Paris (2008)

This film has an overload of good actors and a very interesting script,however it fails so much more than it succeeds. It left me wanting to never visit Paris again.(I am sure Paris is breathing a sigh of relief).In reality I love Paris the city. Mainly because the film was so indulgent and vain. As for the lead actor I really ended up wanting him to die due to his narcissistic attitude to his illness. I read a review that said that the film left many things unresolved much like life.Which is exactly the type of bullshit that this film propagates. It was just a few people shagging around.When they did have sex we did not get to see anything that remotely appeared to hold true to life. I did like the animation section of the film which I thought was genuinely inventive.The way the interwoven stories overlapped in an arbitrary fashion was banal.I am a big fan of French cinema and recognised so many of the actors from much better films.The music was also very irritating.For me the only thing that was left unresolved at he end of the film was why I subjected myself to a film that patted itself on the back at every opportunity. This is not cinema,this is not life,this is a very poor film dressed up as a masterpiece.Avoid honestly avoid.Unless condescension is your bag.

I could watch any film starring the beautiful and talented French actress Juliette Binoche and have seen most of her England-language work, but naturally most of her 40 or so movies are in her first language, including this one from 2008."Paris" is not just a French film, it is a quintessentially Gallic flic. Writer and director Cedric Klapisch makes the eponymous capital city almost an actor in itself with plentiful shots of familiar and unfamiliar locations and typical French spots like the cafe, the boulangerie, and the food market. Also tres Francais is the plentiful dialogue, the existential angst, the beautiful women, the mandatory intellectual, and the odd couplings (although the actual sex is never seen), while Klapisch gives us unconnected characters (Paris is the only thread) and unresolved lives (more like real life than reel life).Binoche plays a social worker who clearly takes her professional work seriously because she is herself a single mother of three children and needs to take time off work to care for her brother (Romain Duris) who has a heart condition that may be fatal. It's all very watchable with social concerns leavened with some humour, but in the end I found it rather indulgent and too loosely worked. Some more narrative structure and drive would have lifted the film from a curiosity to a cur

Paris is a kaleidoscopic view of that great City of Light inhabited with a variety of individuals each of whom is consumed with life and love and living and dying. Cédric Klapisch has written and directed this richly populated canvas as a background of a tender story of a Moulin Rouge male dancer Pierre (Romain Duris) who is diagnosed with a terminal heart disease requiring transplantation if he is to survive. But in the end the many characters introduced in 'incidental stories' have become so interesting that, instead of providing simply a background for Pierre's portrait, they become an integral part of the drama as well as indelibly stamped on the viewer's mind. Pierre has kept his illness secret, yet when faced with the dire concept of a transplant he confides in his sister Élise (Juliette Binoche), a single mother of three, who takes him in to fill his boring days of self confinement. There is a palpable magic between the two as Élise attempts to bring Pierre out into the world of hope and of living. Incidental to her life are trips to the market where she observes the lives of the grocers and discovers their private lifestyles, information shared freely with the viewer. A Parisian North African communicates with his brother at home with a postcard of Paris, seducing the brother to brave all odds to come to the city. We also meet a jaded art historian Roland Verneuil (Fabrice Luchini) whose father has just died, an event that devastates his emotional brother Philippe (François Cluzet): Roland proceeds to have an affair with a student but his physical awakening is abruptly altered by the realities of Parisian life while Philippe progresses through his seemingly mundane existence toward a surprise ending. The grocers seek adventures with a group of girls among whom is the ex-wife of one of the men and in the process we observe the varying reactions of interpersonal relationships tested away from the eyes of group participation. All of these stories are white noise to Pierre's situation, and though Élise is able to make Pierre 'dance again' at a party of his fellow dancers she organizes, in the end Pierre is left to care for Élise's children while Élise finally opens her frozen heart to a new romance. At this point Pierre receives the inevitable telephone call that a transplant is ready, and as he proceeds to the hospital he opens his mind to the beauties of Paris. Some of the vignettes we have observed are completed while most simply continue - just like life in the glorious city so often considered the city of love. All of the many roles are enacted by gifted actors, the cinematography offers us a different view of Paris than that of postcards and travel brochures, and the musical score ranges from popular music to the haunting 'Gnossiemme No. 1' of Erik Satie which is Pierre's theme music. At times the viewer feels lost in the complex overlay of the many stories being told, but settling back in a chair and just absorbing the film results in an evening of Parisian intoxication. Grady Harp

Many parallel stories here; many of them taking place under the eyes of this young dancer with a heart disease, who watches them from his balcony.He's jealous of these lives and communicates with them mostly through his sister, who after all perhaps is the only real character he knows. She's living, while others perform a kind of theater, from the racist lady in the baker's shop to the professor who tries to have a ridiculous affair with one of his students.The script functions well sometimes and less well other times. A movie to watch or just let go.