Romantic love dominates this collection of short films set in contemporary Paris.  However it is not just the first stirrings of romance and the beginning of love affair, but the moments in the middle filled with uncertainty, the ending of an affair, the affair dreamed of but never begun, the love between family and friends, and  all those the moments of conflict that define a relationship.

Paris, je t'aime cannot help but be a sweet and darling of a film, since it revolves around love, but there is enough humour, accident and thwarted desire to make it real as possible.  The scope of scenarios reveal many aspects of human affection and desire rarely examined in cinema, and the expectations of the audience in terms of conventional romance are continually overturned with many coyly amusing scenes.

These vignettes are arranged wonderfully opening with Montmartre by Bruno Podalydès where a man (Bruno Podalydès) with the desire for love, has a chance meeting with a woman who has the potential to be his sweetheart.  Then, in Quais de Seine, Gurinder Chadha deals with a romance hidden from peers when a French youth courts a Muslim girl and must learn to respect the manners of another culture.

Many of the stories play with our expectations, and delight in the misadventures of courtship.  Flirting through language barriers in Gus Van Sant's Le Marais, two young men have a disastrous, perhaps staggered prelude (one would hope) to a love affair.  A highlight of the collection is Ethan Coen and Joel Coen’s a very funny tale Tuileries with Steve Buscemi as a hapless American tourist whose gaze lingers too long on a local’s girlfriend while waiting for a train.  Again, language and custom dominate the narrative as Steve Buscemi lowers himself into more and more hot water.

The paradox of what we do for love, especially what we sacrifice concerns Walter Salles and Daniela Thomas in Loin du 16ème.  A mother, who works as a nanny, must put her baby in care, while she attends to the child of a richer woman.  The sadness and unfairness of this class divide contrasts with Porte de Choisy by Christopher Doyle, a martial arts parody set in a hair salon, and another highlight of the film with Li Xin as the athletic Madame Li.  We laugh and we cry again as death and love and duty come into play in Bastille by Isabel Coixet starring Miranda Richardson. Nobuhiro Suwa takes this mood a step further in Place des Victoires where a woman (Juliette Binoche) grieves the death of her son and has a vision where a cowboy (Willem Dafoe) allow her to speaks with the ghost of her son ghost. At last she can let go.

After such a moving story we ineveitably swing back to high camp humour, this time tackling the most mocked art French form – that of the beret-wearing, red-scarfed and black-and-white-striped shirt French mime.  Told in a cartoon-like fashion with mime and music, Tour Eiffel by Sylvain Chomet is so cute and self effacing – dragging out every mime joke in the book – that you can’t help but be tickled pink with this mime romance that pulls out, with relish, all the corniest gags in the world.  Just when you think it can’t get any cheesier Parc Monceau by Alfonso Cuarón sets the scene with the classic older American (Nick Nolte) and feisty French lass but suggests that perhaps the obvious is not true.

In Quartier des Enfants Rouges by Olivier Assayas  Maggie Gyllenhaal plays an actress in a period drama who smokes endless joints in her trailer whiling away the hours and waiting for the lighting to be set.  She scores some pot off a handsome dealer and feels some chemistry and imagines he felt the same.  Further highlights include Bob Hoskins at a strip club in Pigalle by Richard LaGravenese , Elijah Wood as a boy seduced by a vampire  in the black-and-white hyper-stylised Quartier de la Madeleine by Vincenzo Natali and the appearance of Oscar Wilde’s ghost (with romance advice no less!) in Père-Lachaise by Wes Craven.

In the last couple of films, misunderstanding gets the comedy rolling in Faubourg Saint Denis by Tom Tykwer, whose fast-paced imagery tells the story of an entire romance in a matter  of seconds, delighting in showing how our concept of time and memory are altered by our emotional states.  In one of the last films Gina Rowlands write and stars in Quartier Latin by Frédéric Auburtin & Gérard Depardieu, and she relishes the role of a woman divorcing a man and having nothing to lose.

By the end of the film, I was relieved that it did not just deal with couples in the heat of romance but had enough breadth to attempt to diversity in age groups, sexualities, religions and relationships.  Love becomes the tie that binds humans together, and often defines us; in each of these films, a shift occurs in the relationship with the people involved always changing their identity as their connections alter.


