Paris je t'aime review
May. 18th, 2006 07:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ourdramaqueenFrom the Hollywood Reporter. No direct mention of our man, but his segment is mentioned at the beginning:
May 18, 2006
Paris, I Love You (Paris, Je t'Aime)
By Ray Bennett
Being in Paris is to be inside a work of art, and it is no surprise that in the charming collection of vignettes that make up "Paris je t'aime," the art is love. This is a Paris where Oscar Wilde can reappear beside his grave at Pere Lachaise to give squabbling lovers a sense of humor. A vampire may pounce on an unsuspecting backpacker in the Madeleine. A cowboy on horseback can bring a grieving mother back to her family. A paramedic may fall in love with her bleeding patient.
Love in all its weird and wonderful forms is the subject of 18 short films made by an assortment of international directors who bring individual vision to a collective love letter to the French capital. Most of the directors have written their own pieces, and they range from whimsical to romantic, to dramatic and tragic.
With many familiar faces including Juliette Binoche, Fanny Ardant, Natalie Portman, Nick Nolte, Steve Buscemi, Bob Hoskins and Gena Rowlands, the film is necessarily uneven but has an overall winning charm and can expect a warm reception in art houses around the world.
Buscemi and Coen brothers completists will not want to miss their hilarious tale of an American tourist on the Metro stop at the Tuileries learning firsthand how accurate his guidebook is. Forget "The Da Vinci Code" -- anyone who sees this film will never look at Mona Lisa's smile again without thinking of the matchless Buscemi.
An offbeat sense of humor is established from the opening story, subtitled "Montmartre," in which a frustrated young man (writer-director Bruno Podalydes) struggles to find a parking spot only to spend the time parked complaining aloud about why he can't find a girlfriend.
Then a lovely young woman (Florence Muller) faints beside his car. It's Paris.
Writer-director Gurinder Chadha spends a few minutes showing how a young man (Cyril Descours) can learn more from a modest hijab-wearing young woman (Leila Bekhti) than from his leering buddies.
Isabel Coixet manages to find great humor in a story of a failed love affair given new life after one of the lovers (Miranda Richardson) is diagnosed with terminal leukemia, while Oliver Schmitz's new paramedic (Aissa Maiga) learns how fleeting love can be while treating a stab victim (Seydou Boro).
Several sequences begin with misdirection so that Nolte's May-December romance turns out to be not that at all, while Hoskins and Ardant's strip club encounter involves more than a little planned artifice. Tom Tykwer's tale of an actress (Portman) trying to break off her affair with a blind linguist (Melchior Besion) also holds a surprise. Sylvain Chomet's item involving mimes is pleasingly self-mocking, and Alexander Payne's narrative of a Denver matron (Margo Martindale) visiting the city to improve her halting French begins in sarcasm and ends in sympathy.
Binoche grieves for her dead son in Nobuhiro Suwa's parable about a cowboy (Willem Defoe) who rides the midnight streets of Paris to ease her pain. Director Barbet Schroeder has fun along with Li Xin in a wacky musical fantasy by Christopher Doyle. Wes Craven naturally gravitates to a graveyard for his oddball contribution involving Wilde.
The cinematography is varied and wonderful. Pierre Adenot's music fits the bill, and there's a great waltz at the end with English adaptation by Oscar-winning lyricist Will Jennings.
PARIS JE T'AIME
Victoires International in association with Arrival Cinema
Credits:
Directors: Bruno Podalydes
Gurinder Chadha, Gus Van Sant, Joel and Ethan Coen, Walter Salles & Daniela Thomas, Christopher Doyle, Isabel Coixet, Nobuhiro Suwa, Sylvain Chomet, Alfonso Cuaron, Olivier Assayas, Oliver Schmitz, Richard LaGravenese, Vincenzo Natali, Wes Craven, Tom Tykwer, Frederic Auburtin & Gerard Depardieu, Alexander Payne
Producers: Claudie Ossard & Emmanuel Benbihy
Co-producer: Burkhard Von Schenk
Executive producers: Chris Bolzli, Gilles Caussade, Sam Englebardt, Ara Katz, Chad Troutwine, Frank Moss, Rafi Chaudry
Original idea: Tristan Carne
Concept: Emmanuel Benbihy
Production designer: Bettina von den Steinen
Editing supervisors: Simon Jacquet, Frederic Auburtin
Original music: Pierre Adenot
No MPAA rating
Running time -- 120 minutes
And for those interested - an article about the legal tussle between the producers, also from HR:
May 18, 2006
'Paris' not feeling the love
Producers involved in legal tussle
By Charles Masters
CANNES -- "Paris, je t'aime" (Paris, I Love You) may well be a film about amour, but there is little love lost between the producers of the portmanteau picture, which has its gala screening tonight for the opening of Un Certain Regard.
