Paris Je T'aime (2006)

[Chris Knipp]

PARIS JE T'AIME (2006)

18 quick takes on an eternal theme

Review by CK

This film, which groups together 18 stories by as many directors all dealing in one way or another with the theme of love and the setting of the French capital, must thereby set some kind of recent European record for number of segments in an omnibus film. What we have here is a set of restrictions worthy of Lars von Trier and his Five Obstructions: deal with life's most profound emotion and the world's most beautiful and romantic city -- in five minutes. Can you do it? Can you stay within such limitations and still do justice to the theme and the locale? Such a project puts a severe strain on both filmmaker and audience. For viewers, it requires constant refocusing, and after a while even the most alert are likely to lose track. For filmmakers, the amount of condensation required is staggering, and suits some filmmaking styles more than others. Most of the directors are established and may be a long way from their court metrage stage. One strains to imagine how a more dilatory director, like Rivette or Antonioni or Desplechin, could thrive in the sound-bite format. Speaking of bites, this is like those fancy restaurants (Thomas Keller's French Laundry is the most noted) supplying little more than exquisite bites, because diners are served a long series of tiny dishes. If that approach whets your appetite, this film also may appeal to you. Or you may feel frustrated, as if you'd consumed 18 plates and still left the table hungry. While individual styles are present, it is hard to fully assert, and harder to make the most of, a style in such a short time-span. While each episode is linked to a different Paris neighborhood (with different degrees of logic), a reliance on golden-lit evening shots to bookend all the segments leaves one with a sense of visual sameness. And many of the segments have had the same editor, Simon Jacquet. Nonetheless this sampler offers a variety of beauty and talent and some brilliance and will be worth coming back to.

A lot of the directors of Paris je t'aime aren't French, and this is largely therefore an outsider's Paris. Nothing wrong with that. As American photographer William Klein spent decades documenting, Paris has continued to grow more and more multi-colored and multi-cultural, and is far from the pale gray mono-cultural lady of Fifties images. At least two of the outsider’s views ("Place des Fetes" by Oliver Schmitz, about a poor black worker and an African nurse, and, Tom Tykwer's "Faubourg Saint Denis," about a French boy whose girlfriend gives him the gate) are among the most moving and brilliantly concise, partly through the use of modern editing techniques to tell a lot of background in fast flashbacks. Schmitz's more poignant tale and warmer actors (Aissa Maiga and Seydou Boro) have the edge.

The filmmakers have to grab you fast, and one method they use is iconic actors. Depardieu appears in his own film along with the classic Cassavetes film couple of Ben Gazzara and Gena Rowlands. They certainly know how to play together, though Gazzara looks and sounds pretty old to be the playboy his lines convey. In Cuaron’s "Parc Monceau" episode using a long tracking shot, Nick Nolte is visiting a young woman, and spouting bad French; the episode goes nowhere, and he seems to be improvising clumsily, mispronouncing one of the character's names. In "Loin du 16eme" Walter Salles and Daniela Thomas seek to tell a socially conscious tale of a beautiful young women (Catalina Sandino Moreno, of Maria Full of Grace and six other films since) who cares for a rich lady's baby and her own in vastly different circumstances, but the episode fizzles because it has nothing more to say. Juliette Binoche and Bob Hoskins and Fanny Ardant and Ludivine Segnier and Willem Dafoe and Elijah Wood and Sergio Castellitto and Miranda Richardson and Rufus Sewell and Natalie Portman all appear, with varying results. In a segment that's itself a kind of cameo, cameo's don't count for so much.

Directors under such tight time restrictions, with little room to breathe, fall back on personal schticks. Alexander Payne again out-sources middle America with a Denver maiden lady's account, all in her mispronounced beginner's French, of a first trip leading to a love affair with the city itself (the final segtment, and a logically fitting one). As in Payne's earlier efforts the result is ambigious, to some touching, to others condescending; artistically his segment is one of the most neatly unified, with the classically simple device of a single main actor (Margo Martindale) and her voiceover. Van Sant focuses on cute boys (Gaspard Ulliel and blond American newcomer Elias McConnell) -- and no harm done: the one true aspect of love that can be limned in five is an instant crush and attempted pickup. And Assayas, one of the film's organizers, goes back to drugs. His story doesn't go anywhere (in a way it's another attempted pickup) but he uses a typically intense and real Maggie Gyllenhaal, and his is some of the only camerawork that feels fresh. The Coen brothers resort to brutality, showing another solitary American tourist getting beaten up by a French girl's French boyfriend in the Tuileries Metro station, where he has been to the Louvre: La Gioconde's enigmatic smile turns mocking when his assailant dumps his shopping bag and a dozen Mona Lisa postcards fall out. This is a good episode for its element of surprise and its mockery of a saccharine "Paris is for Lovers" outlook. It's for lovers, but not for Steve Buscemi's fall guy character, who, to his peril, also has broken his guideboo's explicit warning not to look people in the eye in the Metro. Sometimes the Coens are better with premises than with deep explorations. But to be this good in five minutes sort of is deep. Wong Kar Wai's ex-cinematographer Christopher Doyle does his Chinese thing: he deals with an emasculating Chinese lady entrepreneur in Paris. But the effect is more of an advertising stunt shoot than a story.

