Like a car veering from one side of the road to the other, this film about a exchange student from France (Marco Hofschneider) who falls in love with a black local (Robin Givens) in '50s Virginia keeps from colliding with cliche only by the merest of breaths. Its nostalgic, narrative, and sentimental excesses — Summer of '42 meets The Color Purple — would give Foreign Student impeccable credentials with the afterschool-special set, were it not for that R-rated scene meant to sell it to a theatrical audience who nonetheless wouldn't buy. Come to think of it, neither would most self-respecting 12-year-olds. C
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