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Paris, je t'aime review
:. Director: Olivier Assayas, Frédéric Auburtin, various
:. Starring: Florence Muller, Gaspard Ulliel
:. Running Time: 2:00
:. Year: 2007
:. Country: France
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An ambitious but rather unfortunately uneven selection of shorts featuring the City of Lights, Paris Je T'aime makes you wish some of the filmmakers had signed a contract stating they really loved Paris and would treat her with the utmost respect in their storytelling. Others show their devotion to the most beautiful city in the world and its inhabitants with a mere seductive glance, which is how it should be.
Some of the most compelling stories deal with Parisian immigrants and the two strongest shorts in this category deal with immigrants from Africa and Latin America. In Walter Salles' poetic "Loin du 16ème" we meet Catalina Sandino Moreno as an immigrant in yet another city (some may recall that in Maria Full of Grace she ended up pregnant and alone in New York). In a brief but highly effective and emotionally charged vignette we watch her as she wakes at dawn, takes her infant to a scruffy daycare in the suburbs and travels by train to care for a wealthy woman's child in central Paris. In the heartbreaking "Place des Fêtes," we witness the death of a young, homeless immigrant from Lagos, escaping civil war only to succumb to the barbarity of urban life.
It's no surprise that some of the funniest vignettes involve mimes and Steve Buscemi. In "Tuileries," the Coen Brothers direct Buscemi as a tourist who breaks a rule in his travel guide about making direct eye contact with Parisians and ends up mauled in a metro station. In another short, Sylvain Chomet's silly and strangely charming "Tour Eiffel" is a look at mimes in love under the watchful gaze of the Eiffel Tower. Alexander Payne directs a wonderfully melancholy Margo Martindale narrating in an American intermediate French student accent as a lonely postal worker from Denver on her dream vacation in the City of Lights in "14eme arrondissement."
And then there are lots of duds. Natalie Portman stars in a contrived romance with a blind Parisian boy in "Faubourg Saint Denis" while Willem Dafoe plays a cowboy whose horse trots up to a grief stricken Juliette Binoche in the overwrought "Place des Victoires." While there's no law against Wes Craven ever directing a love story set in "Père Lachaise" cemetery starring Rufus Sewell and Emily Mortimer, nor is there a rule barring Oscar Wilde appearing as a ghost there, the end result looks haphazardly stuck together. Even lazier is Alfonso Cuarón's "Parc Monceau" with a disheveled but likable Nick Nolte. A horror film short set in Paris seems interesting but totally out of place in this collection of vignettes; Elijah Wood in "Quartier de la Madeleine," directed by Vicenzo Natali.
Finally, there are the shorts that are borderline interesting but disappointing because I was expecting so much more: Gus Van Zant's "Le Marais," featuring a sly wink to Kurt Cobain and Marianne Faithful, could have been more poignant instead of a merely clever case of someone not speaking your language. Gérard Depardieu directs the classy Gena Rowlands in "Quartier Latin," a short about the moments leading up to a divorce, but it just falls flat despite a few moments where pain and hatred briefly flash onto the screen.
And the biggest question is, why are certain arrondissements left out? There are 18 shorts, so would two more have broken the budget of the film? The problem with these amalgamations (similar to some of the reasons that 11'09"01 September 11 didn't work) is that at times uneven tones seesaw between stories that are more intriguing than others. Just when you get comfortable, it's on to the next one. This isn't to say that it's never worth it to go to a wine tasting versus ordering a whole glass, but it's so much better when they're all of the same caliber.
Anji Milanovic
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