Happenstance

Writer-director Laurent Firode explores how chance and destiny affect the twinings of a couple of dozen Parisians as they unknowingly cycle through the two and three degrees of separation that connect them. Among them are the 30-year-old habitual liar who depends on his mother for financial support, the philandering husband who can never bring himself to act on his fantasies of assertiveness, the handsome Algerian pizza shop worker, the unemployed street philosopher who shoplifts as a form of activism,the compulsive pickpocket, the unhappy middle-aged housewife, et al. Most importantly, we get to re-encounter gamine beauty Audrey Tautou (star of the recent import hit "Amelie") as Irene, a salesgirl who is destined to stumble across potential love.But Irene is more disillusioned than Amelie, and the gritty Paris of Happenstance is not the scrubbed-clean storybook City of Lights in that film. Destiny, schmestiny; when these potential lovers finally meet, it seems more like the result of dumb luck.