in believability. I always gauge the quality of a film by the minor characters, are they more than placeholders to complete a plot. The wife and fiancé of the two central characters were just that, each so devoid of realism that the kind of sympathy for someone who is perfunctorily discarded is avoided.And then there's the song, " They'll be blue birds over the white cliffs of Dover...." the beautiful tune that evokes a moment in history, a time when the lives of vital young men were as fragile as a kitten loose in Trafalgar Square. It was a time when a glance between two people, a connection, could mean that if taken, if grasped, they might have a moment of joy, of completion, that very likely could be the only such taste of life of the man facing probable death."......tomorrow when the world is free," was understood to be a tomorrow that one of them would never see, that could only be lived in the memory of one whom he loved, if the love was taken at that moment, never to be offered again.I don't know whether those born after those years can understand what the song meant. And perhaps for those who loved the film, the connection was made, and for those I'm glad the film gave them a slight whiff of those now forgotten days.

Henry Jaglom's films have a distinct feel to them. The dialog is more natural, less theatrical, with stammers, stutters, repetition, hesitation, and stepping on lines. In this film we follow an engaged woman from the streets of Jerusalem, through Tel Aviv, Paris, Dover and onto London where she is to meet up with her fiancé. This journey was shaped in part by a mysterious woman she meets in Jerusalem. Along the way she encounters a dashing gentleman who seems to be the perfect fit for her. This film raises questions about destiny and soul mates. Steven Dillane and Victoria Foyt work well together, and Vanessa Redgrave glows.

I watched Deja Vu immediately after seeing the superb "Amelie," and the parallels are striking. Both films are premised on the role of a whimsical and amoral 'fate' in setting the course of romance, offering mortals the choice of opting in, thereby risking everything mundane and familiar for immediate joy (which might or might not be everlasting), or opting out, sacrificing true love for the comforts of the safe and familiar -- and both movies posit the epicenter of this sort of fated romance as Montmartre in Paris. But beyond this, the two films could not be more different. Amelie is pure surreal fantasy set in a "Paris" which despite having been filmed on location, is no more real than Disneyland (although a lot more interesting). Deja Vu is equally a fantasy, but it is set in a much more realistic world, with only a subtly softened romantic aura. The writing, direction, and acting are all serious and good, which creates a paradoxical problem in that one cares a lot more about the future ex's than one would in a bawdy comedy or a surreal fantasy (Amelie avoids this problem entirely by having no ex's). All of which leaves unanswered the question posited by Deja Vu -- is this really romance, or is it madness? * Possible spoiler follows *The ending of Deja Vu demands we take it on faith that following the whims of the fates is the right way to go. I would have been happier with more evidence, for example a coda in which architect Sean and would-be innkeeper Dana begin to create a new inn of their own, as pointed contrast to Alex and Dana's aborted plan to restore someone else's dream villa. Absent this I give Deja Vu a 6/10 (worthy effort that fails to satisfy), while I gave Amelie an 8.