Café au Lait

REVIEW
Director/star Kassovitz has put together a racially charged, but ultimately tame tale about an interracial ménage-à-trois. The film's impressive opening credits take place over a lightning-paced bicycle-wheel's-eye ride through Paris that leads to the collision of Felix (Kassovitz), a gawky Jewish bicycle messenger, and Jamal (Kounde), the handsome, well-groomed son of an African ambassador. Unbeknownst to either, they have shared the affections of Lola (Mauduech), a light-skinned beauty of Carribean descent. The two men wind up on her doorstep together, whereupon she informs them that she is pregnant and doesn't know, much less care who the father is. Needless to say, for the rest of the film, the men joust over race and ego, tossing epithets at each other with little reserve. Café au Lait's problem is that while it tries to be lighthearted comedy, the slurs are laid on a little too thick. Kassovitz fails to take a serious subject and inject humor into it; he simply turns comedy serious. It doesn't work. (French with English subtitles)