There's no unity of segments, and none needed. In such a collection, you have one advantage: the boring ones go by fast, and the good ones, you can linger over in your mind. Everyone will have favorites, and peeves. Enough said?

[oscar jubis]

Chris, perhaps I'm the only one, but the review is hard to read in my monitor because of the codes used for foreign words.

The record for the number of segments in an omnibus film is probably held by Lumiere and Company, which has forty segments.

[Chris Knipp]

You're not the only one, though it did not appear in Mozilla Firefox, only in Explorer. I've corrected all the weird codes for parenthesis and apostrophes that had appeared--sorry--something to do with using my laptop. (Not foreign words.) I put in "current" in front of "record."

[oscar jubis]

I don't understand how writing "current" in front of "record" changes things much. 18 segments in an omnibus film is simply not a record. Lumiere and Company is a relatively recent film, having premiered in the US 11 years ago. There is also a new Filipino film called Image Nation which at 20 segments surpasses Paris Je T'aime.

There's a typo here and there. The one I'd want to correct is the name of one of my favorite cinematographers Chris Doyle.

[Chris Knipp]

You're right. It's hard to keep pace with records in a world increasingly of extremes. If you ask me, these numbers don't make much sense, as the old omnibus films with four or six or so relatively did. So (since I still think the number is a bit mind-boggling) I've changed it to "recent European record," though I'm doubtul that will suit you. Let me know if there are any more misspellings--I've tried to catch all I could find.

[oscar jubis]

Alexander Payne
Rufus Sewell
and the extra "s" at the end of line #5

[Chris Knipp]

Thanks.

[mouton]

PARIS, JE T’AIME

Francine: Thomas Listen. Listen. There are times when life calls out for a change. A transition. Like the seasons. Our spring was wonderful, but summer is over now and we missed out on autumn. And now all of a sudden, it's cold, so cold that everything is freezing over. Our love fell asleep, and the snow took it by surprise. But if you fall asleep in the snow, you don't feel death coming.

With the sun shining brilliantly on a quiet Sunday that is just about to fully wake up, love can be felt in the soft breeze that sweeps past my feet and can be seen in the smiles of the people I walk alongside. It is the perfect day to stop off for croissants and a café-o-lait before heading off to the city of lights and love. Of course, a flight to Paris is not reasonably in this humble film critic’s budget so I had to opt for the next best thing, PARIS, JE T’AIME, a collection of 18 short films by a variety of international directors. Each piece is named after a different Parisian neighborhood and is a reflection on love. Careful not to over glorify the most powerful and persuasive of all human emotions, PARIS, JE T’AIME explores love at the many stages of its own game. The results are spontaneously romantic and surprisingly consistent. And truly, what better way to express the fleeting nature of love and how a moment can change your life than with a collection of filmed moments.

The beautifully poetic quote above is taken from Tom Tykwer’s Faubourg Saint Denis. True to form, Tykwer (RUN, LOLA, RUN) uses time-lapse photography and repetition to demonstrate the entire cycle of love, from inception to dissolution. Originally shot in 2004 and paired down for this anthology, Faubourg stars Natalie Portman as Francine, an American actress in Paris for a part in a film, and Melchior Beslon as Thomas, a blind man she falls in love with. Here, the blind leads the blind through the most unstable of terrain, where two people consume each other to a point where their lives nearly lose their own existences. As love seems to go from dazzling to dizzying, Tykwer reminds us of the tricks it can play on our minds and the illusions it can create when we stray towards doubt.

Perhaps the most giddily romantic offering comes from Sylvain Chomet’s Tour Eiffel. Choosing the city’s most identifiable attraction for its title, Chomet (LES TRIPLETTES DE BELLEVILLE) gives us a little boy who tells the story of how his parents met and fell in love. His father, a mime (Paul Putner), finds himself falling into one surreal scenario after another and eventually lands himself in jail. This is where he meets the woman who will become the love of his life (Yolande Moreau). Miming has become something of a dying art, if it isn’t already dead. Yet by nature, it is dreamy and untroubled. Miming points its silent finger at the ridiculousness of human behaviour and what but love can make people act more absurd? We might find someone special in the least likely of circumstances if we could just take ourselves a little less seriously.

