From Cédric Klapisch the award-winning writer/director of L AUBERGE ESPANGOLE comes a deliciously intimate new valentine to The City Of Lights featuring an all-star cast that includes Oscar®-winner Juliette Binoche (THE ENGLISH PATIENT), Romain Duris (THE BEAT THAT MY HEART SKIPPED), Mélanie Laurent (INGLORIOUS BASTERDS) and François Cluzet (TELL NO ONE). It s the story of a young Moulin Rouge dancer (Duris) awaiting a heart transplant, his single-mother/social worker sister (Binoche), and their rediscovery of the life, laughter and love that hides within every balcony, apartment window, street corner and market stall. These are the stories of the middle class and bourgeois, immigrants and students, fashion models and homeless, and all the lovers and strangers whose paths could only cross and whose worlds are about to change forever in PARIS.
Paris is my favorite city, with SF and Berlin close seconds. After about 20 visits over the last 40 years and some brief spells living there, I love any chance to be in Paree, even if just in spirit, so Parisian films delight and intoxicate with memories and the promise of another visite. Paris the movie offers some nice moments and some good acting, and is a fine film...but as a Parisian classic I can't really rank it up there with Amelie, Breathless, Le Dernier Metro, Day Of The Jackal, Diva, Les Ripoux, and a few others.
The highlights include the acting of Binoche and Lucchini, a good script, and of course some fine shots of the town. But despite the realer than usual feel, something didn't quite click for me here. Many might call this episodic flick Altmanesque, and I'd agree, for better and for worse. It's got his multiple storylines, one or three characters too many to get much involved with any of them, and an ending that's a little too forced and tidy, even though nothing is resolved. Which is fine, but I wasn't left with the same feeling of wonder I get when watching any of the other mentioned films, or the same longing to jump on a plane that instant and walk the town for 12 hours day after day.
I speak decent French and the subtitles are actually more accurate than usual, though the language is actually nowhere near as idiomatic as one might expect...which is one of my qualms here. It sets out to be a panoply of Paris viewpoints, but there's less local feel than you might expect for each arrondissement and the very different vibes each place has, except perhaps the Pavillon des Viandes...they got that right!
The stories are interesting but never really gripped me, and there was more angst and less amused Gallic shrug than I've encountered in the town and France in general. I can't quite put my finger on it, but the happy slyness I love in so many Parisians one meets during non-tourist season (go in late fall, winter, and early spring!) seems rather absent. But perhaps that's a function of the town being, as is said here, for rich people now. It can't be getting any cheaper to live there, no doubt. It's the working class Paris I was looking forward to seeing more of here, but it all felt like a movie in the end.
A good movie, well shot and acted, no doubt...but without the magic of so many other Paris films that seem more suffused with the City of Light's glow, both inside and out.
Beautiful, entrancing, and deep - Irfan A. Alvi - Towson, MD USA
This is a French movie made for a French audience. As a result, for Americans, it provides a window into another culture which is familiar in some ways, but quite different in others. Personally, I love movies which transport me in this way.
Not surprisingly, the movie is visually beautiful, and thus does justice to the beauty of Paris. But more importantly, the movie uses its distinctively French style and sensibility in order to probe many facets of the human condition in a sensitive, penetrating, and balanced manner, thus taking us on quite a journey of diverse vicarious experiences, thoughts on questions big and small, and a wide spectrum of simple and complex emotions. In short, the movie gave me a lot to ponder, and I may need to eventually watch it again.
At the end of the journey, it's clear that this is by no means a feel-good movie, and my net feeling was closer to poignance than happiness or even ambivalence. But the movie does also illustrate the possibility and value of savoring, while we can, the positive elements of life (a very French attitude), some of which can be a source of hope, so the movie has an uplifting side as well - just like real life.
Highly recommended to anyone interested in a beautiful, entrancing, and relatively deep movie.
Great movie! - Don't wait -
I didn't know what to expect about this movie, but the moment I saw who was staring and directing it I understood why I loved it. Romain Duris and Cedric Klapisch, the director of L'Auberge Espagnole. This couple is indeed THE formula for a great French film. Of course the screenplay has to be interesting but these two always hit it off.
I don't want to spoil the film but I just want to say that filming in Paris, during winter, the storyline, the actors and the different stories within created a this piece of true cinema. The director didn't focus on Paris solely, his intention was not to turn the film into an informercial, having lived in Paris myself, I truly felt inside the movie, it is truly French cinema but not only French but Parisian cinema.
I had to buy the Bluray version. So, if you haven't watched it, do it you won't regret it.
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