American racism impedes a French exchange student's love affair with a black woman during the 1950s. Though romantic and bittersweet, FOREIGN STUDENT lacks the depth that might have pushed it to the head of the class.
1955. French exchange student Philippe Labro (Marco Hofschneider) arrives in the US to spend a semester at a small college in Virginia. At an unsuccessful tryout for the football team--he thought it was soccer--he befriends golden boy quarterback Cal Kates (Rick Johnson). Cal fixes him up with
Sue Anne (Charlotte Ross), a blue-eyed flower of the South, who ably resists his Parisian charms. At a professor's home, Philippe meets April (Robin Givens), a schoolteacher from the black side of town working as a housekeeper. He is instantly enamored. She knows interracial relationships are
taboo, and rebuffs him. Still, he pursues her, turning a deaf ear to her warnings about the danger. His persistence wins her over, and they begin a secret romance.
April considers herself a realist, and although Philippe talks about returning to France with her, she expects he will tire of her and begin chasing some southern belle. One day, she sees Philippe with Sue Anne, who is now reading Freud and wearing earth tones, and assumes the worst. Despite her
anger and fears, April can't deny her feelings, and on Thanksgiving she visits Philippe in his dorm room. Soon after, when they are both at the professor's house--he for a poetry reading, she to clean--April faces and accepts the impossibility of a future with Philippe. They share a last romantic
interlude.
The end of the semester looms, and Cal gets Philippe to join the football team as a kicker. Philippe learns that Sue Anne, who is now wearing black and probably reading Sartre, is really a disturbed girl from Boston named Elizabeth. In the final seconds of the big game, Cal and Philippe combine
on the winning play. As he is carried off the field, Philippe spots April in the crowd. It is the last time he ever sees her.
The film seems sincere in its commitment to nostalgia-tinged romance; much like SUMMER OF '42, the narrative is framed by Philippe's recollections 40 years later. Memory's prism has filtered out any timidity or self-doubt on April's part, and Givens portrays her as a prideful, self-assured, and
stunningly beautiful woman. Handsome Hofschneider is all eager, youthful passion and wide-eyed innocence, and his lines are unself-consciously poetic at times. The couple are even supplied with a love theme that recalls the famous Nino Rota score from Zeffirelli's ROMEO AND JULIET.
However, the idealized romantic reverie clashes with the seemingly pointless account of Sue Anne's psychological problems and Cal's alcoholism. The voice-over narration by the elder Labro is often intrusive and cliched ("I learned that youth is wasted on the young"). The film is not--nor does it
aspire to be--much of a commentary on race relations; racism is merely a narrative device, like the family feud in Romeo and Juliet, for keeping the lovers apart. In an era when racial identity and discrimination are issues of overwhelming importance, the intermittently charming FOREIGN STUDENT
feels like a nostalgic cop-out. (Sexual situations, profanity.) leave a comment
