Paris, Je t'aime
Apr. 27th, 2011 02:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sechan19I really, really enjoyed this film. It argues well for the notion that more omnibus films should be made in the west. (Plenty of omnibus films are made in Asia already; in Japan there are usually three or four released a year.)
My favorite segments (in chronological order):
Bastille by Isabel Coixet.
Tour Eiffel by Sylvain Chomet.
Place des fêtes by Oliver Schmitz.
Père-Lachaise by Wes Craven.
Faubourg Saint-Denis by Tom Tykwer.
14e arrondissement by Alexander Payne.
My absolute favorite segment, 14e arrondissment, requires some spoiling. Read on at your own discretion.
The short film starts the brilliant character actress Margo Martindale (The Laramie Project, Million Dollar Baby) as a letter carrier from Denver, Colorado. The film followers her as she tours the city on her first visit, while in voice-over narration she describes her experience (in heavily American-accented French) to the members of the French class she's been studying with for the past two years. Through Martindale's eloquent performance, we come to realize that the trip is not exactly what she expected and that it hasn't exactly given her what she had hoped to gain by going.
In the denouement she sits on a park bench, eating a sandwich (undoubtedly delicious in the way only a Parisian sandwich can be) and looking around at her surroundings. In that moment you see her realize her own reality. She understands and accepts the fact that she is a single, middle-aged, overweight letter carrier from Denver, Colorado and that she will pretty-much always be that. But she also realizes that she's a woman who took the trouble to learn French and to travel, alone and bravely, to a foreign country to see something of the world outside her daily life and to be enriched by it.
In that moment she is probably as perfectly happy as any one person is ever capable of being. And it is a beautiful and striking revelation. Watching it, I felt elated and as if I had experienced a powerful affirmation, that life is not the sum of your collected possessions or adherences to social-expectation but is instead anything you choose to make of it and be thankful for.
Anyway, I really loved this film.
Bonus favorite sequences:
* During Porte de Choisy, by Christopher Doyle, one of the characters switched into Chinese and I understood every word. I even understood well enough to spot the verbal pun that was being made and to comment on it before the characters in the film did. (This caused my viewing partner, A., to claim that she hates me that much more now.)
* During Quartier de la Madeleine, by Vincenzo Natali, A. and I experienced a simultaneous irrepressible desire to laugh the minute Elijah Wood appeared onscreen. We also both immediately acknowledged that we shouldn't be laughing at him, because he's not really that funny, but that we just couldn't help it--there's just something so adorably laughable about him.
My favorite segments (in chronological order):
Bastille by Isabel Coixet.
Tour Eiffel by Sylvain Chomet.
Place des fêtes by Oliver Schmitz.
Père-Lachaise by Wes Craven.
Faubourg Saint-Denis by Tom Tykwer.
14e arrondissement by Alexander Payne.
My absolute favorite segment, 14e arrondissment, requires some spoiling. Read on at your own discretion.
The short film starts the brilliant character actress Margo Martindale (The Laramie Project, Million Dollar Baby) as a letter carrier from Denver, Colorado. The film followers her as she tours the city on her first visit, while in voice-over narration she describes her experience (in heavily American-accented French) to the members of the French class she's been studying with for the past two years. Through Martindale's eloquent performance, we come to realize that the trip is not exactly what she expected and that it hasn't exactly given her what she had hoped to gain by going.
In the denouement she sits on a park bench, eating a sandwich (undoubtedly delicious in the way only a Parisian sandwich can be) and looking around at her surroundings. In that moment you see her realize her own reality. She understands and accepts the fact that she is a single, middle-aged, overweight letter carrier from Denver, Colorado and that she will pretty-much always be that. But she also realizes that she's a woman who took the trouble to learn French and to travel, alone and bravely, to a foreign country to see something of the world outside her daily life and to be enriched by it.
In that moment she is probably as perfectly happy as any one person is ever capable of being. And it is a beautiful and striking revelation. Watching it, I felt elated and as if I had experienced a powerful affirmation, that life is not the sum of your collected possessions or adherences to social-expectation but is instead anything you choose to make of it and be thankful for.
Anyway, I really loved this film.
Bonus favorite sequences:
* During Porte de Choisy, by Christopher Doyle, one of the characters switched into Chinese and I understood every word. I even understood well enough to spot the verbal pun that was being made and to comment on it before the characters in the film did. (This caused my viewing partner, A., to claim that she hates me that much more now.)
* During Quartier de la Madeleine, by Vincenzo Natali, A. and I experienced a simultaneous irrepressible desire to laugh the minute Elijah Wood appeared onscreen. We also both immediately acknowledged that we shouldn't be laughing at him, because he's not really that funny, but that we just couldn't help it--there's just something so adorably laughable about him.
