Paris (2008)

Réalisateur:

Cédric Klapisch

Scénariste:

Cédric Klapisch (writer)

Release Date:

20 février 2008 (France)

Genre:

Comedie | Drame | Romance

Plot:

Pierre, a professional dancer, suffers from a serious heart disease. While he is waiting for a transplant which may (or may not) save his life...

Plot Keywords:

Illegal Immigration | Male Female Relationship | Multiple Story Line | Motorcycle Accident | Humiliation

Avis des utilisateurs:

Maybe the Finest movie about Paris since Paris vu Par

Ensemble

Juliette Binoche	...	Élise
Romain Duris	...	Pierre
Fabrice Luchini	...	Roland Verneuil
Albert Dupontel	...	Jean
François Cluzet	...	Philippe Verneuil
Karin Viard	...	La boulangère
Gilles Lellouche	...	Franky
Mélanie Laurent	...	Laetitia
Zinedine Soualem	...	Mourad
Julie Ferrier	...	Caroline
Olivia Bonamy	...	Diane
Maurice Bénichou	...	Le psy
Annelise Hesme	...	Victoire
Audrey Marnay	...	Marjolaine
Xavier Robic	...	Arthur Delamare - le présentateur télé

MPAA:

Rated R for language and some sexual references.

Durée:

France:130 min

Pays:

France

Langue:

Français

Couleur:

Couleur

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Son:

DTS | Dolby SR | Dolby Digital

Classification:

UK:15 | USA:R | Australia:M | Switzerland:7 (canton of Geneva) | France:U | Switzerland:7 (canton of Vaud)

Emplacements De Pelliculage:

Basilique du Sacré-Coeur, Montmartre, Paris 18, Paris, France

Company:

Canal+

Goofs:

Continuity: When the shop-owner of the bakery sell a baguette she asks for 80 cent, doesn't register it in the till, which has the figures 0,00 than it changes to 0,78 than back to 0,00 again.

Guillemet:

Élise: [in French] You're all alone here? What do you do all day?
Pierre: [in French] Watch other people live. Wonder who they are, where they go? They become hereoes in my little stories.

Maybe the Finest movie about Paris since Paris vu Par

No one, but no one, makes movies that better capture a sense of place than Cedric Klapisch. Since the miraculous little When the Cat's Away (Chacun Cherche son Chat, 1996)) he's consistently been able to evoke a real sense of lived lives and inhabited city spaces. Wonderful then , to discover that after all the travels of The Spanish Apartment (2002) and Russian Dolls (2005) he's returned to Paris to make one of the best films ever made of those little universes within the City of Light. That said . if you know nothing about France or its history and culture you just wont get it!

The hook on which this multidimensional movie hangs is Pierre ( Klapisch favorite, Romain Duris), a professional dancer who's just learned that his heart is failing. A transplant may save him, maybe not. All this has echoes of the great Agnes Varda film, Cleo de 5 a 7 (1962) by (where Cleo, a young singer played by Corinne Marchand also gets a frightening diagnosis and she too, walks the streets of the city facing her own death), but maybe achieves even more as a kind of aubade or farewell to the dance of life that ceaselessly crosses Paris in time and in space.

The centre of the film is Pierre's sister Élise (Juliette Binoche in her most relaxed and charming performance in years). Elise moves in with Pierre ( along with her children!) to help out and her own little adventures as she shops at the local market opens out the film as we discover the complex and may layered live of the market workers, especially glum Jean Albert Dupontel and his soon to be ex wife Caroline (Julie Ferrier).

Another story thread follows terminally bored history professor, Roland Verneuil (Fabrice Luchini) embarking on a new career as a TVpundit : these scenes are beautifully satirical yet also curiously touching.

Among the many delights of the movie is a great dream scene where Roland's brother, architect Philippe Verneuil (François Cluzet) is plunged into the 3D Universe used to sell of one of his middle class housing Projects and floats like a tormented Mario Brother from some gleaming modernist disaster to rapturous potential buyers and back again. This delicious scene goes on just long bought to make more than a few silly dreams of home improvement (let alone all those fantastical TV Reality shows) seem, as they are, utterly absurd , yet also quite nightmarish in their silly faith in problem solving by buying stuff. For this alone the movie's worth the price of admission!

Interwoven, too, is the story of the anxious young Benoit in the Cameroon, adrift and about to try to join his Paris based émigré family in that most dangerous of was, the open boat from Africa to Europe. All French life, it seems is touched upon, not least the political morass facing governments as they grapple with the problem of the poor and dispossessed out in the projects . The music track is equally complex, with that old favorite (since Truffaut used it in Shoot the Piano Player almost fifty years ago!) Erik Satie's Gymnopaedie Number 1 again weaving it s extraordinary spell! You just have to be there!

Klapisch has done something marvelous here, a film full of ideas and humanity, yet one that somehow enables us to engage with and care for so many complex characters without ever having to resort to stereotypes. Its a great achievement – and a glorious movie about that city to which we must all return in our dreams: Paris.