Paris, je t'aime
2006

Directors:
Olivier Assayas   ‘Quartier des Enfants Rouges’
Frédéric Auburtin (‘Quartier Latin’) (transitions)
Emmanuel Benbihy (transitions)
Gurinder Chadha (‘Quais de Seine’)
Sylvain Chomet (‘Tour Eiffel’)
Ethan Coen (‘Tuileries’) & Joel Coen (‘Tuileries’)
Isabel Coixet (‘Bastille’)
Wes Craven  (‘Père-Lachaise’)
Alfonso Cuarón (‘Parc Monceau’)
Gérard Depardieu (‘Quartier Latin’)
Christopher Doyle (‘Porte de Choisy’)
Richard LaGravenese  (‘Pigalle’)
Vincenzo Natali  (‘Quartier de la Madeleine’)
Alexander Payne (‘14th arrondissement’)
Bruno Podalydès (‘Montmartre’)
Walter Salles (‘Loin du 16ème’)
Oliver Schmitz (‘Place des Fêtes’)
Nobuhiro Suwa (‘Place des Victoires’)
Daniela Thomas (‘Loin du 16ème’)
Tom Tykwer (‘Faubourg Saint-Denis’)
Gus Van Sant (‘Le Marais’)

Screenwriters:
Tristan Carné (idea)Emmanuel Benbihy (feature film concept and transitions)
Bruno Podalydès (‘Montmartre’)
Paul Mayeda Berges (‘Quais de Seine’) & Gurinder Chadha (‘Quais de Seine’)
Gus Van Sant (‘Le Marais’)
Ethan Coen (‘Tuileries’) & Joel Coen (‘Tuileries’)
Walter Salles (‘Loin du 16ème’) & Daniela Thomas (‘Loin du 16ème’)
Christopher Doyle (‘Porte de Choisy’) & Gabrielle Keng (‘Porte de Choisy’) & Kathy Li (‘Porte de Choisy’)
Isabel Coixet (‘Bastille’)
Nobuhiro Suwa (‘Place des Victoires’)
Sylvain Chomet (‘Tour Eiffel’)
Alfonso Cuarón (‘Parc Monceau’)
Olivier Assayas (‘Quartier des Enfants Rouges’)
Oliver Schmitz (‘Place des Fêtes’)
Richard LaGravenese  (‘Pigalle’)
Vincenzo Natali (‘Quartier de la Madeleine’)
Wes Craven (‘Père-Lachaise’)
Tom Tykwer (‘Faubourg Saint-Denis’)
Gena Rowlands (‘Quartier Latin’)
Alexander Payne (‘14th arrondissement’)

Cinematographers:
Maxime Alexandre (‘Père-Lachaise’)
Michel Amathieu (‘Place des Fêtes’)
Bruno Delbonnel (‘Tuileries’)
Eric Gautier (‘Loin du 16ème’) (‘Quartier des Enfants Rouges’)
Frank Griebe (‘Faubourg Saint-Denis’)
Eric Guichard (‘Tour Eiffel’)
Jean-Claude Larrieu (‘Bastille’)
Denis Lenoir (‘14th arrondissement’)
Kathy Li (‘Porte de Choisy’)
Pascal Marti (‘Place des Victoires’)
Tetsuo Nagata (‘Quartier de la Madeleine’)
Matthieu Poirot-Delpech (‘Montmartre’)
David Quesemand   (‘Quais de Seine’)
Pascal Rabaud (‘Le Marais’)
Michael Seresin  (‘Parc Monceau’)
Gérard Sterin (‘Quartier de la Madeleine’)

Editors:
Luc Barnier (‘Quartier des Enfants Rouges’)
Mathilde Bonnefoy (‘Faubourg Saint-Denis’)
Stan Collet (‘Père-Lachaise’)
Simon Jacquet (‘Quais de Seine’, ‘Porte de Choisy’, ‘Bastille’, ‘Pigalle’, ‘Quartier Latin’, ‘Faubourg Saint Denis’ and ‘14th arrondissement’)
Anne Klotz (‘Montmartre’)
Isabel Meier (‘Place des Fêtes’)
Alex Rodríguez (‘Parc Monceau’)
Hisako Suwa (‘Places des Victoires’)

Original Music:
Pierre Adenot, Michael Andrews ,Leslie Feist, Reinhold Heil, Johnny Klimek, Christophe Monthieux, Marie Sabbah, Tom Tykwer

Cast:
Bruno Podalydès, Steve Buscemi, Li Xin, Miranda Richardson, Juliette Binoche, Willem Dafoe, Nick Nolte, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Bob Hoskins, Elijah Wood, and Gena Rowlands.