The film is the subject of a legal tussle, with the project's initial producer, Emmanuel Benbihy, unhappy that two of a planned 20 segments were cut from the film by Claudie Ossard, who boarded the floundering project two years ago as a white-knight producer.
The long-in-the-works movie, which has "an overall winning charm," according to a review in The Hollywood Reporter, features a series of vignettes shot around the French capital from an impressive array of international filmmaking talent. But two of these directors, Raphael Nadjari and Christoffer Boe, ended up on the cutting-room floor after Ossard sidelined Benbihy from the final montage. She also excised linking sequences he had shot.
"It's not at all the film I wanted to make. It's not right to cut out two great directors," Benbihy said. "I don't want to damage the film, but I can't shut my mouth completely."
Benbihy obtained a ruling from a Paris court this week that theoretically blocks the film's distribution, on pain of a €180,000 penalty for each infraction, lawyers representing both sides confirmed Wednesday. Despite this, the first press screenings went ahead as scheduled Wednesday, with Benbihy credited onscreen as producer.
Christophe Pascal, a lawyer for Ossard's Victoires Prods., said the court ruling would be appealed pending the outcome of negotiations. He said a further hearing is set for June 13, when a court-appointed mediator is due to recommend a compromise. The movie is scheduled to be released June 21 in France through La Fabrique de Films.
Ahead of Wednesday's opening ceremony, Ossard said: "We'll reach some agreement. What I want to do is protect our film. We've made a good film."
With negotiations still under way at press time, it was unclear what the outcome will be. "There will be two versions, one Mme. Ossard's, one M. Benbihy's," suggested Jacques Bitoun, a lawyer for Benbihy.
Benbihy said he would not attend tonight's gala screening, at which much of the talent involved is due to be present. "I'll go to the party to greet the talent that's made the trip, but I'm not going up the steps for an unfinished film," he said.
ETA: Ahahaahaaa you go Ian! According to a brief radio report about the Da Vinci Code screening in Cannes, Ian McKellen said the Vatican really should be happy that there is talk about Jesus and Mary Magdalene - at least then no one can claim that Jesus was gay. ♥
May 18, 2006
Paris, I Love You (Paris, Je t'Aime)
By Ray Bennett
Being in Paris is to be inside a work of art, and it is no surprise that in the charming collection of vignettes that make up "Paris je t'aime," the art is love. This is a Paris where Oscar Wilde can reappear beside his grave at Pere Lachaise to give squabbling lovers a sense of humor. A vampire may pounce on an unsuspecting backpacker in the Madeleine. A cowboy on horseback can bring a grieving mother back to her family. A paramedic may fall in love with her bleeding patient.
Love in all its weird and wonderful forms is the subject of 18 short films made by an assortment of international directors who bring individual vision to a collective love letter to the French capital. Most of the directors have written their own pieces, and they range from whimsical to romantic, to dramatic and tragic.
With many familiar faces including Juliette Binoche, Fanny Ardant, Natalie Portman, Nick Nolte, Steve Buscemi, Bob Hoskins and Gena Rowlands, the film is necessarily uneven but has an overall winning charm and can expect a warm reception in art houses around the world.
Buscemi and Coen brothers completists will not want to miss their hilarious tale of an American tourist on the Metro stop at the Tuileries learning firsthand how accurate his guidebook is. Forget "The Da Vinci Code" -- anyone who sees this film will never look at Mona Lisa's smile again without thinking of the matchless Buscemi.
An offbeat sense of humor is established from the opening story, subtitled "Montmartre," in which a frustrated young man (writer-director Bruno Podalydes) struggles to find a parking spot only to spend the time parked complaining aloud about why he can't find a girlfriend.
Then a lovely young woman (Florence Muller) faints beside his car. It's Paris.
Writer-director Gurinder Chadha spends a few minutes showing how a young man (Cyril Descours) can learn more from a modest hijab-wearing young woman (Leila Bekhti) than from his leering buddies.
Isabel Coixet manages to find great humor in a story of a failed love affair given new life after one of the lovers (Miranda Richardson) is diagnosed with terminal leukemia, while Oliver Schmitz's new paramedic (Aissa Maiga) learns how fleeting love can be while treating a stab victim (Seydou Boro).
