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 I'd long wanted to see this ever since I first heard about it a few
years ago. The idea: eighteen stories of about 6-7 minutes each, about
love in
Paris and directed by eighteen auteurs
(the Coen brothers, Vincenzo Natali, Alfonso Cuarón, Gus Van Sant,
Alexander Payne, to name some of the more famous ones). Talking about
life in modern
Paris; stories of love from the heart of the city, right?
Well it certainly was an interesting idea that resulted in a fairly
mixed bag. In essence, all eighteen films were short films, and like a
lot of short films, they can be done either really well (see I'll Wait for the Next One or Private Life),
or they can be utter crap (too many), but I figured that these are
experienced directors and they're not going to screw it up.
Unfortunately, that's not the case, here. The problem of a short form
is trying to get in as many things as possible in a shortened time
frame, and you have pressures of both having too much in the story, or
having too little. The former happens all the time in feature-length
films (uh Jurassic Park 2!?), but the latter rarely ever
happens because big studios know that few people go into a theatre to
watch a two hour long metaphysical rumination on love lost (cue Solaris'
$15 million total gross). In short films, you have to deal with both
possibilities; you don't want to cram too much in so you make it about
capturing a moment in time. But how do you give meaning to that scene
or to those moments? How do you emotionally connect with your audience
in 7 minutes? How do you tell something interesting, unique and
original? Sometimes you just don't.
The movie, which actually has two sequels now, one based in
New York and another in
Tokyo, is crammed with actors, an overwhelming amount of who operate or at least have flirted with
Hollywood. People like Nick Nolte,
Gaspard Ulliel, Steve Buscemi, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Juliette
Binoche, Willem Dafoe, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Bob Hoskins, Elijah Wood,
Rufus Sewell, Emily Mortimer and Natalie Portman to name a few. Imagine
them walking around
Paris and doing whatever – awesome, right? Now who wouldn't want to see that?
But when I think about this film I find it difficult to
ponder it as a whole, aside from its novel concept, and I think that
comes down to the fact that there's no real connecting bond between the
stories. It comes off as a vehicle for directors to mess around with
little ideas they've had under the guise of a coherent piece of work.
Some fair far better than others. The latter half, interestingly
enough, contained the stronger choices that were more consistent,
notably Tom Tykwer's Faubourg Saint-Denis, with Melchior Beslon and Natalie Portman; Oliver Schmitz's Place des Fêtes, with Seydou Boro and Aïssa Maïga; Vincenzo Natali's Quartier de la Madeleine, with Olga Kurylenko and Elijah Wood; and Alexander Payne's 14e Arrondissement, with Margo Martindale (known for playing Hilary Swank's mom in Million Dollar Baby).
It's hard to make generalizations about style because you have so many
people doing so many different things so I won't really try, but
notable is Alfonso Cuarón's cinegraphic work as he plays with the one
unedited shot that he masters in Children of Men
(in that battle scene at the end); the Coen brothers' frame
composition; the general blue-tone feel of the majority of the short
films; Vincenzo Natali's B-movie dark vampire thriller and its
accompanying awesome use of music and sound effects; Gus Van Sant's gay
love story (which was kind of amusing actually); and Wes Craven's
simple love story with the added amusement of Oscar Wilde's ghost. I
also really liked Gurinder Chadha's Quais de Seine, which was a neat alternative to the riots and general discontent that you hear from Muslims living in
France. Also great was the song for the movie, Feist's La Même Histoire; I'm going to have to find the OST somewhere.
The problem with the movie was that there were a lot of stories that
were just kind of meh, or okay...but the point is? And those disrupt
the flow and the continuity of the film (not that there really is any,
but it lowers our expectations unexpectedly). Some stories fell into
that trap that I was talking about before, too little over too long.
What's your point? What are you trying to say? So Maggie Gyllenhaal's
character spends most of her time smoking illegal drugs - what is your
message? Is there a point? Are you just making a metaphysical rumination on drugs? Because that's boring and I don't want to see it. Porte de Choisy
was equally boring, but at least it was bizarre and had Asian people in
it, and stereotypes of everyone knowing kung fu and playing mahjong
when they're bored. Tour Eiffel was only good because it had MIMES as the main characters. Otherwise it's a little too specific and a little too in-your-face LOOK AT ME I'M FRENCH LET ME REALLY PUT ON SOME FRENCH STEREOTYPES to really fit in with the rest of the themes going on in the movie.
After waiting around for so long for this to come out, it's a little
disappointing to see so many of them read as mediocre or at best okay,
but the ones that were good, were certainly fairly neat.
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