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Cedric Klapisch's appropriately titled Paris is a love story for a city, much akin to Woody Allen's equally lovestruck Manhattan. Klapisch's film may be a lighter, airier movie than Allen's much more luscious and demanding Manhattan (the enigmatic Nick Schager of Slant Magazine calls Paris a frothy pop trifle) but the love of place and time are equally evident. Frothy perhaps, but filled with love nonetheless. And it is what it is filled with that makes it work. Fragmented and disjointed, with an array of ensemble characters swirling and whirling in and out and back into the story (Paris plays out as Altman as often as it does Woody Allen), it is these various moments in time, these moments in the life of a city, that connect to a greater whole that is Klapisch's film. The sum of these parts may not quite equal this proverbial whole, but they manage to spark enough life into the proceedings to lift Paris above the over-sentimentalized maudlin trap it could have easily - and once and awhile does - fall into.
With longing looks at La Ville-Lumière from the rooftops and the balconies and the quaint streets below, Klapisch directs his film as if the city were his ideal lover and thus could do no wrong. Shown from the middle classiest of perspectives - the immigration problems and shanty town surroundings of the city are barely addressed - Klapisch's Paris is visually breathtaking filmmaking through the rosiest of glasses. This idealization may end up making the film less important in a way - though when was the last time you saw a poor person in the New York adorations of Woody Allen - but it makes its impact seem more ethereal in a cinematic way of thinking. No less so than the Paris-set films Truffaut and Rivette, Klapisch allows his camera to virtually make sweet sweet love to his city - without any worries of that bad morning after. This is the beauty of Paris for the beauty of Paris' sake. And then you have Juliette Binoche.
Possibly Juliette Binoche for Juliette Binoche's sake, the stunning eponymous actress (age is only making her more beautiful with each passing film) is the heart of Klapisch's film. Binoche plays Elise, a divorced mother of three who moves in with her younger brother Pierre (played by the equally eponymous Romain Duras) when he finds out his heart is failing. Again, she is the heart of this film. The other main storyline involves Roland (a fabulously infantile Fabrice Luchini) a lonely history professor who begins anonymously texting a student - first with giddy schoolgirl insecurity and finally with fiery, violent poetry from Baudelaire - only to have his stalking perversions rewarded by bedding the budding coed (played by the sexy Melanie Laurent in her first US released movie since making this critic fall in love with her as Shosanna Dreyfus in Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds). The most memorable scene involves Luchini's Roland making a purposeful fool of himself dancing to Wilson Pickett's Land of 1000 Dances as his copulating coed looks on in seemingly joyous rapture.
Granted this mish-mash of storylines - many are shamefully and inexplicably truncated - play out as too uneven at times, but the sheer beauty of the photography (though this still isn't Gordon Willis's photographic genius from Manhattan!) and the interplay between the characters - a somewhat minor storyline of blue collar farmer's market malaise is sorely in need of a movie all its own - make Cedric Klapisch's Paris glow with an aura of undying love from the filmmaker. Klapisch's Paris is a Paris that can do no wrong - and thee is nothing wrong with that. [10/30/09]
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