Abdellatif Kechiche's L'Esquive focuses on the less than glamorous lifestyles of the kids in the Parisian suburban 'banlieue'. Its low-budget, shaky hand-held gives the impression of realism, as does the ghetto-speak delivered by the young mostly non-professional actors, but I doubt that most impoverished, minority race Paris suburban youths consider rehearsing 18th century plays as their preferred outdoor leisure activity.That might give some indication of just how heavy-handed L'Esquive is, a school production of Marivaux's 'Games of Love and Chance' being shoehorned in to draw parallels on how social divisions and prejudice are not just tolerated, but actively enforced by the society and the authorities to the extent that those repressed come to believe that they aren't deserving of anything more. The use of language meanwhile is used to compare and contrast those social divisions and attitudes, showing in the process that essentially, people are pretty much the same regardless. Just in case you don't get it though, a police squad swoops down at the kids at one point to make sure they know their place and don't get any ideas above their station.It's a relevant subject and one of particular social significance at the time the film was made, leading the Césars to shower it with awards for tackling such edgy material. Any good social points the film has to make however are negated by its storytelling and film-making deficiencies. In addition to being heavy-handed, it's tedious in the extreme - a banal, badly-acted story of attraction between profoundly irritating ghetto kids bickering at the tops of their voices for what feels like an interminable two-hours.

I think this film deserve theirs Césars for a lot of reasons. The actors are excellent, especially Sara Forestier who's not from suburbs and has learned all words of this 'particular' vocabulary. The screenplay is very well, finally that's a play in a play ("le Jeu De l'Amour Et Du Hasard" written by Marivaux). This film shows almost the reality, is sometimes funny. The french teacher is disgusting, she is exactly what the director wants to fight : a society were there is no hope for an inhabitant of suburbs. As to her, Kremo is an idiot because he will never be Arlequin, he 'll never be in love and he doesn't even know how to play it. The film shows how wrong it is... The low point of the film is the sound, very bad, I think they wanted to be more realistic but that could be better, and realistic. This film is well to see, everyone can learn something.Even for french the language is hard to understand(sometimes we would have wanted subtitles!). I don't think the foreigners (particularly the ones who watch only blockbusters) will enjoy, or/and understand. But this freshly film is worth to be seen with attention.

L'Esquive is the coming (and going) of age story about Krimo, a resilient, emotionless, passive teenage boy living in a French ghetto. He is surrounded by his macho violent homeys, confused girlfriend, conniving teenage girls and a beautiful actress named Lydia, played by what may be the Olson Twin's long-lost triplet.It plays out like the French "Kids", without the poignancy. It's tedious. In fact, it gives new meaning to tedious. These shrill teenagers are constantly at each others throats. The few moments of calmness were not enough to hold people in there seats at the Vancouver Film Festival. After 40 minutes of hormonal bickering, the theater was half full.There is not enough story or character to keep this going. In needs to be taken back to the editing room and trimmed of down 40 of its 120 minutes. No doubt this would leave you with a short tale, but it's as long as this thin story needs to be told. Many scenes are used to explain what we've just scene. One-topic dialogue runs for as long as 10 minutes, in pointless circles until an opening is made for another superfluous scene.However I will say that the drama is very realistic and plays out in a natural ways that is commendable. But for story and entertainment's sake, things need to be cut, sharpened, explained and unexplained.As the end neared, I could feel my ears trembling, knowing that whatever the climax was, it would be ten times more shrill and irritating as the rest of the script. But I was wrong. Not only was it quieter and tolerable. It was void of a climax, at all. Not only is there no character change, but there seemed to be an adamant effort to avoid this natural convention at all odds. Even of it could have saved the movie.There are short moments of charm, wit, humor and a minuscule amount of beauty. However, L'Esquive is nothing you can't find at your local Blockbuster.

I saw L'Esquive at the San Francisco Film Festival on April 24. I was prepared for a sappy coming-of-age romantic movie but with the first dialogue which whisks you up before even the titles are shown and doesn't put you down until the end of the movie, I got something much more fulfilling. This is one realistic and well-performed movie. The director got some fantastic acting out of an almost 100% amateur cast. Very realistic and fast-paced. It is not a perfect movie, but it is very energetic and definitely a must-see.Well worth seeing and probably the highlight for me at the festival. Hopefully it will screen in the US.