iA host of international filmmakers, including The Coen Brothers, Gurinder Chadha, Gus Van Sant, Water Salles, and Alfonso Cuarón have come together to each tell in their own unique voice and vision stories of Paris.
Through a series of 18 short vignettes you see a very different City of Lights. The central theme is love in its many incarnations. Each director was given a particular neighborhood in the city in which to set their story about an unusual encounter.
The cast is who’s who of European and American talent: Miranda Richardson, Juliette Binoche, Bob Hoskins, Nick Nolte, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Gaspard Ulliel, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Natalie Portman, Steve Buscemi, and Elijah Wood.
It is a look at Paris that tourists seldom see as well as a look into the hearts of people reaching out to each other.
I guess when you review a movie like this you don’t review it as a whole but each if its parts. Let me say at the outset that I enjoyed each and every one of the chapters (each short was entitled with the neighborhood it took place in and the director). There is literally something for every taste. I’d like to talk about a few that I particularly enjoyed:
“Le Marais” by Gus Van Sant is about a young man Gaspard (Gaspard Ulliel) who is inexplicably drawn to a stranger (Elias McConnell) he meets in a print shop where his employer (Marianne Faithfull) has brought her work to be duplicated. Gaspard shares with the stranger how he had a feeling he was going to meet someone important and how he wants to explore this connection further. It’s a charming piece about attraction and the confusion of language. That Gaspard kid is so deliciously Parisian.
“Loin du 16ème” “Far from the 16th arrondissement” by Walter Salles and Daniela Thomas is about a young mother (Catalina Sandino Moreno) who must leave her own child at a local daycare to make the long commute into the fashionable 16th arrondissement to care for another woman’s baby. In addition to it being a social statement about the daily struggle of hardworking domestics this story shows how a woman can put aside her own emotions and her own heart to do her job.
“Bastille” by Isabel Coixet follows a man (Sergio Castellitto) on the verge of asking his wife for a divorce so he can be with his flight attendant mistress. Before he can his wife (Miranda Richardson) reveals that she has inoperable cancer. The man decides to do the right thing and stay with his dying wife. In spending her last days with her he falls in love with her again. There are bittersweet and very real emotions in this story.
“Place des Fêtes” by Oliver Schmitz opens on Hassan (Seydou Boro), an immigrant from Lagos, as he flirts with a beautiful woman Sophie (Aïssa Maïga). The circumstances of their encounter are that Hassan has been stabbed and Sophie is the medic trying to help him and give him comfort. As Hassan sings a familiar tune to Sophie, she realizes she has met him before. Hassan and Sophie are a lovely reminder of the city’s rich multicultural population.
“Quartier de la Madeleine” by Vincenzo Natali is a gothic tale of a traveler (Elijah Wood) who unwittingly stumbles upon a Vampire and her latest victim. The Vampire (Olga Kurlyenko) discovers the intruder and descends upon him. He isn’t frightened by her ghastly beauty, instead he is smitten. She spares his life and he takes measures to make her his. I had to mention this story for two simple reasons: it’s the coolest idea for a chapter about Paris (come on, Vampires!) and Elijah Wood. Once a fangirl, always a fangirl.
The last story “14ème Arrondissement” by Alexander Payne (who also makes a cameo in Wes Craven’s “Père-Lachaise”) is the perfect way to end this film. Carol (Margo Martindale) is a mail-carrier from Denver who has studied French for two years in preparation for her trip to Paris. She narrates her adventures in her very American French and articulates beautifully how Paris has changed her. I’m pretty much an easy cry and this one had me in tears.
I don’t exclude the other stories because they weren’t worth mentioning. Au contraire mes amies, this review would go on for pages and pages if I were to do that. As it is the film is 120 minutes long though doesn’t feel it due to the quick changes to the next neighborhood. The stories are told with humor, longing, sweetness, and humanity. Chances are you’ll be thinking about booking a flight to Paris after you see this.
Limited release May 4th: New York. May 18th: Los Angeles, USA.
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