This was a delightfully different kind of film.

It reminded me somewhat of "Coffee and Cigarettes" because the entire movie is made up of a series of vignettes of completely different and unrelated stories. The only thing tying them together is that they all take place in and around beautiful Paris. The movie tagline is: "Stories of love. From the City of Love".

For example, one story is about a young woman who kisses her baby goodbye in the morning. She brings her baby to a babysitter and sings a song in Spanish to calm her child. She then goes to her job, which is taking care of another baby who is about the same age. We hear a woman (the mother of this baby) call out that she will be an hour or two late getting home that evening. You see the sadness appear on the face of this young mother and understand that she is sad because it will be an hour or two less time spent with her own baby. The door slams and the young babysitting mother then walks into the baby's room and sings the same Spanish song to the other woman's baby.

Each story is approximately five or six minutes in length. They are all completely different in theme, and all directed by different directors. Yet they all fit together. They are all separate stories, with different characters, different directors, yet it works. We really enjoyed viewing this film. It was quite unique. On the cover of the film, I read this quote: "Through the neighborhoods of Paris, love is veiled, revealed, imitated, sucked dry, reinvented and awakened". It's true. We see love in every kind of relationship, form, size and shape.

One story is about an American working in a fabric store of sorts. A woman comes in to purchase some fabric (Marianne Faithfull) while her assistant speaks to the young American unabashedly on and on about his attraction to this employee. It seems to be a sort of come on, and the young American employee listens attentively but confesses that he understands very little French after the assistant leaves.

I also enjoyed the first story very much of a man attempting to find a coveted parking spot and those who try to take it from him. He curses just about everyone around him, but ends up finding potential happiness just by circumstance when a woman walking by his car suddenly faints.

One of my favorite segments was a story called "Parc Monceau" directed by Alfonso Cuarón about a woman named Carol who is an American traveling alone in Paris for the first time. She has taken French lessons and describes her trip and her thoughts all in very basic French with a very American accent. It's funny and clever and sad all at the same time.

I found the stories to be amusing, sad and generally very interesting. The fact that each of them is more or less five minutes in length doesn't give you much time to get bored. Also, we watched this in two parts, one night after the other. It was easy to do this and didn't matter much to the plot since we just picked up where we left off.

Much of the film is in French, but there is a little bit of English thrown in here and there, depending on the story and who is speaking. There is a wonderful story with Natalie Portman and another with Juliette Binoche. There were many, many talented actors in all of the stories, some I recognized and some I did not. Among those I recognized were: Bob Hoskins, Nick Nolte, Steve Buscemi, Willem Dafoe, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Ben Gazzara and Gena Rowlands.

Of course, there are beautiful scenes of Paris, some are indoor, but many are lovely outdoor scenes which are familiar to me because we were there last year (and because they are so famous...e.g. Notre Dame and the Eiffel Tower). Some are in cafe's or out in the streets or shops. One thing is for sure: you will not be bored watching this.

There were many, many different directors each with his or her own inimitable style presenting their films for us. They have five minutes to show us what they can do and they all do it so well! Some of the talented directors whose work is featured in this film are:

Gurinder Chadha (segment "Quais de Seine")
Sylvain Chomet (segment "Tour Eiffel")
Ethan Coen (segment "Tuileries")
Joel Coen (segment "Tuileries")
Isabel Coixet (segment "Bastille")
Wes Craven (segment "Père-Lachaise")
Gérard Depardieu (segment "Quartier Latin")
Alexander Payne (segment "14th arrondissement")
Bruno Podalydès (segment "Montmartre")
Walter Salles (segment "Loin du 16ème")
Nobuhiro Suwa (segment "Place des Victoires")
Tom Tykwer (segment "Faubourg Saint-Denis")
Gus Van Sant (segment "Le Marais")


Running length: 120 minutes


Rates R for brief drug use.



~thanks for reading~


©gkm.


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This review is another (late) entry into Barbara's (ifif1938) Paris write-off.




Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Fit for Friday Evening
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older