Tacticalin An absolute waste of money

Mabel Munoz Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

Myron Clemons A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

Skyler Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

Devast8ing beauty The movie is as stereotypical as it can be. The characters are plain and predictable. I feel as if the movie was a the-dreamers-wanna-be, given that they were trying to portray liberal characters such as Agnès and trying to be philosophical at the same time, but they did not succeed. I lost track of the movie halfway. I don't know if it was only me, but the three roommates looked very alike and I still confused them at the end of the movie. Definitely not worth my time. I gave it three stars because there were some scenes that were good: passionate and lustful. I liked, however, the way they criticized the educational system in France and the social class division, aristocracy and bourgeoisie.

billpride The title translates to "The Best of Schools," the school of life. This film really makes me wish I was fluent in French, including idioms and nuances that must be flowing every moment. Subtitles just can't cut it. But there's a great line in the film, which translates pretty well, I think: "You don't get it at all. Hetero, homo, all that's finished. It's outdated and it doesn't matter." In the "Making of..." feature, the director (Robert Salis) says, "...the theme is based on the notion of choice, or, actually, the disobeying of imposed choices...." and "crisscross desire" (which he insists is not the same as sex). He also said, "...it's like a dresser with drawers on top of one another. To find out the complete contents you have to open the drawers separately one after another." He does just that very skillfully.Needless to say, it's a complex film, with happy parts, sad parts, sex galore (men with women, and a man with a man), sexy men showing full frontal nudity, and all that. About halfway through, it felt exactly like "Maurice," (and Salis even mentioned that film in the "Making of..."), but then it changed to something totally different after that. This isn't a Gay film. It's a "men who have sex with men" film. "MSM" is a term sex researchers use because most men would never self-identify as Gay, but usually will privately admit if they've had sex with men.There's a lot more depth, but I'm not going to analyze it to death. Great movie! Watch it. Don't watch the trailer or the "Making of..." or anything else first though.Back to "desire": Salis'closing line in the "Making of..." is, "There's only love and the lack of love. And desire naturally goes hand in hand with the lack and nourishes itself." I think I'll have to watch the movie all over again now to understand that.

Ron Smolin Yes, the cast is attractive. Yes, the acting seems quite good. Yes, there are some relevant allusions to history, philosophy, and business. And, oh yes, there's lots of excellent sexual and sensual scenes--enough to highly recommend this film. But the story lines, especially as we reach the third act, do not dovetail well. Also, the climax seems contrived. The need to appear artistic dominates the screenplay, which has lots of good confrontations. But in the end, the resolution among the characters is not very satisfying. However, it still is a superior film in quality and execution. And, did I mention? It's sexy!

Wolfgang Schmitt When I first read a summary about this film I thought, "Please, not another coming out story of a poor college boy who discovers in his junior year that he likes boys more than girls..." And, yes, basically that's what you're in for.This movie could have worked as a comedy (Paul and Agnes betting who gets to sleep with Louis-Anault first would have given room to a lot of hilarious situations)- but no, it's a drama and a good one at that.What levels the movie really up are the excellent performances by Gregori Baquet and Salim Kechiouche. Their scenes together are the best of the entire film.Of course, the entire film comes along a bit pretentious with its philosophical over-the-top dialogue that makes you constantly think that no one talks like that, on the other hand- the same kind of dialogue helped "Dawson's Creek" to stay on air for 6 seasons. And that's probably the line where you should place this movie - persons who rate it with "Maurice" opened next to their computer and looking for flaws in this one are maybe not the target audience...