A requiem for a long-lost youth begging to close the door on the past bereavements by tricking the ungainly mother living her lorn childhood dream; This time with the pure, yet infeasible love of a playful child. Such doomed to failure passion for an immature boy seems to be incontrovertible to all the sane,mature beings, yet the irresistible temptation of being cherished and loved by someone after a long time, even for a small moment, makes the ill-fated adult mother blind to the consequences. An uncanny story which which may choose to express itself simply and plainly, by not going too deep and remains at the surface with its characters, but still is satisfying,well-crafted and well-played./ B+

There's a good reason why the English language title for Agnes Varda's new film was borrowed from a video arcade game. Beyond the obvious metaphor of the game itself it spells out very clearly the lack of pretension in Varda's story of a forty-year old housewife who falls in love with a fourteen-year old schoolboy. On its surface the film is about an older woman recapturing the passions of youth, and a young boy's awkward reaching out toward maturity. But underneath is a thoughtful look at the erosion of old-fashioned romantic ideals in an age of safe sex and AIDS awareness, a fact Varda gracefully acknowledges in the final, chilling scene, which (in a subtle way) shows the darkest side of adolescent peer pressure. It's a quiet, undemonstrative drama; Varda has a poet's sense of how much to say and how much to leave unsaid, and the few remaining words she leaves in the capable hands of a first-rate cast. In a daring casting decision the director's own son handles the role of the teen lover, and with surprising skill for a kid his age.

a teenager boy, a middle-aged woman. the love between these two? what kind of ending you will give it? it is a delicate movie in the sense of emotion description. From the camera, the director makes us feel that there is a man inside that little boy, who loves the "kung fu master" video game very much. His eyes talk like a man, his hands move like a man, he acts like a man in front of that woman. It is possible to forget about the big age difference between these two. At this point, I think the director did a good job. what kind of ending you will give to a love story, not necessarily this one, certainly can talk about how you see the world and the love and relations between human beings. I can't help thinking about my own ending in the whole process of watching the film. To me, the most important part is not the ending the director shows, it is the ending in my own heart. What is love's perfect ending? Does "living together from then on" really answers for all?

I undertook a time machine type ride heavily imbued with nostalgia when I saw this film in 2005.Kung Fu master directed by the unofficial grand mother of French new wave cinema Agnes Varda is as relevant in our contemporary times as it was 20 years ago in a not so distant past of 1987.It was a time of ubiquitous video games and all the unending worries,fears and anxieties related to a mysterious disease called AIDS. In this film it was nice to see some young French actors who ever since have nicely grown up such as Lou Doillon,Charlotte Gainsbourg and Mathieu Demy.The mystical Agnes Varda touch is very much evident and she takes her viewers on a tour of two different countries where our leading lady Jane Birkin has resided :England and France.Kung Fu master also contains in itself a puppy tale of juvenile love.In the hands of a less versatile director this would have been an absolute catastrophe but due to Agnes Varda's experience in handling such a complex tale of human emotions, what we get is one of the most personal wonderful statements of 21th Century on love.This is the only plausible reason for viewers to watch this film.