randomosity

Last night marked a first visit to the IFI (Irish Film Insti­tute). The IFI, I have gathered and can now con­firm is a won­der­ful

venue for those in the know. They fea­ture a full slate of movies, largely European indie flicks, def­in­itely of eclectic rather than pop­u­lar taste. Last night for example fea­tured: Paris, City of Men, L’Heure d’été and Led­jis.
Last night’s object­ive was to see the rather innoc­u­ously named Paris. Read the movie sum­mary, but went in with little idea about what we were going to see. This 2008 film from Cédric Klapisch earns a very strong must see recom­mend­a­tion! It centres on the flam­boy­ant pro­fes­sional dan­cer Pierre (Romain Duris), who has been dia­gnosed with a ter­minal heart con­di­tion and his sis­ter (Juli­ette Binoche) who sheds work respons­ib­il­it­ies to move in and care for him. Much in the style of his earlier, and superb L’Auberge Espangnole, Klapisch ingeni­ously webs a series of tan­gen­tially inter­lock­ing story lines. He keeps you guess­ing at to when and where the stor­ies will inter­sect, and aside from some rather clumsy fore­shad­ow­ing in one of the tra­gic sequences, he plays his hand well.

Cross-posted to Dub­lin­ica.

The char­ac­ter­iz­a­tion is superb and the expres­sions, smiles, curses, antics of our play­ers take us on a emo­tional jour­ney into their lives, pains, and struggles. This is all bal­anced against a sump­tu­ous treat­ment of the urban fab­ric of Paris. Mov­ing from aer­ial shots from bal­conies and rooftops, to the cata­combs to Ver­sailles, the film finds root in the homes of Pierre and of Paul, an aging pro­fessor (Fabrice Luchini) whose father’s death sud­denly makes him face a nar­rowly suc­cess­ful but largely unreal­ized life. Paris fea­tures a won­der­fully evoc­at­ive dream sequence, blend­ing anim­a­tion and a Second Life sort of effect. A fur­ther play­ful striptease sequence by Binoche to the tune Sway, is a wag­gish treat.
There are prob­ably one or two character/stories too many, but this barely detracts from the over­all exper­i­ence. One is drawn into Paris, into the lives of the char­ac­ters and their neigh­bour­hood. The set­ting is a sump­tu­ous treat, Paris in its splend­our but with an unkempt, com­plex, unre­solved side exposed with aplomb. Four and half of five stars.