:
Jocelyn Quivrin,
Salim Kechiouche,
Alice Taglioni,
more...
:
Robert Salis
see all cast/crew...
: Not Rated
: Fox Lorber
: Drama, Foreign, France, Gay & Lesbian, Features, Erotica
: 110 min.
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At a school that breeds France's cultural elite, a young man experiences heterosexual and homosexual attraction, power games and racial conflict.
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| Talk and Sex (both pretty good)
by talltale
December 22, 2004 - 7:13 AM PST
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13 out of 13 members found this review helpful
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| Only the French could have come up with GRANDE ECOLE. If this sounds like a warning, you'd best stay away. But if--as do I and few thousand other Americans (I would like to say millions, but perhaps that's exaggerating)--you enjoy French films, add this to your queue. Taking place at what appears to be the US equivalent of where French students get their MBAs, the movie embraces economics, culture, race, gender, immigration, globalization, love and sex--especially sex. Flesh is all over the place, much of it male and full frontal. Male/male attraction is explored from angles more unusual than anything Hollywood gets close to: one relationship involves not just gender but race and culture, with all of it handled quite intelligently and movingly. Bi-sexuality, a general no-no for Americans and their movies, is given quite a workout, as well. What makes "Grande Ecole" quintessentially French, however, is the students' "take" on all this. They are forever explicating their actions with quotes from philosophers, pursuing theory to account for what they want and what they do. While this occasionally comes across as pretentious, it seems real nonetheless. You'll probably try to work through these kids' ideas and thoughts right along with them, which will make for a bracing, if uneven, couple of hours. Never uninteresting, the film does not quite flow as well as it might. But the actors are both talented and gorgeous--a pleasing combination for a movie with this much talk and sex. |
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GreenCine Member Rating
(Average 5.98)
82 Votes
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