Reviewed by Janina Conboye
Stars Juliette Binoche, Steve Buscemi, Willem Dafoe, Gerard Depardieu, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Natalie Portman, Miranda Richardson, Gaspard Ulliel & others
Certification UK 15 | US R
Runtime 115 minutes
Written & directed by Olivier Assayas, Gurinder Chadha, Sylvain Chomet, Joel & Ethan Coen, Isabel Coixet, Wes Craven, Alfonso Cuaron, Vincenzo Natali, Alexander Payne, Nobuhiro Suwa & others
Paris — the city of lovers ... well, it was never quite the romantic city when I ventured on a school trip as a teen, which obviously involved staying in a naff hotel and dining in dreadful restaurants. But this collection of short films has softened the lack of romantic or charming memories I was perhaps supposed to have. I've never been the biggest fan of very short films. I often feel that no matter how good the script, the underlying meanings or metaphors, they still lack depth. But Paris, Je T'Aime, although at times a little dull, is a very small exception.
In Paris, Je T’Aime celebrated directors from around the world — including the Coen Brothers, Gus Van Sant, Wes Craven and Olivier Assayas — have come together to portray Paris through a series of vignettes about people and their lives. The films have charm. Some are tender, very interesting and even puzzling, and some stories give a real emotional impact. But there are times it really fails to give anything.
Essentially the films are about the people, their day-to-day lives and what Paris means to them emotionally. It certainly doesn’t depict the city in its stereotypical “postcard” sense — street cafes, the architecture, museums and such like — so if this is something you want, then these films are not what you are looking for, as the purpose is to go beyond this facade. Many of the situations presented will be found anywhere in the world, so the films were a little disappointing in that they don’t depict the French capital as wholly unique from any other city in the world.
Credit does go to the quality of the cast. Cleverly gathered from both sides of the Atlantic to demonstrate Paris as a cosmopolitan city, the line up included Juliette Binoche, Nathalie Portman, Fanny Ardant, Elijah Wood, Barbet Schroeder, Steve Buscemi, Nick Nolte, to name just a few. They are all superb and, with dialogue in both French and English, make the most of the material they have to go on.
My main complaint is that the collection is just too long. There was the feeling of quantity rather than quality and they left the dull films until last, which didn’t help. It would have been far more enjoyable if it were an hour-and-a-half at the most and if the somewhat boring shorts were cut. It was not bad, but I’d rather seek out something a little more interesting.
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SECOND OPINION | Stuart O'Connor: A very novel idea — 18 short films written and directed by some of the world's best filmmakers, all set in the one city and with the one theme — that almost, but not quite, works. The problem with a short film is that you have a limited amount of time — in this case, each film is about 8 minutes long — to set up your story and characters and get to your payoff. Many of these vignettes succeed, but quite a few don't.
Of the collection, I have quite a few favourites: the first flm, Montmartre (by Bruno Podalydes) which tells of a lonely man who collapses in the street beside his car; Quais De Seine (Gurinder Chadha), about a boy who falls for a Muslim girl; Tulieries (the Coen brothers), with Steve Buscemi as an American tourist having a few, um, problems at a Metro station; Bastille (Isabel Coixet), in which a man planning to leave his wife for his mistress learns she has cancer; and Pere-Lachaise (Wes Craven), about a young English couple visiting Oscar Wilde's grave.
All those films succeed in what they set out to do. We quickly come to empathise with the characters — and even, in a few cases, get to like them. And my least favourite? Tour Eiffel (Sylvain Chomet), the story of a lonely mime who works near the Eiffel Tower. I hate mimes almost as much as I hate clowns. This is also the only film that uses the tower; all the films tend to shy away from the cliched, "picture postcard" views of Paris we normally see on the screen, giving us a glimpse of the real city you really only get to see once you go there. For that alone, they should be applauded. But overall, the film is a trifle long. It needs to lose maybe 4 or 5 of the weaker shorts to be a much tighter, more complete work.