If you’ve never heard of him, Eric Cantona was a tempestuous French soccer player who mixed moments of stunning grace on the football field with incidents of madness, like attacking a supporter in the crowd. But “Le Roi,” as his fans called him, has been on safer ground as an actor; he plays himself in Ken Loach’s Looking for Eric as the hero to a delusional namesake, postman Eric Bishop (Steve Evets), who is in the midst of a breakdown due to family difficulties. At times clearly inspired by Woody Allen’s Play It Again, Sam (in which a film geek gets romantic advice from Humphrey Bogart), Loach’s movie manages to effectively play a game of two halves, juxtaposing the gritty realism of much of the director’s previous work with a surprisingly light touch throughout, almost venturing down the road traveled by many a buddy movie. But let no one tell you any different: this remains Cantona’s movie. Not for nothing does it say in the credits that his part is played by lui-même.
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