Retrospective: Va Savoir / Who Knows (2001)

[Kam-Hung Soh]

After three years' absence, stage actress Camille Renard (Jeanne 
Balibar) returns to Paris to perform in an Italian play. The company's 
director and her lover, Ugo Bassini (Sergio Castellitto) frets that the 
season would be a failure. Between performances, the two drift apart. 
Camille visits her ex-lover, Pierre (Jacques Bonnaffé), a philosophy 
lecturer who is still working on his thesis on Heidegger. She finds him 
rather cold towards her, and he is now married to Sonia (Marianne 
Basler), a ballet teacher. Meanwhile Ugo spends his time visiting 
libraries looking for a missing manuscript by an 19th century 
playwright, where he meets Dominique (Hélène de Fougerolles), a 
delectable graduate student. Ugo later discovers that Dominque's family 
may have a copy of the manuscript he is looking for. The circle of 
relationships between the characters closes when we find that 
Dominique's half-brother, Arthur (Bruno Todeschini), a gambler, is 
seducing Sonia with the intention of stealing her ring.

Director and co-writer Jacques Rivette constructs a refined farce where 
the characters search for something that is right under their noses, and 
their story is reflected in the (uncredited) Pirandello play that 
Camille and Ugo are staging. It's a slow-paced film (the version I 
watched is 154 minutes long, and there's an even longer version!) and 
while I was not bored, this film is probably aimed at viewers more 
literate in theatre and literature than me.

French and Italian with English subtitles.

3 out of 5 stars.
7 March 2009
Kam-Hung Soh
http://morvahouse.blogspot.com