A movie I saw a few weeks ago (June) and that I strongly recommend!
18 neighborhoods, 18 takes on the city of love
By Kristin Hohenadel The New York Times
Published: August 31, 2006
PARIS The brief for the high-profile directors of "Paris, Je t'Aime" was as sweeping as an essay question on a French baccalaureate exam: Make a five-minute film set in a Paris arrondissement that reflects the spirit of the neighborhood, the city and the nature of love itself.
But what happens when you ask mostly foreign filmmakers - including the Americans Alexander Payne, Wes Craven and Gus Van Sant; the Brazilians Walter Salles and Daniela Thomas; and the British director Gurinder Chadha - to make a love story in a city they don't know by heart?
You get a cinematic potluck in which individual exercises in style reflect at least as much about the filmmakers as about the subject matter. For example, a young immigrant mother (Catalina Sandino Moreno) cares for someone else's baby in the bourgeois 16th Arrondissement in the segment from Salles Thomas. Or the Canadian Vincenzo Natali has Elijah Wood exchanging bodily fluids with a vampiress in the Eighth Arrondissement.
The idea of a collective film with Paris as muse is not new. In 1965 "Paris Seen By" featured six vignettes from New Wave directors like Claude Chabrol and Jean-Luc Godard; the idea was reprised by a new set of filmmakers in 1984 with "Paris Seen by ... 20 Years Later." Emmanuel Benbihy, the co-producer of "Paris, Je t'Aime," bought the concept from a French television director. "The myth of Paris as a city of love is an international myth," he said. "The French see in Paris something more quotidian, problematic, existential. Foreign directors are interested in what the city gives off and what it inspires."
Though he had produced only two films, Benbihy managed to recruit the high-powered talent he wanted for "Paris." But he struggled to secure financing until Claudie Ossard, a veteran producer (of Jean-Pierre Jeunet's "Amélie," among others), came on board two years ago to plug the holes in the movie's budget of €10 million (about $13 million).
Benbihy appointed himself as a kind of über-director, devising and shooting transitional sequences - with technical help from the French director Frédéric Auburtin, the co-director of the segment set in the Latin Quarter - to link the disparate characters in an Altmanesque mosaic. But Ossard, who had final editing approval, test-screened a rough cut for an audience and found the transitions between the segments unwatchable and too long. She commissioned Auburtin to produce postcard shots of city landmarks to serve as narrative glue.
"I thought it was important that we see Paris, as we don't always see it very well in the stories, which take place in the Métro, in cafés and so on," Ossard said.
She axed contributions from the Danish director Christoffer Boe, set in the 15th Arrondissement, and the French-Israeli director Raphaël Nadjari, set in the 11th, saying that they didn't quite fit in the mix. Suddenly two arrondissements short, she renamed the film's segments for neighborhoods and landmarks.
And thus began a well-reported brouhaha between the producers, who are no longer speaking to each other. Benbihy filed a lawsuit in an attempt to stop the film's premiere at Cannes. "I wanted to make a single film with 20 directors," Benbihy said. In a heated conversation in which he alternately praised and condemned the final product, he grumbled, "The film now is broken into 18 pieces."
Ossard responded coolly, "I just did what I thought was good for the movie."
After a complex set of legal maneuvers and appeals, Benbihy won a financial settlement and the right to go forward with future related film projects. Then the film opened the Un Certain Regard section at this year's Cannes Film Festival as planned, and was released in France in June.
"Paris, Je t'Aime" wants to portray a modern, multicultural Paris blind to cultural, gender, class and even language differences. There's love at first sight in Van Sant's segment, set in the gay-friendly Marais district, and a flirtation between a Muslim girl and a white French boy by Chadha. Paris's Chinese population is center stage in a contribution from the Australian Christopher Doyle, and the German director Oliver Schmitz tells the story of two young Africans in the 19th Arrondissement.
The project includes the native directors Olivier Assayas, Sylvain Chomet, Bruno Podalydès and Auburtin. But roughly a third of the film is in English. Segments by Assayas and the German director Tom Tykwer feature American actresses playing American actresses in Paris (Maggie Gyllenhaal, speaking heavily accented French, and Natalie Portman, speaking none at all).
Directed by Payne, the final segment is a variation on one of the most familiar of Paris stories: that of an unglamorous middle-aged American tourist (Margo Martindale) wearing out her sneakers chasing the city's charms.
He rented an apartment in the 14th Arrondissement, where his co-writer, Nadine Eid lives. After a week Payne had a better feel for Montparnasse's wide boulevards and storied history, but inspiration hadn't hit. "On the plane going home, my mind kept bringing me back to an idea that I had really wanted to avoid," he said, "which was that of a tourist."
Payne speaks French, but Martindale had to read her lines phonetically, resulting in perhaps the most hilariously inventive American-accented French ever captured on film.
The film attracted mixed reviews and moderate box office in France - where it opened in June following its debut at the Cannes Film Festival. It did well for a French film, but never reached the numbers often achieved by imported talent. "Paris in 18 short films, of which 3 succeed," wrote a reviewer for Le Monde. It has no United States distributor, but it is making inroads elsewhere: "Paris, Je t'Aime" opened over the summer in Russia, Finland and Belgium, and it will be screened this month at the Toronto International Film Festival. In November and December it is set to be released in the Netherlands and Argentina, and in Germany come January.
The filmmakers salvaged some of Benbihy's scenes to provide final glimpses of characters connecting, proof that not all French love stories end in tears. Even Payne's solitary tourist is granted a movie moment of grace, allowing her to believe that Paris is capable of embracing her.
But it seems that Benbihy's heart does not belong exclusively to his hometown. He is now developing a film brand he's calling Cities of Love.
