Paris fell in love with me

BACK STAGE
SASA MAJUMA | Friday November 14, 2008 00:00

 

Directors Emmanuel Benbihy and Frdric Auburtin deal with all the interlacing overviews and day and night portrayals of Paris. As in any great buffet not all the dishes may match your appetite. This is true in Paris, je t'aime as they are of vastly different flavours and will appeal to many different tastes, but not everyone.

The first selection is by Bruno Podalyds (director and script) and is on Montmartre. A man (played by Bruno Podalyds) finds a place to park and then waits. He is as 'laughable as a lonely joke'. He is looking for a woman and then one collapses next to his car (Florence Muller). In Paris love arrives in totally unexpected ways.

For the second five minutes Gurinder Chadha, who wrote the script with Paul Mayeda Berges, is set at the Quais de Seineand is full of unusual perceptions. Three adolescent boys sit on the bank of the river taunting passing women. When Zarka (Lela Bekhti) trips, one of them goes to assist her. He has difficulty helping her adjust her hijab. She speaks eloquently of why she wears it, 'beauty is to feel good, to be part of a faith'. He takes her picture on his cell phone. They share a mutual attraction. Then he follows her across the park to her mosque.

Le Marais is by Gus Van Sant (script and director). 'Do you believe in soul mates?' A French lad talks non-stop to a person who does not understand French. What next? Brothers Ethan Coen and Joel Coen (script and directors) descend to Tuileries, the Metro station below Le Louvre. A Tourist (Steve Buscemi) tries to follow his guidebook's instructions, like 'eye contact should be avoided'. But he fails to do so and suffers the consequences, ending up covered with smiling Mona Lisas. The fifth five-minute tale. Loin du 16me is by Brazilians Daniela Thomas, who wrote the script with Walter Sales. Ana (Catalina Sandino Moreno) is a servant from Brazil who early in the morning places her baby in a crche and then endures many metro rides and correspondences to reach her employer's flat where she cares for another baby, singing the same song again to sooth it.

Porte de Choisy is by Christopher Doyle to a script he wrote with Gabrielle Keng and Rain Li. This is one of the two bizarre shorts that stand out from the whole as it satirises a number of French passions: fashion, hairstyle and advertising. What Asian hair problems asserts the dynamic Ai Ni (Li Xin).

Isabel Coixet from Spain both wrote and directed her segment Bastille. It conveys what happens when a man acts like a man in love and then falls in love again. It is one of the more touching contributions to the series. The Japanese director and scriptwriter Nobuhiro Suwa has Place des Victoires, an abstract tale on death and longing proving that 'Cowboys Still Exist' and so does a belief in humanity. It stars Juliette Binoche and Willem Dafoe.

An outstanding piece is Tour Eiffel by Sylvain Chomet where a boy explains how his parents met in prison. Paul Putner and Yolande Moreau are his parents and professional mimes.

We must all learn how to raise our palm in front of our face and turn dourness into smiles. In the 10th selection, Parc Monceau, Claire (Ludivine Sagnier) demands that an older man, Vincent Lang (Nick Nolte), speak French to her. She says that her life is being taken over by Gaspar. But what can he do about it? Not smoke. The director and scriptwriter is Alfonso Cuarn from Mexico.

Les Quartier des Enfants Rouges is by Olivier Assayas (script and director) from France (most of the segments are by outsiders). In it Liz (Maggie Gyllenhaal), a movie star, succumbs to an addiction.

One of the most moving sequences is Place des Ftes by Oliver Schmitz (script and director). Sophie (Assa Maga) is a new paramedic who comes too late to the rescue of a migrant from Lagos, Hassan (Seydou Boro). He says to her, 'Help-Lagos is safer'. Then, 'You must be tired ... you've been running in my dreams all night'. They'd met before when he tried to share a cup of coffee with her, but he failed then too. Richard LaGravenese in Pigalle tackles the sex trade that substitutes for love in Paris. Fanny Ardant and Bob Hoskins play an elderly team of performers before their final show. A tourist and a vampire meet in the other bizarre entre, Quartier de la Madeleine, starring Elijah Wood and Olga Kurylenko by Vincenzo Natali. This is followed by number fifteen by Wes Craven, Pre-Lachaise where Oscar Wilde saves a couple's pending marriage (Emily Mortimer and Rufus Sewell) that is rapidly derailing. Ah, 'death of the heart is the ugliest death that there is'.

German writer/director Tom Tykwer has constructed the most memorable episode in Faubourg Saint-Denis. A blind lad Thomas (Melchior Beslon) rescues Francine (Natalie Portman) and their affair in Paris passes through spring, summer and fall. Can it survive separation and winter? As in Run Lola Run he speeds things up. Thomas also uses his palm before his face to achieve a transformation. 'Are you listening to me?' 'No, I see you'. Grard Depardieu directs and plays a caf owner in Quartier Latin to a script by Gena Rowlands, starring a warring couple played by Rowlands and Ben Gazzara.

The final segment is in school French spoken by Carol (Margo Martindale) a post office letter carrier from Denver, Colorado on holiday alone in France. She has no lover but Paris - 'I felt Paris fell in love with me'. 14me Arrondissement is by Alexander Payne. Nearly all the cinematographers are French, but there is not enough space to list them. sasa_majuma@yahoo.co.uk