The film being a HSC study text probably doesn't help its cause, but soon after I starting watching I was wishing the board of studies had chosen a more entertaining text.<br /><br />The "action" (if the cinematic ramblings of a nostalgic director can be labelled as such) takes place in the working class suburb of l'Estaque in the south of France. The plot is simple - the titular characters fall in love, clichéd plot devices pull them apart, before getting back together for a feel-good ending. All wonderfully bland and formulaic.<br /><br />The only difference here is that there is a variety of interesting (but pointless) side-characters and subplots around them, sometimes genuinely good as individual scenes but always jarringly disjointed.<br /><br />And here is the film's main fault: there is a lot of potential within the quirky neighbours, but they are reduced to little more than unrelated vignettes that simply distract from the main story.<br /><br />By themselves, unrelated vignettes would have been fine - as would a bland romance.<br /><br />But by mixing the two, director Robert Gediguian creates an unappetising sludge that is messy, meandering and boring - a crime with such potentially interesting characters to explore.