PARIS, JE T’AIME keeps the flow lively by not always focusing on love between lovers. Three memorable shorts focus on the love between a parent and a child. Walter Salles (MOTORCYCLE DIARIES) has Catalina Sandino Moreno singing lovingly to her child before she leaves him to sing the same song with a distant longing to the child she watches over for her living. Nobuhiro Suwa (UN COUPLE PARFAIT) has Juliette Binoche trying desperately to overcome the emptiness she feels after losing her son. Binoche says very little yet, not surprisingly given her immense talent, her struggle is evident in her face as she learns that love sometimes means letting go. And Alfonso Cuaron (CHILDREN OF MEN) weighs in with one continuous shot of a father (Nick Nolte) and his grown daughter (Sara Martins) walking together for what must be the first time in a long while. We see them only from across the street and we only get close to them as the distance between the two characters narrows to a place of comfort and accepting.

The last short to screen is Alexander Payne’s 14ieme Arrondissement. As usual, Payne (SIDEWAYS) takes an ordinary person and shows us what makes them extraordinary. Carol (Margo Martindale) is another American in Paris. She is there alone and for less time than she would have liked as she has dogs waiting for her at home. She is a plain person with an uneventful life who finds herself in a city that is rich and lush. In beautifully delivered Americanized French, she muses about the sights and how being there makes her feel. This woman spends so much time trying to be happy despite life’s numerous disappointments and as she sits in a city made for lovers, she realizes that she is in fact happy and loves herself more than she knew. She falls in love, if only for perhaps a moment, with life and love itself.

The characters that appear but fleetingly in PARIS, JE T’AIME find themselves at the romantic center of the universe. The moments they share with each other, be it helping someone up after a hard fall or talking to someone without knowing what to say just because you feel compelled, are the moments that give love its flare and flourish. Outside the city of lovers, it can be easy to miss moments such as these but we must remind ourselves of their significance. It takes but a moment for love to shine through a cloudy sky. You just have to keep your heart open to see it. And if one city can be so abundant with love, one has to believe it can find its way one day to your door.

[mouton]

Hey Chris ... I'll get to your review as soon as I can .. just wanted to post now. Later! joe

[Johann]

nice review, Joe (I mean mouton noir...)

:)

where did you see it in Montreal?

I heard schwartz' deli is awesome. Have you been there?

[mouton]

Thanks Johann ... I saw the movie at the AMC theatre here. It's five minutes from my house and with so many screens, it is basically a big art house theatre. I love it. In fact I'm on my way there again this morning to see ONCE.

I can't believe Shwartz's has a reputation outside of this city. It's good smoked meat but the line up it ridiculous. I've only been the one time because I didn't feel the end justified the means.

[mouton]

Hey Chris ... I feel like you didn't like it as much as I did. This is not to say I loved it either. I guess, to refer to your piece, I still felt hungry. I found your review to be something of a cautionary tale to all who might engage with the film differently. No offence to you because your style is great but I didn't get a sense of how you felt about it so much as how you anticipated others would. That being said, it is so fragmented that I guess it is very easy to lik some of it and not like the rest, leaving anyone's opinion somewhere in between.

I particularly loved your closing remarks ... I have lingered for a long time over the pieces that managed to move me in the brief time they had and the others are over before they get irritating ... except for the Asian hairdresser piece ... that could have ended in 30 seconds and I would have been much happier.

[Chris Knipp]

Hey Chris ... I feel like you didn't like it as much as I did.

Depends on what "it" means. I don't know that there's a single "it" you can like, just a lot of little "it's" you can like or dislike. I'm not sure but I think I mentioned more segments of Paris Je T'Aime than you did that I liked--Tykwer, Schmidt, Payne, Van Sant, the Coen brothers. (I agree with you on Doyle's.) . Maybe it's just that I don't warm to the genre of omnibus films as much as you do or have a lot to say about the theme of "it "as developed by these 18 directors. Don't take our differences on this too much to heart. I really liked your review of Paris Je T'Aime, on which we agree concerning several of the episodes. It may be you enjoyed the experience of watching the whole film more than I did, but I look forward to re-watching selected segments, which I think I may want to watch many times. This is (not surprisingly) a beautiful film with a tremendous wealth of talent. I find omnibus films as I said, that they in a sense overfeed you and still in some ways leave you hungry. They're also hard to write about, as are sequences of short films at festivals. I'm reacting to that, and unlike you I don't have generalizations aboutlove that I can relate to the film. I am fine with connected story collections by one person, like The Canterbury Tales or Boccaccio's Decameron and I was going to say the 1001 Nights but they aren't really by one person at all, though all three of course were done in his own fashion by Pasolini and those are favorites of mine, especially the 1001 Nights.