Perceval Full Movie

Greg W 22 Apr 2012

Perceval is a tad too self reflexive for my tastes. Too much of characters referring to each other in the third person and narrating their actions as they do them, too much blank faced acting and an overly stylized mise-en-scene to the point of ridiculousness. It's a slow film and feels like too much attention was paid to certain details at the expense of others, ie. there are shadows on the backdrops at points. Perceval has it's moments, and is an interesting cultural artifact, but with a two and a half hour run time is extremely tedious to sit through.

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Hadrien S 10 Jun 2008

Eric Rhomer n'est sans doute pas l'auteur le plus captivant ni le plus facile d'accès, sauf peut-etre pour la menagere de 40 ans qui aime regarder "Plus belle la vie". Pourtant, il est indeniable que nous sommes ici en presence d'une veritable recherche formelle et d'une tentative de restituer cinematographiquement le recit de Perceval le Gallois tel que Chrétien de Troyes l'ecrivit. De tres jolies musiques de style feodale, des acteurs convaincants, une oeuvre particuliere mais plaisante.

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Lyndon G 26 Nov 2007

The colorful fake sets, the peculiar narration, the simplistic quality of the 12th century source material. Zany? It takes itself seriously. The story is told in Old French couplets sung by minstrels at interludes and recited by the characters, often in third person. (This actually really works.) The music is pleasant, the stage like what you'd see at a play, only much more immersive. Perceval's first encounter with a knight reminds me of 2001 (an alien, monolithic knight). Determined to become one of these creatures, Perceval wanders around misapplying his mother's simple teachings until a knight mentor tells him to stop telling everyone what his mother taught him, and in fact to stop talking so much, unless absolutely necessary. Soon there is a scene with the opposite lesson: talking too little is just as bad as talking too much. The subject matter may be simplistic, but such old stories have a way of catching you off-guard with their directness, then just so with circumspectness.

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David H 16 Jul 2007

Completely bizarre version of one of the King Arthur legends. In French, it's just kind of hard to describe... closer to a school play than a movie. I loved it.

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Christopher W 26 Nov 2007

I wouldnt recommend this one unless you are a staunch Rohmer or medieval European poetry fan. It has its qualities to be sure but they will all fall on the deaf ears of the uninitiated viewer.

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