Maximum Francophilia

Today I caved and watched a movie which I had originally made fun of when I saw previews. The movie? Paris. Should I have left it at the previews? Well, it wasn't a complete wash. But probably.

Paris is one of those tapestry of life films where strangers bump into each other and connect across the tableau of a big city - Paris, in case there was any ambiguity. The movie begins and ends with sweeping shots from the Eiffel Tour, as if the picturesque Parisian skyline is sufficient justification for whatever happens in the rest of the film.

The story concerns a young dancer who has a heart condition and is dying, also very picturesquely. His sister is Juliette Binoche, the only character who doesn't come off as trite or two-dimensional. She doesn't have a man and he advises her to "take a chance on life," whatever that means.

There's the aging professor who gets ahold of one of his student's numbers so he can send her flirtatious texts - a story that barely ties in with anything else in the film. Even as the girl becomes interested in her dorky old professor, it feels like a grotesque caricature - the idea that an older man can "regain his youth" with an affair, while the whole time it's evident that she's stringing him along and that he's going to lose her. And then he'll be sad. Which isn't predictable, or anything.

There are some stabs at global significance - a French model meets a man Senegal, who then tries to come to France. Crossing the Mediterranean in a speedboat, he nearly drowns while she is attending a fashion show. Quickly, the film moves on. Instead of registering as a portrait of inequality, desperation and indifference, it strikes the viewer as a bizarre little subplot that could have just as well been left out.

If there's one thing this movie does well, it's the little portraits of ordinary people. For example, the owner of the neighborhood bakery, a pretty blond with a predator's smile who greets her customers with saccharine sweetness, then berates her employees and complains that young people today have no work ethic. She's a minor character, but she sort of stole the show (insofar as there was a show to steal).

After a few of these ensemble movies, I find myself wishing that the directors had instead focused on just one of their stories instead of trying to weave them together. Conventional, perhaps, but probably a better way of telling stories.