Several sequences begin with misdirection so that Nolte's May-December romance turns out to be not that at all, while Hoskins and Ardant's strip club encounter involves more than a little planned artifice. Tom Tykwer's tale of an actress (Portman) trying to break off her affair with a blind linguist (Melchior Besion) also holds a surprise. Sylvain Chomet's item involving mimes is pleasingly self-mocking, and Alexander Payne's narrative of a Denver matron (Margo Martindale) visiting the city to improve her halting French begins in sarcasm and ends in sympathy.
Binoche grieves for her dead son in Nobuhiro Suwa's parable about a cowboy (Willem Defoe) who rides the midnight streets of Paris to ease her pain. Director Barbet Schroeder has fun along with Li Xin in a wacky musical fantasy by Christopher Doyle. Wes Craven naturally gravitates to a graveyard for his oddball contribution involving Wilde.
The cinematography is varied and wonderful. Pierre Adenot's music fits the bill, and there's a great waltz at the end with English adaptation by Oscar-winning lyricist Will Jennings.
PARIS JE T'AIME
Victoires International in association with Arrival Cinema
Credits:
Directors: Bruno Podalydes
Gurinder Chadha, Gus Van Sant, Joel and Ethan Coen, Walter Salles & Daniela Thomas, Christopher Doyle, Isabel Coixet, Nobuhiro Suwa, Sylvain Chomet, Alfonso Cuaron, Olivier Assayas, Oliver Schmitz, Richard LaGravenese, Vincenzo Natali, Wes Craven, Tom Tykwer, Frederic Auburtin & Gerard Depardieu, Alexander Payne
Producers: Claudie Ossard & Emmanuel Benbihy
Co-producer: Burkhard Von Schenk
Executive producers: Chris Bolzli, Gilles Caussade, Sam Englebardt, Ara Katz, Chad Troutwine, Frank Moss, Rafi Chaudry
Original idea: Tristan Carne
Concept: Emmanuel Benbihy
Production designer: Bettina von den Steinen
Editing supervisors: Simon Jacquet, Frederic Auburtin
Original music: Pierre Adenot
No MPAA rating
Running time -- 120 minutes
And for those interested - an article about the legal tussle between the producers, also from HR:
May 18, 2006
'Paris' not feeling the love
Producers involved in legal tussle
By Charles Masters
CANNES -- "Paris, je t'aime" (Paris, I Love You) may well be a film about amour, but there is little love lost between the producers of the portmanteau picture, which has its gala screening tonight for the opening of Un Certain Regard.
The film is the subject of a legal tussle, with the project's initial producer, Emmanuel Benbihy, unhappy that two of a planned 20 segments were cut from the film by Claudie Ossard, who boarded the floundering project two years ago as a white-knight producer.
The long-in-the-works movie, which has "an overall winning charm," according to a review in The Hollywood Reporter, features a series of vignettes shot around the French capital from an impressive array of international filmmaking talent. But two of these directors, Raphael Nadjari and Christoffer Boe, ended up on the cutting-room floor after Ossard sidelined Benbihy from the final montage. She also excised linking sequences he had shot.
"It's not at all the film I wanted to make. It's not right to cut out two great directors," Benbihy said. "I don't want to damage the film, but I can't shut my mouth completely."
Benbihy obtained a ruling from a Paris court this week that theoretically blocks the film's distribution, on pain of a €180,000 penalty for each infraction, lawyers representing both sides confirmed Wednesday. Despite this, the first press screenings went ahead as scheduled Wednesday, with Benbihy credited onscreen as producer.
Christophe Pascal, a lawyer for Ossard's Victoires Prods., said the court ruling would be appealed pending the outcome of negotiations. He said a further hearing is set for June 13, when a court-appointed mediator is due to recommend a compromise. The movie is scheduled to be released June 21 in France through La Fabrique de Films.
Ahead of Wednesday's opening ceremony, Ossard said: "We'll reach some agreement. What I want to do is protect our film. We've made a good film."
With negotiations still under way at press time, it was unclear what the outcome will be. "There will be two versions, one Mme. Ossard's, one M. Benbihy's," suggested Jacques Bitoun, a lawyer for Benbihy.
Benbihy said he would not attend tonight's gala screening, at which much of the talent involved is due to be present. "I'll go to the party to greet the talent that's made the trip, but I'm not going up the steps for an unfinished film," he said.
ETA: Ahahaahaaa you go Ian! According to a brief radio report about the Da Vinci Code screening in Cannes, Ian McKellen said the Vatican really should be happy that there is talk about Jesus and Mary Magdalene - at least then no one can claim that Jesus was gay. ♥
