In-Depth: Paris, je t'aime (2006)

"Sitting there, alone in a foreign country, far from my job and everyone I know, a feeling came over me. It was like remembering something I'd never known before or had always been waiting for, but I didn't know what. Maybe it was something I'd forgotten or something I've been missing all my life. All I can say is that I felt, at the same time, joy and sadness. But not too much sadness, because I felt alive. Yes, alive. That was the moment I fell in love with Paris. And I felt Paris fall in love with me."



In 2006, a smorgasbord of American, English, and French actors and directors composed around eighteen short films that were then patched together to become Paris, je t’aime (aka the longest tourism commercial ever). Among the many familiar faces were Natalie Portman, Gaspard Ulliel, Elijah Wood, and Maggie Gyllenhaal, with the directors’ list boasting names like the Coen Brothers (No Country for Old Men), Alfonso Cuarón (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban), Gurinder Chadha (Bend it Like Beckham), and Wes Craven (every scary movie since the 80s). With as much talent and time as was put into this project, I came out on the other side of this 18-chapter “tribute to love” feeling, believe it or not, a little depressed. And it’s not just because 4 out of 18 of the stories involved the death of a main character (with an additional fifth taking place in a cemetery).

I began watching this expecting a French version of the English cavity-inducing confection known as Love Actually (2003). The fact that it wasn’t was both good and bad. Good, because had they been similar, I would’ve undoubtedly fallen into a diabetic coma. Bad, because the discontinuity between the sequences was, at some points, bizarre (one word: vampires. What??). There was an air of over-indulgence in a few of the shorts, the whole “zis eez French so it’s automatically tasteful” feeling which is, to put it bluntly, false. I mean, we get it, Gaspard is pretty, but watching an attractive man attempt to hit on a complete stranger for five minutes hardly counts as interesting gossip, much less an interesting short film. Other shorts, like cinematographer Christopher Doyle's weird, weird musical number or the WTF VAMPIRE skit will be pushed into the sinkhole of my brain where it can join other things that are awkward and have no place in the world, like Snuggies or Emmy Rossum's acting.

The two that really stood out, in my mind, were the shorts by the husband-and-wife team of American screenwriter Paul Mayeda Berges with Indian-British director Gurinder Chadha and by German writer/director Oliver Schmitz. Each are less than six minutes, and though entirely different from one another (one is likely to make you smile and the other is likely to make you cry), both depict--in my mind, and with my limited experience of short films--exactly what a short film should be. Like a short story, each of these pieces took a single moment in time and somehow turned it into a narrative. What makes the two so rich is their simplicity; neither seeks to tell a grand story or depict an occurrence that seems to call for additional scenes or explanation. To me, these standout shorts have a sense of completion balanced with a manner that isn't rushed or forcing you to feel something. They're quiet, fleeting, and beautiful. You can view them below (and since Paris, je t'aime is entirely short films, watching these technically won't be spoilery for the rest of the film).


The saddest and the most truthful about Parisian life.

One of the only shorts to bring a smile to my face. The young actors were great choices.
Happy, sad, monotonous and all, these shorts coming together to form a "film" didn't feel terribly well-executed for me. In truth, Paris, je t'aime seemed to be less about love and more about death, disagreements, and even divorce. Woven between the so-called stories of love was a sense of isolation, detachment, and emptiness that, having just returned from spending a significant time there, I think is prevalent in real Parisian life (the short Loin du 16e was another great example). So you can trick yourself into thinking that this movie is about love, or you can choose to view these as stories about the varying depths of loneliness interspersed with the rare moment that a human connection is made. Either way, Paris can eat it, 'cause New York, I Love You comes out soon. And my city wins.

Rating for the film as a whole: 3/5