Average Rating: 6/10
Reviews Counted: 36
Fresh: 23 | Rotten: 13
Though the plot of Happenstance is basically a gimmick, the film is a fun, light-hearted trifle.
Average Rating: 6.5/10
Critic Reviews: 16
Fresh: 12 | Rotten: 4
Though the plot of Happenstance is basically a gimmick, the film is a fun, light-hearted trifle.
liked it
Average Rating: 3.6/5
User Ratings: 6,780
After a series of short films, writer/director Laurent Firode made his feature-length debut with this tale of coincidence, chance, and fate inspired by a variation of the chaos theory, which supposes that if a butterfly beats its wings in one part of the world, it could theoretically cause a full-fledged storm thousands of miles away. Firode applies this theory to a disparate group of Parisians, opening with a young retail worker, Irene (Audrey Tautou), reading her horoscope on the train to work
Dec 31, 2000 Wide
May 21, 2002
Lot 47 Films
All Critics (41) | Top Critics (18) | Fresh (23) | Rotten (13) | DVD (5)
Discreet, delicate and humane: a sweet butterfly of a movie that beats up a cinematic windstorm of life.
A mild but engaging romance, the charms of which come at you sideways.
It strives mightily to convince us that the Chaos Theory rules us, yet everything in it feels preordained.
The idea, after all, is that people don't have free will, and who wants to watch puppets, however adorable?
It's a delight to watch the plot unfold, and to become aware of how a small, random action by one person can impact the life of another.
An utterly delightful fable of romantic destiny.
A gimmicky yet remarkably spry and overall enjoyable tapestry about the 'random interconnectedness' of life in general and romance in particular.
Each little action, as we see, causes something bigger to happen, resulting in not exactly a tidal wave, but a happy sense of cinematic pleasure.
I didn't get the feel that Irene was a hopeless romantic, or believed in horoscopes, just that those circumstances where part of the story. It was sweet, and the characters were humorous.
August 3, 2010Super Reviewer
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