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Playing with ideas of chance is not, of course, original in cinema. Rohmer himself explored "Pascal’s wager" in My Night With Maud. Much of Kieslowski’s output concerns the chance interconnectedness of otherwise separate lives, and one of his films, Blind Chance, is based on a 3-way "what if?" scenario (shamelessly copied in the more recent Sliding Doors). One of the best new releases of 2001, Haneke’s Code Unknown, develops from an initial chance meeting. Bresson’s masterpiece Au Hasard ("by chance") Balthazar tells of a donkey who, by his very nature, is totally acted upon by the chance events and people of his life. Vila’s film has a further approach, namely that the central character, by putting himself at the mercy of chance, has made a positive decision to become totally passive. One could read this as a study of a certain psychological type, so lacking in self-confidence that he doesn’t want his own actions to affect events, yet Juan doesn’t seem to be this type. A Bench in the Park is enjoyable enough as a light romantic comedy, although the central premise seems little more than a peg on which to hang the story. The performances, led by Alex Brendemuhl, Victoria Freire, and Monica Lopez, are excellent, especially as Vila almost totally avoids cross-cutting during the lengthy conversations, thus placing more demands on the actors. The camera is hand-held throughout, most strikingly when it continually circles around the table during one of the two dinner-parties where Juan’s friends are trying to fix him up with someone, whom he rejects each time because it is all prearranged. A film to see once, but probably once only.
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