Looking for Eric

I have always wondered what impresses me so much about the guy with the Brezhnev vegetation above his eyes and with his collar up. Now i get it. Ken Loach filmed an unbalanced mix of social drama, comedy and love story, and it's all led by a man with walking charisma - Eric Cantona. For me, the film amounts to 116 minutes of extraordinarily entertaining spectacle with an extraordinarily positive undertone and an extraordinarily subtle grid of a view of the English "proletariat". A passionate apotheosis of football, camaraderie and hopeless losers, headed by the god-man Cantona in a wonderfully self-parodying creation. Even though at certain points I thought that Loach just couldn't hold this all together, it always somehow worked out miraculously, and I came out of the movie theatre feeling like a citizen of a pretty normal planet and a pretty normal society. As long as the phantoms of football geniuses appear to postmen and advise them about love, then we're going to be alright. This is a warm film full of formal holes, but with perfect focus and an ending worthy of Eric. (03/29/2010)

Ken Loach films are always a tough watch for me. The themes resonate deeply, but the characters often leave me puzzled. In this case, it was Eric Cantona who drew me in. But then, when the down-and-out Eric, played by Steve Evets, took the stage, I found myself constantly shaking my head. The social drama aspect is executed flawlessly, and if it hadn't been for the slightly fantastical ending that felt like it belonged in a different movie, I might have given it Loach's usual three-star rating. The best scenes, however, are set in the local pub and among the fans of the two Manchester clubs. (02/12/2024)