Les Mauvais Joueurs (Gamblers)

by BakeSnaker December 6, 2006

I rented this film because I thought the Chinese/Vietnamese/French actress Linh Dan Pham is quite strong in The Beat that My Heart Skipped and I wanted to check out what else she’s done. I came across this 2005 film… Les Mauvais Joueurs (Gamblers). Very small release. Won the Manfred Salzgeber Award at Berlin…..what ever the hell that is.

synopsis – low-end French criminals rub elbows with the illegal Chinese immigrants. Armenian con man becomes the defender of a Chinese teen.

Anyway, the director and French production team was promoting this as the French Mean Streets….far from it. The setting of the garmet industry in Paris and the social interaction amongst the Chinese and Armenian immigrants obviously made it interesting to me..I’m planning on making a film about hustlers in the NYC wholesale district… so if you don’t find that world interesting, I doubt you will get much from this film. You can skip this unless you are interested in those subjects.

Acting is excellent… believed every character…cinematography is handheld, natural light look…. but the script basically sucks. It has that long “walking toward the camera” take as the lead’s smile
slowly grows on his face….an ending that is so typical in a film like this.