Review
8/10 Stars
This 2000 brilliant piece of art by the writer/director Pierre Olivier is a well-crafted short film that breaks the expectation of any audience.
The film starts with the need of a young woman that needs to practice her lines for the audition of a movie she will star on. Later, she picks the first man she sees at a coffee store and starts to practice her lines. The outstanding performance of the actors and the awesome close up takes by the director Olivier, makes this film a very enjoyable one, with some sadness and with some melancholy.
One of the brilliant ideas of this movie is that it joins two different points of view about life, coincidence and fate. At first, the young girl sits down with the solitary guy to practice her lines, and as she goes through them, she realizes that the man next to her had been just left by his wife or girlfriend. Finally, my interpretation of the film is that they were sited there because of fate, and because of it, the girl could get what she wanted to achieve, a great audition.
Now analyzing the ending of “On S’Embrasse?, it is amazing how Pierre Olivier makes a twist in the story, with the appearance of the woman that just left the guy of the coffee store. Olivier left me stunned when that girl said the audition line “On S’Embrasse” (in English, can we kiss?), and he leaves the audience waiting for the “expected” answer of the guy: “No. Get out of here.”, but as an incredible director’s choice, he chooses to finish the film without any answer.
In conclusion, “On S’Embrasse” is an excellent French film, and it is a wonderful one because of the incredible performance of the actors Jean-Luc Abel and Alice Carel, the outstanding takes by Olivier and the breathtaking ending. It is incredible how that simple conversation meant a lot for both of the characters.
