Film Review
Cédric Klapisch's affectionate ode to the City of Lights is a
curiously melancholic work. It lacks the ebullience and frenetic gaiety
of his previous films, films that celebrate life and love with an
insouciance and optimism that is all but missing from this latest
offering.
Paris
is a celebration of life, but in a much more solemn vein, more
conscious of the dark forces that inhabit our world, more cynical, more
cruel, and more aware of the proximity of death, reminding us how
precious and fragile is the thing that we call life.
In common with much of Klapisch's previous work, exemplified by
Chacun cherche son chat (1996),
Paris is a colourful collage
of modern life that comprises several loosely connected vignettes
involving a wide cross-section of French society. The film does
engage to a degree but it doesn't have the coherence and fun of the
director's earlier films. The various story fragments not only
feel shallow and insubstantial but they also fail to gel into a
satisfying whole, and the film feels strangely inelegant and
incomplete.
Part of the problem is that several of the story elements are worthy of
a film in their own right and are not given the time to make any kind
of meaningful statement. We want to know more about Pierre's back
story, but all we are told is that he is dancer with a heart
condition. The angst-ridden historian Roland Verneuil has the
more interesting story but this is compressed into a series of
unconvincing sketches that just barely escape being an accumulation of
clichés; his brother Philippe is drawn even more vaguely and
you wonder why he is even in the film at all. A muddled story strand
involving Cameroon immigrants is even less successful at capturing
our attention and feels like the cinema equivalent of a still birth.
At first, the film's lack of coherence and preponderance of
superficial characters is not a problem. There is enough
poetry in the photography, enough panache in the mise-en-scène to distract
and reward us. However, by the mid-point, the magic has evaporated
sufficiently for the film's shortcomings to become
apparent. The endless zapping between the various
storylines becomes increasingly bothersome, particularly when we are
diverted away from the characters that have begun to interest us.
Although the film has an excellent cast, only two of the actors -
Romain Duris and Fabrice Luchini - succeed in rendering their
characters believable and sympathetic. The others - even stars of
the calibre of Juliette Binoche and François Cluzet - struggle
to make anything of their broadbrush stereotypes and it soon becomes
obvious that there are just too many characters, too many stories vying
for our attention.
For those familiar with Cédric Klapisch's work,
Paris can only come as something of
a disappointment. It is not entirely without charm - there are
some moments of real poignancy and an occasional splattering of good-natured humour.
Yet the amorphous nature of the film, its lack of structure and its
thinly sketched characterisation prevent it from having much of an
impact, and so a film that had so much promise is forgotten all too
easily.
© James Travers 2010
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Next Cédric Klapisch film:
Ma part du gâteau (2011)
Film Synopsis
Pierre, a man in his early thirties, begins to lose hope when he is diagnosed
with a potentially fatal medical condition. His only hope is a heart
transplant, but there is no guarantee that this will save him. Convinced
he is soon about to die, Pierre sinks deeper into depression, and this merely
aggravates his already strained relationship with his sister Elise.
But then, gradually, the young man's awareness of his own mortality opens
his eyes to the beauty of the world. As he wanders around Paris he
begins to see life in a completely different light. All around him
there are people he will never know who are getting on with their lives,
each life unique and precious. For the first time, Pierre becomes aware
of the multiplicity of lives around him and realises how fortunate he is
to have been a part of the rich tapestry of existence...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.