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In PARIS, JE T'AIME, celebrated directors from around the world, including the Coen Brothers, Gus Van Sant, Gurinder Chadha, Wes Craven, Walter Salles, Alexander Payne and Olivier Assayas, have come together to portray Paris in a way never before imagined. Made by a team of contributors as cosmopolitan as the city itself, this portrait of the city is as diverse as its creators' backgrounds and nationalities. With each director telling the story of an unusual encounter in oe of the city's neighborhoods, the vignettes go beyond the 'postcard' view of Paris to portray aspects of the city rarely seen on the big screen. Racial tensions stand next to paranoid visions of the city seen from the perspective of an American tourist. A young foreign worker moves from her own domestic situation into her employer's bourgeois environs. An American starlet finds escape as she is shooting a movie. A man is torn between his wife and his lover. A young man working in a print shop sees and desires another young man. A father grapples with his complex relationship with his daughter. A couple tries to add spice to their sex life. These are but a few of the witty and serendipitous narratives that make up PARIS, JE T'AIME. (official distributor synopsis)
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Reviews (9)
I did some rigorous math – an average – and I got what I gave it. I liked the 4th and 6th stories the least, the beginning was kind of weak in general, but then the mimes came in and it gave me hope for a better ending. After that, my enthusiasm cooled down – two stories that I would probably have given something like 2 stars. But the 12th story charmed me; and I'd give that one the highest rating on its own. And after that? Nothing came along that was worse than average, so the final level was very nice, orderly, melancholic. The last short story brings it to a beautiful close, just like the person at the center of the story, even I came away feeling it, and everything just clicked. It's definitely worth taking a tour of Paris – in both senses. It starts weak, but finishes with verve.
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A very pleasant experience, tuned especially to the wave of relaxed melancholy and love tremors. If I set aside Doyle's truly stupid and inconsistent Porte de Choisy and the situation when the authors confused the short with a cheap kitschy agitation (especially Quais de Seine), here we have the same more or less high-quality and interesting little stories, from which the charming Sylvain Chomet stands out (this is what individuality should look like on the screen for a few minutes) and Payne’s fantastic short, which tells more about Paris through the eyes of a foreigner than most previous short stories combined. Personally, I was also very pleased with Natali's vampire nonesense, the Coens' traditional entertainment show with "donny" Buscemi, minimalist suggestive Loin de 16éme and the excellent craftsmanship (albeit a little weaker in terms of content) of Tykwer and Cuarón.
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These short story collages on the subject of capital cities are always problematic. After all, Paris after the year 2000 cannot be such a flat city of stories that fail to engage on their own and fit together as a whole. If I didn't take notes, after a few days I wouldn't even remember Tykwer's rather daring romance with Portman and the lovely ending of Payne, in which such a sweetly earthy American woman bade farewell to the city of all cities. Gérard Depardieu was a complete disappointment and what Natali made was absolute crap. 18 fragments are really too much for one film.
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The first film that dared to present a great world metropolis in the form of stories. Some of them still come to my mind, while others I have successfully forgotten. Nevertheless, the film remains a wonderful mosaic of how Paris looks from the perspective of many filmmakers. I should watch more "I Love You" films to find out how they measure up in terms of quality. You can't expect every story to be a masterpiece, but in this case, quality definitely prevails.
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I would rate the individual etudes differently. The absolute number one for me was Arrondissement 10, when the blind boy tells Natalie Portman: "I can see you". And I must also mention Arrondissement 7, Tour Eiffel, the boy with the big briefcase and his parents the mimes. Next, story number 7 appealed to me, which was about a man who wants to break up with his wife because of a young stewardess and the fact that the wife sings the same song over and over, wears the same clothes, has lipsticks she doesn't use, doesn't order appetizers and desserts, and ends up eating the husband's entire meal...and what's more, the husband is to the point where he even orders meals that the wife will like. But when his wife tells him she is sick, he doesn't break up with her and leaves the stewardess. He pretends to love his wife until he falls head over heels in love with her again... she dies and he is alone... On the other hand, I would leave out the soulless beginning, i.e. Arrondissement 18, which was rather awkward. The rest was average or above average... anyway I will think about it. Nice work.
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