30 April 2007: See Paris in Irvine Through ‘Je T’aime’

This was the most delightful movie I had seen in a while. I was able to attend a private screening in Los Angeles and immediately pre-ordered it on DVD when I came home. The review was so fun to write because the whole project was so brilliant.

New University Newspaper: See Paris in Irvine Through ‘Je T’aime’

See Paris in Irvine Through ‘Je T’aime’
by Christina Nersesian
Volume 40, Issue 26 | Apr 30 2007

Paris is the known as the City of Love. Yet in this U.S. release of a film-festival favorite, Paris is showcased in the most serendipitous, spectacular and surreal series of vignettes never before imagined.

‘Paris, Je T’aime’ features a series of short films by some of modern film’s most celebrated filmmakers, from Wes Craven to the sardonically funny Joel and Ethan Coen.

Included in this strange brew of filmmakers, directors and screenwriters is Gus Van Sant, whose directorial decisions turned two Jersey boys into overnight movie stars with ‘Good Will Hunting.’ The mind behind the twisted reality of ‘Cube,’ Vincenzo Natali, also has a short in this collection, as does Alfonso Cuaron, director of the Academy Award-nominated films ‘Children of Men’ and ‘Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban,’ and writer/director Alexander Payne, of ‘Sideways’ fame.

The shorts also star some of today’s prime silver-screen talent, from young Hollywood – Natalie Portman, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Elijah Wood, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Gaspard Ulliel of recent ‘Hannibal Rising’ fame – to their seniors and inspirations, such as Juliette Binoche, Gena Rowlands, Gerard Depardieu, Steve Buscemi and Bob Hoskins, to name a few.

Japanese writer and director Nobuhiro Suwa’s work ‘Place des Victoires,’ starring Juliette Binoche and Willem Defoe, is about a mother’s difficult time coping with the loss of her little boy while mimes Paul Putner and Yolande Moreau find love in a city not ready for their sort of imagination.

Natali’s twisted spiral of events puts Elijah Wood into a whirlwind of emotions – accompanied by a theremin – with a real femme-fatale vampire in ‘Quartier de la Madeleine.’

Craven’s ‘Pere-Lachaise’ gives us a couple running through the titular cemetery, wherein rest the remains of Sarah Bernhardt, Frederic Chopin, Jim Morrison, Edith Piaf, Marcel Proust and the tinder to the fiery plot, Oscar Wilde. When two lovebirds nearly break their vows over one man’s lack of appreciation for his wife’s chosen stop on their honeymoon, the spirit of you-know-who materializes to save the day the only way he knows how: with impenetrable prose.

Portman lends her charm to a love story about a dramatic actress and her boyfriend, played by Melchoir Belson, in Tom Tykwer’s ‘Faubourg Saint-Denis,’ which keeps things lively with stop motion and other cinematographic methods reminiscent of Twyker’s most notable film, ‘Run Lola Run.’

With each short, a certain aspect or running theme shines with perfection in the director’s or screenwriter’s eye. It’s difficult to pull them apart from one another; although they are entirely different stories done in wholly separate methods of filmmaking with drastically opposing characterizations, they are but one part of a whole: Paris, a bright light among the cities of the world.

Rating: 5/5