Fate and Charm Collide With a Fresh Twist in ‘Happenstance’

Laurent Firode’s “Happenstance” arrives as a welcome Christmas gift from France, a musing on how character and fate--and sometimes pure chance--collide in myriad ways beyond our imaginings. It brims with the charm, wisdom and light touch that have endeared French films to international audiences for more than a century. It doesn’t hurt that its star is “Amelie’s” Audrey Tautou.

Firode sets his dizzying plot in motion aboard a Paris Metro, where a pleasant, middle-aged blond woman (Charlotte Maury-Sentier) asks Tautou’s appliance clerk, Irene, about what shampoo she uses, explaining that she’s earning her living conducting a survey for a toiletries company. Her real forte, she adds, is reading horoscopes. She points out that as a full moon is imminent, Irene will meet her true love that very day. Sitting nearby is a young restaurateur, Younes (Faudel), who is astounded to overhear Irene say her birthday is March 11, 1977, for it is the same as his. It’s not necessary to have seen the complete works of romantic filmmaker Claude Lelouch to figure out where Firode is heading.

It’s the getting there that counts, which means that lots of things are going to happen to lots of people--30 by actual count--in causing Irene and Younes to cross paths again. Firode’s plot is as inspired and whimsical as an old Rube Goldberg invention, yet Firode’s people aren’t mere puppets. As in real life, at times their emotions and actions trigger untoward--and sometimes positive--results. Yet destiny here is not all cause and effect either, because just plain luck plays its unpredictable role too.

All of this is perfectly obvious, but Firode gives it a fresh, personal twist, suggesting that while we’re more vulnerable to fate than we realize, we often fail to take charge of our destinies when the opportunity presents itself. For Firode, that so much in life is illusory and transitory should, yet doesn’t always, cause people to value love all the more.

“Happenstance” is a romantic comedy in a decidedly roundabout way that allows for a philosophical subtext in a most unobtrusive manner. Firode manages to work in a subtle commentary, revealing how harsh and potentially dangerous happenstance can be for Paris’ Arab community.

There’s a “Six Degrees of Separation” quality to “Happenstance” that is the source of its wry humor. For example, a young man is hauled before a magistrate (Lily Bologne), yet neither of them can know he was brought there through the action--or rather inaction--of the magistrate’s son, Luc (Eric Feldman), who emerges as one of the film’s key characters.

Luc is a dreamy, immature guy, as well as a skilled and easy liar, who gets a job as a museum guard through a friend of his mother and is just the sort of heedless individual who triggers all sorts of trouble for himself and others.

Because “Happenstance” is a first feature for Firode, it is all the more impressive for its maker’s ability to inspire succinct, nuanced portrayals across a very large board and at the same time maintain a sense of pace through a spiraling thicket of complications.

“Happenstance’s” original title translates as “the beating of a butterfly’s wing,” which stems from the notion that a butterfly’s wings fluttering over the Atlantic Ocean could eventually cause a hurricane in the Pacific. Embodied in the film’s prescient Destiny Man (Gilbert Robin), this notion is at the heart of this beguiling film.

*

MPAA rating: R, for a scene of nudity. Times guidelines: mature themes, brief glimpse of a naked man in bed.

‘Happenstance’ (Le Battement

d’Aile du Papillon)

Audrey Tautou...Irene

Faudel... Younes

Eric Savin...Richard

Eric Feldman...Luc

A Lot 47 Films release of a Les Films des Tournelles-Les Films en Hiver presentation. Writer-director-art director Laurent Firode. Producers Anne-Dominique Toussaint, Pascal Judelwicz. Executive producer Franck Landron. Cinematographer Jean-Rene Duveau. Chief editor Didier Ranz. Music Peter Chase. Chief costumer Najat Kas. Chief decorator Catherine Jarrier Prieur. In French, with English subtitles. Running time: 1 hour, 35 minutes.

At selected theaters.