Paris, Je T’aime
Studio: First Look
Rated: R
Cast: Steve Buscemi, Juliette Binoche
Director: Gus Van Sant, Wes Craven, others
WorkNameSort: Paris, Je T’aime
Our Rating: 4.00
It’s hard to imagine a city more intimately and inextricably bound to the cinema than Paris, even if it’s New York City’s skyline that has become the world’s most recognizable thanks to its own relationship with the movies. In Paris, Je T’aime, it again receives homage in a collection of 18 shorts directed by 22 internationally diverse directors including ‘ deep breath ‘ the Coen brothers, Gus Van Sant, Alexander Payne, Walter Salles, Alfonso Cuarón, Gérard Depardieu and even Wes Craven. These shorts, which are about 18 different Parisian neighborhoods and star names like Natalie Portman, Elijah Wood, Steve Buscemi, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Nick Nolte, Juliette Binoche and Catalina Sandino Moreno, are somehow ‘ quite inexplicably ‘ strung together into a feature-length movie with nothing except its titular subject matter to connect them, but somehow ‘ somehow ‘ it works. Despite conventional film language and everything one expects from the traditionally stiff short film (which tends to eschew narrative storytelling) nothing about Paris, Je T’aime feels stiff or hindered by its haphazard, sometimes truncated, but always sincere love letter to and tour of the City of Lights.
This article appears in Jun 13-19, 2007.