Paris, je t’aime is a cinematic buffet of love and its bittersweet permutations set within a dreamy travelogue of its most representative city, Paris. Like walking through a museum with numerous artworks to selectively admire, this omnibus film collates 18 different vignettes that delineate the city of love through the distinct themes and visions of an assortment of accomplished directors. That also means that individual tastes will vary as to which segments are worth writing home about.
The film does sometimes feel like an overstuffed experimental film and inevitably some segments feel more self-contained than others. But that uneven quality enhances the filmic universe the work creates. Because it deliberately does not make a point to tie the various short films together (though a few characters do connect in the end), the film is devoid of the disjointed quality inherent in some works by singular directors that contain multiple stories interlocked together by pure coincidence. As such, it comes as close as any film to convincing us that all these diverse characters are really occupying the same city and space.
It does take a little while to get used to the rhythm of the disparate short stories because just when we are about to get used to a few characters and really care about them, the film moves on to another district of the city for the next short. That quality particularly hurts a few vignettes such as “Loin du 16ème” by Walter Salles and Daniella Thomas, about an immigrant (Catalina Sandino Moreno) who must leave her own baby to baby-sit another from a rich family in order to make a proper living, and Nobuhiro Suwa’s “Place des Victoires,” about a grieving mother, played by Juliette Binoche, who sees a spiritual vision to help her cope with the loss of her son. We are so absorbed to want to see a whole movie about each of them and we are sad to leave after seeing their respective stories last only about seven or eight minutes.
What is consistent throughout is that every segment has a beautiful and distinctive look to capture a different facet of Paris, though I think most people will agree that the one directed by Christopher Doyle, a regular cinematographer for many of Wong Kar-Wai’s films, is an embarrassment that trades too much on Asian vs. European fashion stereotypes. That also holds true for Gurinder Chadha’s piece, “Quais de Seines,” which may have worked in feature length if the clash between European and Arabic cultures were dug deeper but really feels superficial as a short. Other segments are far more satisfying such as the Coen brothers’ “Tuileries,” which is a wonderful social comedy of errors about an American tourist (Steve Buscemi) who confirms his social paranoia towards the peculiar behavior of two very oddball French lovers. Another memorable one is Tom Tykwer’s “Faubourg Saint-Denis,” about a blind man (Melchior Beslon) who falls in love with an aspiring actress (Natalie Portman) and realizes how selfishness and narrow-mindedness can perhaps lead to inadvertent pain in relationships.
Article comments
1 - Seraphina
Great review of Paris, je t'aime, John! You really highlighted the greatest stories.